Guest Opinion: Sonja Berndt: The Need for Smart Effective Crisis Intervention Involving Unhoused Persons Suffering from Mental Illness

Dear Mayor Gordo and Members of the Public Safety Committee:

Last week, Pasadena Now published a community report from the City’s police department that summarized calls officers responded to last month, including the following disturbing incident:

“February 5, 2021 at 1:56pm: Officers responded to the report of a suspicious male seen loitering in the area of Arden St. and Oak Knoll Ave. Officers arrived, immediately recognized the subject from previous contacts and arrests, and were aware the subject acts violently towards police officers. While attempting to detain the subject, he tried punching an officer. A struggle ensued and eventually, officers were able to detain him. The suspect is known to suffer from mental illness.”

Community allies and advocates for persons experiencing homelessness in our City question the wisdom or logic of sending uniformed police officers to detain a person known to have mental illness, who is known to act violently towards police officers, who is “loitering.”  When a person with known severe heart disease collapses, or a person is found unresponsive in a swimming pool, the 9-1-1 dispatcher sends a paramedic/fire department personnel to the scene, not a police officer.  Community allies and advocates who engage in direct outreach with our unsheltered neighbors are all too familiar with the disastrous results that can occur when uniformed police officers respond to a non-life-threatening situation involving a person experiencing homelessness who also suffers from mental illness.  Further, citing or arresting mentally ill persons experiencing homelessness only creates even more, and many times insurmountable, barriers for those persons, at substantial cost to our city and county for police officers, public defenders, prosecutors and court personnel. 

But fortunately there is a proven alternative that could have avoided the disturbing result that occurred on February 5th — a community-based public safety system that provides mental health first response for crises involving mental illness and substance use disorders.  The program Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) and similar programs are operating in cities across America with very positive results, both in providing effective and compassionate outreach to those experiencing mental illness and substance use disorders, and in significant local cost savings as a result of deploying experienced outreach workers rather than law enforcement officers.  In fact, a bill has been introduced in Congress, the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) Act, which would grant states enhanced federal Medicaid funding for three years to provide community-based mobile crisis services to individuals experiencing a mental health or substance use disorder crisis.  It also provides $25 million for planning grants to states to help establish or build out mobile crisis programs.

Last November, then-Chairperson of the Public Safety Committee, Councilmember John Kennedy, agendized a presentation from CAHOOTS.  Unfortunately, that meeting was cancelled due to the lack of a quorum.   

I, along with other advocates and community allies of persons experiencing homelessness, urge you to place on the Public Safety Committee agenda as soon as possible the urgent and critical issue of developing a mobile crisis response program similar to the CAHOOTS model to provide services to those experiencing a mental health or substance use disorder crisis.  Thank you.

Sonja K. Berndt, R.N. (inactive) is a retired state prosecutor