The city of Los Angeles is launching a new pilot program to address crime, opting to use unarmed civilians instead of police officers to respond to nonviolent mental health emergencies.
The Unarmed Model of Crisis Response was launched about a month ago and features two teams of mental health practitioners available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Members of the teams will respond to situations that would typically be handled by the police, like conducting welfare checks and responding to calls for public intoxication or indecent exposure.
The city administrator is in charge of the program, which is currently operating within three police divisions, including Devonshire, Wilshire, and Southeast. The current plan is to evaluate the three teams’ performance after a year and, depending on the results, potentially expand.
“From welfare check-ins, to nonviolent mental health/drug issues, to minor health crises in encampments and elsewhere, we need more tools in our toolbox to truly help Angelenos in need,” City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said in a statement. “We can’t keep asking our police officers to also be social workers, mental health clinicians and outreach workers.”
The program was announced about a month after it was launched during a news conference two weeks ago.
City officials launched the program after scrutiny continued to mount for the Los Angeles Police Department following its handling of several mental health-related calls, some of which resulted in shootings.
According to the Times, there were 19 times an officer with the LAPD opened fire on someone experiencing some form of behavioral crisis in 2023.
During a meeting with the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, interim LAPD Chief Dominic Choi said that the department is giving the new program its full support.
“It’s taking some of the workload from us and shifting the resources to the appropriate” responders, Choi said.
Now, he said that 911 personnel have been given training on how to divert calls to the program versus police departments. Some of the criteria to earn a program response include there being no weapons or threats of violence mentioned.