Mental health team responding to nonviolent 911 calls expands through Los Angeles

A program using mental health workers to respond to non-violent 911 calls focusing on issues with the homeless is expanding through Los Angeles, targeting areas where the need is the greatest. 

The Crisis and Incident Response through Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE) program, launched in 2022, dispatches mental health workers and individuals with lived experience, instead of armed police officers, to provide help and assistance for the homeless. 

The program's staff of 80 works in 24-hour shifts to take on the diverted 911 calls related to unhoused individuals, including loitering, well-being checks, noise disturbances, substance abuse issues, and indecent exposure.

The program began in 2022 in Hollywood and Venice and moved into downtown Los Angeles, Lincoln Heights, South Los Angeles, the Northeast Valley, and the Harbor Area.     

Mayor Karen Bass announced the program's expansion Monday into the West Los Angeles areas of Manchester Square, Oakwood, Mar Vista, Palms, Playa Vista, Playa Del Rey, Westchester, and Dockweiler Beach. 

Bass said the program is a prevention tool and addresses community members' quality of life concerns with the unhoused population.   

"If you can address a person who is having a mental health crisis early, you can prevent that person and that crisis from deteriorating to the point where you have to have police because that individual has become violent, or that individual has hurt someone," Bass said. 

CIRCLE's mental health director, Latoya Stevenson, said decompression centers are essential to the program, and one has yet been established on the Westside.  

Stevenson emphasized that the decompression centers are not drop-off or walk-up sites, but are used only through CIRCLE program staff interactions.  

"It's a place for respite for people experiencing homelessness to come back for a short period of time to meet with the care coordinator, to meet with the mental health worker, get a break from being out in the elements," Stevenson said. 

"...When it comes to the individuals we work with, who are experiencing homelessness, it's meeting them where they are, but also encouraging the utilization of those existing services." 

In the last year, more than 14,000 calls were dispatched to the CIRCLE teams.  Bass says the program frees up armed police officers, allowing them to focus on fighting crime.