‘People don’t think clearly in crisis:’ California law enforcement turns to mental health clinicians on toughest 911 calls

The man sat silently on a cluster of boulders when the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office mobile crisis team pulled up. His phone, an open can of Dr. Pepper and a colorful glass marijuana pipe splayed out beside him as he looked out on the wooded valley below.

Minutes before, siren blaring, sheriff’s Deputy Galen Spittler raced his patrol truck through the winding Penn Valley roads to respond to a report of a 33-year-male — one they had placed on a psychiatric hold last fall — assaulting his mother. Now the man stood calmly, barely responsive, as Spittler checked him for weapons.

Up the dirt road, his mother sobbed. The man was not taking his medication for bipolar disorder since he got home from his latest hospital stint a few weeks ago, she said. When she tried to call the local behavioral health agency for an appointment, she said he threatened to kill her and threw a baseball bat at her.

“It’s been hell every day here. It’s been hell every day here,” she wailed. “It’s not a normal life.”

Clinician Ernesto Alvarado led the woman through breathing exercises to calm her down. He joined Spittler on patrol a year and a half ago when Nevada County created its mobile crisis team — a partnership between the sheriff’s office and the behavioral health department meant to defuse volatile situations and funnel more people into services rather than the criminal justice system.

“It changes how your body reacts to things,” Alvarado told the woman. He offered to take her to the county crisis stabilization unit if she was feeling overwhelmed by the confrontation with her son.

“I just want him to get help,” the woman said. “He needs medication. He needs something. I can’t take it no more. I’m at my wit’s end.” Read more >>>