After several years and millions of dollars, the city of Los Angeles plans to shut down one of its alternative emergency response programs. Eric Leonard reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, 2024.
The LA City Fire Department recommended ending a pilot program that tested alternatives to police and fire responses to some mental health emergencies, finding that the situations encountered by field clinicians often required traditional emergency responses anyway.
"This model had a negligible impact on call volume reduction," LAFD Assistant Chief Peter Hsiao wrote in a report to the Board of Fire Commissioners.
He said that while the premise of using clinicians instead of paramedics is sound in theory, in reality, "rarely are mental health crisis patients devoid of medical, violence or substance abuse issues."
The Fire Department did not respond to NBCLA's request last week for an interview about the report's findings, and a spokesperson prevented Hsiao from answering questions on camera after a meeting of the Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday.
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The so-called "Therapeutic Van" program was announced by former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti in October, 2020, following a summer of large public demonstrations demanding police reform after the murder of George Floyd.
Garcetti had said the vans were the first in a series of city efforts to remove police from some mental health calls, which, in turn, he said would reduce the possibility of confrontations escalating to violence. He promised the vans would be on the road in January 2021.
The I-Team reported the program stalled before it began, due to difficulties in reaching agreements between the Fire Department, which supplied drivers, and the LA County Department of Mental Health or DMH, which supplied the field clinicians.
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The vans began responding to calls in early 2022, but because the criteria for calls that could utilize the clinicians was narrow, they provided little relief to the City's paramedics already stretched-thin by understaffing.
"DMH staff lacked the requisite training and thus were unqualified to perform medical assessments or provide emergency medical services," the LAFD report said. "This factor became a limitation when responding to a 911 call. This limitation negated any offset of fire resource response relief."
The Fire Department, which is separately exploring several schemes to boost the number of paramedics on staff, said the money spent on the van program would be better utilized on other LAFD programs.
City Council files show the city authorized about $4 million for the therapeutic van pilot program.
The Department of Mental Health declined to comment on the LAFD recommendation.
