LA's unarmed crisis response teams left out of city budget

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says the city is looking to the federal government for help funding its unarmed crisis response teams due to a lack of available money in the proposed budget.

"We're going to look for outside money," Bass told Eyewitness News. "I know that there's a lot of money in the Biden-Harris administration for community violence prevention, and I'm hopeful that we can tap into those resources."

LA Forward, a community organization pushing for social justice, staged a rally on the steps of L.A. City Hall before Wednesday's city council meeting.

The group is asking the city to find an extra $4.5 million to be used to create a centralized emergency dispatch system, and find ways to make the city's current crisis response programs more efficient.

"$4.5 million is less than .03% of the budget," said Tracee Porter of LA Forward. "That is budget dust."

When Los Angeles police officers respond to calls involving psychiatric cases, the outcomes can often be deadly. That is why the city created programs like CIRCLE, which stands for Crisis and Incident Response through Community-Led Engagement. L.A. also started a pilot program called Unarmed Model of Crisis Response in March.

The programs send unarmed clinicians to mental health calls that do not involve weapons or violence in an effort to de-escalate situations.

At the LA Forward rally, Jason Enright, the father of a boy with autism, expressed his concerns of possibly needing to call the city for help.

"As a parent, my nightmare is calling the police to help my child and that call leading to his death," he said. "I shouldn't have to fear that the people meant to help my child would be the ones to hurt him."