El Cajon Official: Want Cops to Back Up County Crisis Teams? Pay Up.

The county and its approach to mental health crisis responses arguably got more scrutiny from the El Cajon City Council during a Tuesday night meeting than a police policy shift on crisis calls that landed on the Council’s agenda. 

At Mayor Bill Wells’ request, the City Council got a briefing on Police Chief Jeremiah Larson’s mid-May decision to stop automatically deploying officers to some crisis calls, a response to liability concerns that spiked after a federal appeals court ruling last year. 

The meeting concluded with no direction to change the police department’s new approach but to keep the City Council posted on regional discussions about police and firefighter involvement in crisis call responses. 

The discussion kicked off with presentations by El Cajon City Manager Graham Mitchell and police Capt. Keith MacArthur about the decision not to have police not to respond to crisis calls that don’t involve a crime or threat to others. Both argued that police presence can escalate crisis calls where a person is only a danger to themselves and present legal threats for officers – and explained that county-contracted Mobile Crisis Response Teams were created a few years ago to minimize police responses to such calls. MacArthur also detailed steps that the police and fire departments have made to improve their coordination and responses since the initial policy shift. 

Voice of San Diego revealed earlier this week that Heartland Fire & Rescue crews have sometimes felt forced to take steps that fall out of typical firefighter duties since the police policy shift, including restraining a suicidal patient who ran toward the road and searching another for weapons. 

Heartland Fire Chief Bent Koch, who declined an interview with Voice, told the City Council that firefighters have been working to “slow down” their responses to better assess potential safety threats in the aftermath of the shift – and the two troubling incidents. Koch said the department is also working on protocols to help fire crews dictate whether police are needed. 

But Koch emphasized the dilemma for firefighters who have limited training on how to respond on crisis calls. 

“When people don’t know how else to get help, they call the 911 system,” Koch said. “On the EMS side, we don’t have the option to say no.” 

MacArthur said the police and fire departments are working together to minimize miscommunications about such responses and to train public safety personnel. 

Though Councilmember Steve Goble inquired about training and protocols for firefighters, others got more animated about county programs.  

Among their questions: Why does the county have both Psychiatric Emergency Response and Mobile Crisis Response teams – and are they competing with one another financially? Why do El Cajon police need to respond to county-contracted PERT calls? Is PERT really necessary now that the county has MCRT? Couldn’t the county supply its own security for these calls rather than rely on El Cajon, which doesn’t reap the same property taxes as other cities in the county?  

“If county wants us to go these calls and they want protection for their people they should just provide it or reimburse us, pay us to provide an extra cop or two,” Councilmember Michelle Metschel said. 

In response to questions from Voice, the county noted that it has budgeted $37.7 million for the PERT and MCRT programs this fiscal year and that the two programs serve different functions.  

MCRT responds to calls that don’t involve violent threats or medical emergencies while PERT, which pairs a police officer and a mental health clinician, can go to those calls. 

County spokesperson Tim McClain wrote that MCRT and PERT collectively responded to more than 14,560 calls during the 2023-24 fiscal year.  

“These are calls that would have otherwise required solely a law enforcement response,” McClain said. 

(McClain also noted that the county itself doesn’t have the power to increase El Cajon’s share of property taxes, which are set by state law.) 

So why does PERT require officers to respond with it?  

PERT Director Mark Marvin said his program relies on officers to assess potential safety threats and to detain people they decide qualify for involuntary holds. Only police have the authority to detain someone who may not want to be transported for a potential hold. 

Marvin touted the success of his program over the past three decades. 

“When there has been PERT contact on scene, there’s never been an officer-involved shooting in 30 years,” Marvin said. 

Yet PERT has been doing less in El Cajon following the change in that city. 

In a recent seven-week period, Marvin said PERT responded to 33 percent fewer crisis calls and saw a two-thirds drop in crisis detainments in El Cajon than it did during the same period last year. 

County Supervisor Joel Anderson, who represents El Cajon and had called for a City Council discussion, called for El Cajon to work with PERT more going forward. 

“It’s disappointing that the city of El Cajon hasn’t chosen to fully utilize our PERT teams as they’ve had tremendous success helping people facing mental health issues,” Anderson wrote in a statement. 

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