LOS ANGELES—Less than one-third of calls to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) involving people experiencing a mental health crisis is being handled by a co-response team that includes a mental health clinician alongside a sworn officer, Police Chief Michel Moore told the Board of Police Commissioners Sept. 27.
The LAPD instituted a program last year to dispatch a mental health response team to certain calls. The unit is known as the Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team (SMART). Previously, SMART units were used as secondary responders.
Of more than 31,000 calls related to mental health that the department received since then, the SMART team was only able to respond to 10,000….