Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on various Mobile Crisis Intervention Service Models designed to address homelessness, mental health, 911 and non-emergency medical calls.
So we're moving on from that item and now we're on to item 15. Communication from Councilmember Pearce, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Price, Councilmember Richardson recommendation to receive and file a presentation on various mobile crisis intervention service models. Great. Thank you. I believe you guys have a PowerPoint. One. Just one moment. T.I. is pulling up the PowerPoint if you'd like to proceed or get that up on the screen. That's great. Thanks. So this is an item that, you know, our city council and our staff have had many conversations around different mobile service units. And I know that we have stopped behind the scenes working on it. Myself and some of my council colleagues had a generalized presentation on the Hart team that we did not officially get the full presentation like we typically do. So we wanted to take just 5 minutes today. My goal is to be able to just look at some other safety models and to hear from council colleagues so that staff can kind of hear from all of us. It's a receiving file presentation that I just thought would be really helpful to be able to keep us in context so we can go to the next slide. So right now, we're in a moment of of the framework of reconciliation, a global call for a new public safety model. Our our very own Long Beach Police Department propose over 5% cuts to the Department for Justice, local and national call part of this change, this call for global change. The city had already taken several steps to invest in community before the police need to intervene. Such things as suicide prevention plans, violence prevention plans. We've got quality life officers, our heart team. And so this presentation is really looking at mobile crisis intervention services to support service first response to people experiencing mental health, substance abuse and homeless related crises. Next slide. So these are a couple of slides taken from the last Hart Team presentation. So in November, November 30th, 2016, the homeless team was created and their mission statement was to reduce the number of fire department responses to individuals experiencing homelessness. They were going to do this by being able to respond to 911 calls, working with the continuum of care partners and educating fire service and community members about local resources and issues. So really, the Hart team is specific to those that are struggling with homelessness. Next slide, please. And the first two years of the Hart team, they had over 3000 contacts with persons experiencing homelessness. 1700 of those contacts originated as nine on one calls, which the fire department were initially dispatched, and more than 96% of the 9911 calls, they were the first ones to reserve on to arrive on the scene. 80% of those cases, Hart was able to cancel the responding fire engine paramedic rescue or both. This is really where we were looking at. The Hart seemed to be a cost savings apparatus for us, not just an additional group of people that could go out, but to ensure that we didn't have to have so many people come out to the scene. In 2018, they responded to over 8000 calls where the chief complaint was quoted as behavioral. Also in 2018, they had two certified members that were certified in mental health first aid. Next slide. So we have our police team as we go right now in the proposed budget, we have two quality of life officers paid for by Metro, one grant funded for the Multi-Service Center. Four paid for with general fund. With the General Fund. And we in this budget, what was proposed by our police department was to move 16 police officers and shift them from community service or shift them from being sworn officers to community service assistants for level three calls . What's currently in the budget that says that these are on uniformed, unarmed civilians trained to investigate and document specific property based crimes? So at the end of this presentation, I'd love to hear a little bit more from PD just on that. And so I wanted to give us a full picture of what we have right now with those that can respond to 911 calls on top of our health department. Next slide, please. So other models that we're talking about today, a lot of people have heard of the cahoots model, which is based out of Eugene. The City of Orange has a cap model. L.A. County has our team, which Long Beach does get access to. But sometimes that team does not come out cannot come out on the same day that they're called. San Diego also has a team. Some of these models go beyond what Long Beach has. Some of these models work not only with homelessness, tenant landlord issues, wellness checks, addiction, suicide, violence prevention and wound care medicine management, which is something that I've learned a lot for our older adults, as well as isolation and loneliness. Lyft assistance and chronic users are frequent fliers, as they're called. Do you see some of these other models really go beyond working just with homelessness, but they really touch on different areas. Every city and every county has different teams. So there's paramedics, public health nurses, mental health crisis people, EMT firefighters, nurse, psychiatric teams, community organizers and dispatch team. Next slide, please. So the reason for this conversation, I think and I want to say how much I appreciate getting to check in with Councilmember Price. I know that the cahoots model, possibly a white bird, will be presenting at the bossy, but I wanted to make sure that we had a full picture of the different areas that a mobile crisis intervention service team could provide for the city. It really helps fill that gap with first responder services that alleviate the burden placed on police and fire to respond to individuals experiencing emotional distress, intoxication or homelessness effectively provides police and fire more time to respond to crimes and life threatening emergencies respectively. You can go on to the next slide. You need to read all that. So a little glance at the Cahoots model. It was created in 1989. I want to thank White Bird Clinic. This information I received from them last year, the Cahoots Model handled over 24,000 calls, about 20% of the calls dispatched by 911. Their teams are comprised of medics, a nurse, EMT and a crisis worker. And so from my conversations with them, I think that they're able to utilize those that can respond to 911 calls, which is very different in California than Oregon, which could be our heart team. But possibly there's other team members out there like crisis workers, people that can respond to even the lower level calls. Next slide, please. For cahoots. They say that it alleviates the burden placed on public safety. They have proven de-escalation situations. They create data that's accessible for all public safety departments, medical evaluations, wellness checks. And on the Oregon program is an affordable program. Next slide, please. So really, as I mentioned, I wanted to present this just to make sure that we were able to hold a space to talk with staff a little bit. I know that our health department is already working on this. I know that the body just put in their recommendation to extend the Hart team for another six months. So really, this is an opportunity for us to say, let's really work with the Council, all the stakeholders, and focus on outcomes, not necessarily focusing on the name of the program. But I wanted to hear from our council colleagues what you would like to see from an outcome and outcome from a model like this. For me, I've thought a lot about 911 response having train dispatchers, making sure that services are available for housed and unhoused, and that there's an alignment with our strategic plans. Suicide and prevention. Suicide and violence prevention. Our youth strategic plan or older adults plan. And possibly opportunities to work with Cal State Long Beach in a social work program. So that is my very brief presentation, just to be able to hold this conversation and hear from my council colleagues if there's ideas on what staff could be working on in the future. But it is a receive and file presentation. So thank you. And I want to thank my council colleagues for signing on to this item with me. Vice Mayor Andres. Yes. Thank you, man. You know. You know, I want to thank the Caravan for Justice, folks, for drawing attention that this kind of service model. You know, I agree that over the years we've had developed developed a need for an innovative, safe safety system that allows for, you know, assessments of mental health and status before assessing the person and taking corrective action. You know, we know that these model works because I say that because I want you to look at the team, the homeless outreach thing, our quality of life team. We put compassion and aid, aid before enforcement. We get a better results from everyone. And I'm committed to seeing something, you know, come to the city of Long Beach. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. I know I have other counsel comment. I'm going to go to public comment and they'll come back to the council. So let's go ahead and do public comment, Madam Clerk. We have children during. Hello, Mayor and City Council. My name is Jordan. I support taking away all the obligations that BP has taken on over the years that they should not take on. They should not be responding to a lot of the calls they respond to. So having crisis intervention and service models and teams that actually take away things from BP and put it into other departments is great. For example, the health department responding to mental health calls would be a huge benefit to the community. Then one premium who was killed in 2017 and there's actually a protest going on right now to honor her, would still be alive if the health department had responded to that call instead of two armed police officers who shot her within 5 seconds of getting out of their car. But the real elephant in the room is the fact that without defunding BPD and altering the budget as it is now, this is all talk. This is all theoretical without significant funding and taking away money from BPD to give it to other departments that will be handling its responsibilities. It will never actually happen. You can't just expect the Health Department to magically start responding to non-emergency calls with no money unless the budget is changed. None of this will actually matter. Defund the police and take a bold stand against police violence, divest from BPD and invest differently in our community. Health and safety. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Okay. We will go back to the council. Councilman Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to Councilwoman Pearce for including me on this item. I did want to just make one brief correction, and that is the presentation on this model or models like this is going to be to the Public Safety Committee in our September meeting, not bossy. And I look forward to having the discussions because I think there's a lot of good opportunities in exploring other models. And the police department has been very receptive to exploring those and talking about those concepts and public safety. Thank you. Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So so far. Thanks, Councilmember, for for bringing this up. Personally, I think I'm pretty excited about this. I see it as as an important step in the city's taken tonight in the budget. By looking at a new mobile response model, we can look at a number of different models or see some of the ones listed. Cahoots definitely has a lot of public support. I see that, you know, as we led up to the adoption of the budget, as we lead up to it, I see that, you know, there's been more people talking about it and we started to look at it. I also know, and I'm glad to see in this presentation there were you know, there were other models we should look at as well. But it's not lost on me that this you know, the heart team started with an idea small. It grew it over time. And now it's time for it to develop into something more independent. It's time to look at, you know, investing in it further. I want to explore partnerships with L.A. County mental health to see if we can expand its role and how they respond with respond to mental health. And all of those things are interesting to me. But I also want to say, like, this stuff doesn't happen overnight. We don't just grab another model from another jurisdiction and drop it in and say, Hey, this is the new response model in Long Beach. It takes time. You have to actually build a capacity for this. There's legal sort of legal conditions that we have that are very different between here in Oregon, here and other states. We have to improve. Here in California, we call this our medicine. And there's laws that guide this. Anybody, you know, dispatched through 911 or through a different or a different number is there, you know, who has the jurisdiction over mental health? Is it what is required, in my view, with L.A. County? Are there additional funding? Can we create a partnership with L.A. County to bring in those resources? All these are good questions, and I'm glad to see that we're taking the first part of the next fiscal year to answer those questions and roll out this model. So so what I see here is an important step that the city is taking, and it's a step that we should take our time to be serious about. And and it's a real commitment that I see here in this budget to exploring this alternative model. And if we're if we do it right and if we do it well, this could be a model for our region that allows us to, you know, do an emergency response to crises, mental health and homeless. That is more cost effective, doesn't it? Doesn't you know, it's more cost effective and allows us to be more responsive and build that community capacity based on public health nurses, mental health conditions and and sort of community staff and support. So there's a lot that we need to evaluate. This isn't a short term thing. This commitment that council was making to this will take time. But I'm glad to see that this will happen in this next fiscal year and that we're getting started with it immediately. Those are my general thoughts on this. This is something I'm going to continue to monitor. I think it's important and and I encourage the city, the public, to pay attention to what this you know, this is this is more than lip service. It's an actual new alternative model, which doesn't happen very often, local government. And so we need to pay attention to it. We need to support it, make sure that it actually achieve the outcomes that we're hoping to achieve, which is expanding capacity, more cost effective, expanded capacity, more comprehensive health service for our community. And that's what I'm supportive of. Thanks a lot. Councilman Sun has. Your mayor. Our city is looking I'm pursuing a lot of really interesting creative policies right now, and I'm excited to be part of this discussion. This said, I think that it's just incredibly promising. The idea that we could really have this benefit for our community by increasing the quality of services we are able to provide to our residents here in the city of Long Beach. I've been really interested in seeing an expanded role for service workers in responding to calls, especially around mental health and homelessness. And I think that this is just so, so promising as a way to more directly get those people that the services that they so need and more immediately. And I think that, you know, I when I first heard about the Hart team and the quality of life team that we had within our departments, I was really, really excited. And I've been, you know, super excited to learn from them and see what they've been doing throughout the years and have they have really, really helped us out in a lot of ways. So right now, we have a unique opportunity to look further into what things that can be done and what programs can be brought forward. So I'm I'm really excited to be supporting something like this. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you, Councilmember Jeanine Pearce, for bringing this forward and for allowing me to be part of this conversation as well. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes council comment. Actually, this concludes the comment. Please cast a roll call. Vote for the. Mr. Blair. I tried to queue, but I'm having a hard time. This is Councilwoman Mongo. Okay. Yeah. You're not on the color, so. Go ahead, Councilman. Thank you. I appreciate it. I just want to say that I know that when this initially got brought forward in partnership between Kelly and our fire chief, we talked a lot about our Hart teams and their successes. And our hurt teams are a nationally acclaimed model, but so are our met teams. And I think it's really interesting that the six teams that we have on the six and eight teams that we have are currently working daytime and afternoon shifts, two, one in the morning, seven days a week, but that still isn't enough. The number of calls we get are very high. The number of mental health issues that are proliferating around our region are important. And I would love to see us add a letter to L.A. County to ask for that money to be transferred to us directly so that the teams will work with us in the city and not specifically for mental health services. Kind of on a task force with us. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. With that, we will do a roll call vote. District one, district two. Hi. District three, I. District four. All right. District five. I. District six. All right. District seven. I. District eight. District nine. High motion carries. Thank you. Now we're moving on to the budget here. Let me. 1/2. If you could read the item, please.