LA promised mental health crisis response without cops. Why isn't it happening?
LOS ANGELES — While campaigning for mayor in mid-August, Karen Bass spoke about a brand-new three-digit mental health crisis hotline — 988 — and its promise to save lives of people suffering from mental illness by avoiding deadly confrontations with police.
As a member of Congress, she had examined more than 100 lethal police encounters throughout the country and found that at least 40% involved a mental health crisis, she said. The figure dwarfs the often-cited national statistic that a quarter of all people who die at the hands of law enforcement have serious psychiatric problems.
In Los Angeles, police reported a similar figure in 2022: 39% of the people their officers shot were in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Now, that would change, Bass said at the news conference highlighting the launch of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
"I'm so proud to know that L.A. is going to be on the forefront of having a solution," she declared.
But the rollout of 988 and related psychiatric emergency services has so far failed to live up to that promise, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found.
On July 15, 2022, one day before the 988 hotline went live, the L.A. County Department of Mental Health of the service that would include "trained psychiatric mobile crisis response teams who can be connected to through the 988 line when necessary."
