Los Angeles police Chief Jim McDonnell is sounding the alarm: roughly one-third of the LAPD's 1.45 million annual calls are now for people in mental health crises, and the department is drowning in the fallout of progressive policies that replaced public safety with ideology.
The numbers tell the story of a city that chose decarceration and defund-the-police rhetoric over the basic functioning of its streets. About 72,000 homeless people now live in LA County, according to the LA Homeless Services Authority, and fed-up residents have flooded police with complaints about vagrants acting out at encampments threatening almost every part of the city. Meanwhile, understaffed cops are stuck playing social worker — a job they were never trained or equipped to do.
McDonnell told the California Post that the LAPD spends "an awful lot" of patrol time dealing with people with mental health issues, and he's now pushing for what he calls "increased civilianization" — bringing mental health professionals into the response chain instead of dumping every crisis on armed officers. He says mayor-elect Nithya Raman is "in alignment" with the approach.
That's a remarkable statement from a chief Raman pledged to replace on the campaign trail. The socialist mayor-elect ran against the police; now she's hunting for common ground because the system her ideology built is collapsing under its own weight. Her first-100-days public safety plan includes unarmed crisis response pros accompanying cops on calls, more 911 operators, and an LAPD audit. A spokesman for Raman wouldn't answer questions about whether she'll build on existing efforts or start something new.
The LAPD union first backed unarmed responders for mental health calls back in 2020, and Mayor Bass expanded the concept with the CIRCLE program — a 24/7 unarmed response team for non-urgent homeless-related calls. But the crisis has only grown worse.
It's not just Los Angeles. Ann Arbor, Michigan just launched its own co-response program, A2 REACH, pairing a crisis-trained officer with a licensed master social worker for 911 mental health calls. The team will operate Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Ann Arbor Police Chief Andre C. Anderson said the partnership helps "connect people with appropriate support and resources when they need them most." Whether a part-time program can meaningfully address the scale of the crisis remains an open question.
The pattern is the same coast to coast: cities that spent years telling cops they were the problem now need them desperately, and the cops are asking for anyone — anyone at all — to share the load. The ideology that got Los Angeles here has a body count and a price tag. Working communities are paying both.
The question now is whether "civilianization" can undo the damage, or whether it's just the next rebrand of a system that still won't say the quiet part out loud: defund-the-police was a catastrophe, and the people who pushed it have no plan to fix what they broke.
