LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Lakeport Police Department and the Lake Family Resource Center are preparing to launch a new program that will offer resource assistance to homeless individuals and those struggling with mental health challenges, and assist officers with de-escalating crisis situations.
At its Oct. 19 meeting, the Lakeport City Council unanimously approved the new crisis intervention responder program and authorized Police Chief Brad Rasmussen and City Manager Kevin Ingram to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the Lake Family Resource Center.
The program will assign a community crisis intervention specialist, which Lake Family Resource Center will fund, to the Lakeport Police Department.
Rasmussen said the program is the result of a collaboration with Lake Family Resource Center that began over the summer.
City officials and Lake Family Resource Center staff are now in the process of finalizing the memorandum of understanding, with a goal of having the program in place and operating by Nov. 1.
Under the agreement, a community crisis response specialist will work with the Lakeport Police Department and be based out of the agency’s headquarters at 2025 S. Main St.
The Lake Family Resource Center has received grant funding through Dec. 31, 2022, that will enable it to hire and pay for the crisis response specialist’s salary and benefits.
The community crisis response specialist will work primarily with Lakeport Police’s homeless liaison officer.
That team will spend most of its time doing outreach to homeless, but will respond to other calls for service throughout the city while on duty, and will be available to assist with situations where the crisis responder can provide expertise — such as those involving domestic violence and sexual assault.
Rasmussen said there will be minor costs to the police department to implement the program. The council’s approval on Oct. 19 covered an estimated $5,000 financial impact.
The Lakeport Police Department is increasingly getting calls both for homeless individuals as well as people in other types of crisis, including mental health-related issues, who Rasmussen said need the kinds of help and resources that are usually beyond what a police officer can provide.
Due to recent national events involving law enforcement interaction with persons in crisis — including those with disabilities and with substance addictions — Rasmussen said there continues to be a public request for more crisis response specialists on the street handling calls along with the police.
He said his agency has been increasing officer training and efforts to gain more available crisis response over the past several years in order to provide better service to the community.
Seeking solutions for crisis intervention
During a Sept. 9 Lakeport City Council discussion with staff on the city’s challenges in addressing homelessness, Ingram said it was safe to say that a majority of Lakeport Police’s calls involve some combination of individuals who are homeless or need mental health-related services.
“Housing is only one component,” said Ingram, explaining that wraparound services are needed and are just as important.
He said the police department has had an agreement with Lake County Behavioral Health Services for three years in an effort to bring in crisis intervention services.
However, for a variety of reasons — including staffing, COVID-19 and the inability to figure out how to bill out services — Behavioral Health “has never set a foot” in the police station, Ingram said.
Ingram said the city is excited about the potential for working with Lake Family Resource Center to get a full-time intervention specialist.
He said the city gets a lot of calls daily about homeless individuals and those with mental health issues in the city’s parklands and shopping centers.
Rasmussen said of homelessness, “It is a major crisis not only in our community but in our state and our country. It just seems to continue and get worse,” which is why they’ve tried to actively engage with homeless people or those who need mental health services.
It also led to the agency establishing the homeless liaison officer position. Officer Melissa Bedford has been working in that role for more than 18 months, he said.
Even so, Rasmussen said that until the police department gets some kind of social worker or crisis intervention person on the street working with officers, they will have a difficult time making more progress in addressing homelessness.
Rasmussen said the general public expects police to be all things and to make problems go away, and they can’t.
He also touched briefly during that meeting on the city’s work with Lake Family Resource Center to bring that crisis intervention position to his department.
“Unless we have all the services and housing, we’re never going to solve the problem,” he said of homelessness. “It’s going to take all of those components to solve it.”
New agreement offers hope for progress
Rasmussen said his department had been struggling with how to deploy a crisis intervention specialist when, in July, they began talking with the Lake Family Resource Center.
Sheri Young, the center’s victim services program director, said Lisa Morrow, the center’s executive director, had been speaking with Rasmussen about the situation.
Young said center staff began brainstorming about the city’s needs and came up with how grant funding they had in place could be used for a new program to help underserved populations, with a special focus on homeless individuals, those in need of mental health services, victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.
Rasmussen and center staff drew on theories and concepts being used in similar programs in other communities and agencies to create their own program, Young said. “Ours will be unique to our own county.”
In the end, she said it all tied together beautifully and they’re determined to make it happen.
She said center staff have been excited to draft protocols and job descriptions for the full-time position, with interviews of job candidates starting last Friday.
The goal, she said, is to roll out the program on Nov. 1 — whether it’s starting the extensive amount of training the position will require or putting that individual into the field.
Young added that they have a great plan for support and supervision of the crisis intervention specialist and the program as a whole.
Young has a longtime passion both for victim advocacy and law enforcement, and loves to be able to morph those two together. “It’s going to be pretty spectacular.”
From the center’s side, she will oversee the crisis intervention program, along with help from the center’s behavioral health program director, Jennifer Nielson, who brings a background in psychotherapy to the effort.
At the Oct. 19 council meeting, Lakeport City Councilman Michael Green had asked Young about how to sustain the program past the end of the grant funding, which runs out at the end of December 2022.
Since then, she said she’s been thinking about Green’s question.
Both she and Rasmussen believe that, after collecting data over the coming year, it will provide them with the opportunity to find additional funding resources.
If anyone can find the funding and write the grant to get it, it’s Young.
Her talent as a grant writer has brought in significant grants that have allowed Lake Family Resource Center to expand its services in the community, including a growing focus on human trafficking.
“I’m really excited about this,” she said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Lakeport Police Department partners with Lake Family Resource Center in new crisis intervention program
- Elizabeth Larson
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