Her interest began while working in crisis negotiations, which proved to her the value of taking time to talk to people in distress, according to Moon, a 32-year veteran of the department. Though the mobile crisis team launched just a few months after nationwide protests over police brutality reached all the way to tiny Nevada City, the county seat, Sheriff Shannan Moon said she developed the program entirely separate from the social justice movement. “It’s all hands on deck to save people’s lives.” ‘People don’t think clearly in crisis’ “It will just automatically escalate the situation,” said Libby Woods, an educator in Nevada City who spearheaded the project. It’s now working to establish a volunteer-run hotline that could supplement and potentially provide an alternative to the sheriff’s team for mental health crises and homeless people in distress, situations that its leaders argue are exacerbated when someone shows up with a badge and a gun. The mobile crisis team was off-duty at the time.Ī community group formed last year following Crawford’s death. Sheriff’s deputies shot Crawford, who was walking down a road with her two young children, after she accused the officers of trying to take her kids and charged one with a knife. Pockets of anger and doubt linger over the February 2021 killing of Sage Crawford. That is the case even in a place like Nevada County - overwhelmingly white, politically moderate, where law enforcement officials say they feel strong support. To succeed, however, these efforts will need to rebuild trust between law enforcement and residents who led the push for change, often skeptical that the solution could come from police. Supporters have promoted this strategy as a way to bring more sensitivity and care to some of the toughest, most time-consuming 911 calls, while freeing up officers to focus on their primary crime prevention duties. The Los Angeles Police Department expanded its decades-old mental health unit and moved it from a secondary to frontline response. Since then, new programs pairing law enforcement officers with behavioral health clinicians as patrol teams have popped up throughout California, including in San Mateo County, Pleasanton, Palo Alto, Santa Maria, Sacramento County, Humboldt County and Modesto. The debate was supercharged in the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and mass protests over policing practices, with many activists urging that law enforcement be removed from non-emergency response altogether. The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office is among the wave of law enforcement agencies across California and the country rethinking how they handle mental health-related calls.Īs the national reckoning over use of excessive force and the death of unarmed civilians gained steam during the past decade, demands also grew for communities to reconsider their approach to the personal crises - severe mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse - underlying so many 911 calls, arrests and, sometimes, fatal encounters with police. “But I also work there, so I’ll make sure, when they ask me, ‘What do you think?,’ I’m definitely going to tell them.” “We don’t really have the final say,” Alvarado said. I’m at my wit’s end.”Īlvarado assured her they would place her son on another 72-hour hold at the local emergency room for evaluation, and that he would recommend the man be transferred to a facility for longer-term treatment. “I just want him to get help,” the woman said. He offered to take her to the county crisis stabilization unit if she was feeling overwhelmed by the confrontation with her son. “It changes how your body reacts to things,” Alvarado told the woman. It’s been hell every day here,” she wailed. When she tried to call the local behavioral health agency for an appointment, she said he threatened to kill her and threw a baseball bat at her. The man was not taking his medication for bipolar disorder since he got home from his latest hospital stint a few weeks ago, she said. Now the man stood calmly, barely responsive, as Spittler checked him for weapons. Minutes before, siren blaring, sheriff’s Deputy Galen Spittler raced his patrol truck through the winding Penn Valley roads to respond to a report of a 33-year-male - one they had placed on a psychiatric hold last fall - assaulting his mother. Pepper and a colorful glass marijuana pipe splayed out beside him as he looked out on the wooded valley below. The man sat silently on a cluster of boulders when the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office mobile crisis team pulled up.
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