Council Authorizes LAPD to Accept Grant Funds for Unarmed Response Efforts, and Supports Others

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council discussed the Unarmed Model of Crisis Response Pilot Program, which aims to expand the crisis and incident response through community involvement, and the Circle Program to additional geographic areas of the city. 

“Circle” is a 24-hour unarmed response program that dispatches a team of mental health professionals and experienced personnel to nonviolent LAPD calls involving unhoused individuals in crisis, according to the Department of Justice website. 

In August, the Council voted to fund an unarmed response pilot program, to which they allocated a projected total of $5,186,581.

“This is money from the State of California to institute a training pilot program on ‘Use-of-Force’ (UOF) and ‘De-Escalation’. In police terms, this means training officers to resolve or defuse contentious situations peacefully so they don’t turn violent,” said Hugh Esten, Director of Communications to Council President Paul Krekorian. 

“The reason I called this item special is because everyone on this council, along with the Mayor, cares deeply about and supports the expansion of the Unarmed Model of Crisis Response in the city of Los Angeles,” said Councilmember Krekorian. 

The L.A. City Council authorized the chief of police to accept the grant award from the California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) for the California Budget Act of 2022 UOF and De-Escalation Training Pilot Program in the amount of $5,000,000. The grant will cover the period from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025. 

“Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson and I advocated for a citywide office of unarmed responses quickly and through the budget process, we funded the mayor’s office of community safety,” said Krekorian. He continued, “That office led by the work of CAO Matthew W. Szabo, and his team hit the ground running and started taking inventory of all the various alternative response models we have in the city, and is mapping out a leverage of $77.6 Million we’re already spending on alternative responses in creating a multi-year plan that Councilmember Nithya Raman and all of us are eager to see.” 

This office is working to grow the network of specialized teams trained in crisis response and are thrilled about these three new teams coming online. 

“We’re making good progress. When I initially spoke with the people in Eugene, Oregon about their Cahoots program, in which they divert 17 percent of their 911 calls – we now spend 10 times what they are spending. We spend more than they spend on their entire police department unarmed response,” Krekorian said. He added, “In many ways, while we’re still growing, we’re also leading the nation in terms of the breadth and scope of what we are doing. We are working on the dispatch piece, supporting our Police Service Representatives, and building capacity within the service provider space. We want to partner with the county, the 988 [mental health crisis hotline] system to achieve its full potential.”

Krekorian concluded his statement urging to move the matter of the public safety committee report, relative to the development of the alternative response framework and implementation of the unarmed model of crisis response pilot program in Tuesday’s agenda amended to include instruction that the CAO report on the crisis continuum of care in L.A. and identify organizations providing mental health, behavioral health, substance use disorder treatment, co-occurring disorder treatment, crisis response, de-escalation, and conflict resolutions within the city. 

Council Votes to Require All AirBnB Owners to Register with the LAPD 

The Los Angeles City Council also voted on Tuesday to authorize a permit for short-term renters like owners of AirBnBs and hotels to acquire a police permit. 

According to President Krekorian, the permit will assist the city in cracking down on illicit AirBnBs. The vote was approved by the council 14-0.

When asked about the permit and the fees, Krekorian informed Councilmember Traci Park that his goal is to make this process easy on the front end and to have a tool to utilize on the back end when there are bad operators. 

LAPD Lt. Scott Moffitt addressed inspection concerns stating that it will be conducted solely through photographs. Moffitt also added, “When we do an on-site inspection, it does add to 30 days and those take longer, but in the meantime, we issue temporary permits until we can complete our inspection, and make a recommendation to the board regarding a grant or a denial.”

After council members expressed their concerns about increasing the workload of LAPD, Krekorian discussed his upcoming goal of collaborating with stakeholders and council members to, “Reduce and not increase the burden by assessing the existing regulatory framework that hotels and short-term rentals are subjected to.” 

Photo taken by Glenn Highcove on iStockphoto.com