_{Thumbnail photo: Concept art of the Del Norte County’s Providing Access to Hope mobile mental health crisis response van. Above: Supervising Behavioral Health Specialist Mariah Coats and two of PATH’s team members, Certified Peer Support Specialist Ryan Downs and Behavioral health Specialist Aaron Matthess. | Photos courtesy of Shiann Hogan}

Del Norte County’s Providing Access to Hope, or PATH, program has responded to 27 calls for help since it launched nearly two months ago.

In a majority of those cases, the staff manning the new mobile mental health crisis unit have helped those individuals come up with a safety plan and have followed up with those folks, Behavioral Health Branch Deputy Director Shiann Hogan told Redwood Voice Community News.

But, while it’s a resource anyone, including law enforcement, can call upon, PATH is currently only available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday due to staffing issues.

Meanwhile, February’s officer-involved shooting at Surf Apartments, which is still under investigation, and a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last summer over the use of force in a non-criminal case has prompted the Del Norte County sheriff and Crescent City Police chief to be more cautious when sending officers to mental health calls.

“What it all comes down to is, if there is a public safety risk, we’re going to respond,” Sheriff Garrett Scott told Redwood Voice. “If the ambulance company calls and they’re in danger of being harmed, a deputy’s going to respond. If a person calls from a neighborhood and they have somebody with an ax running around, we’re going to respond. [But], what you’re starting to see is learning how to disengage — how to use other resources first like your mobile crisis team or your mental health or that 988 number — using those crisis response units before we just respond if we feel like we could escalate the situation by a uniformed cop with a gun showing up.”

CCPD Chief Richard Griffin said he also grapples with whether or not to respond to instances where someone is experiencing a mental health crisis. When they do respond, Griffin said, his officers try to connect the individual with Behavioral Health, Del Norte Mission Possible and other resources. Sometimes they give the individual a ride to the hospital, the chief said.

“It’s not that we walk away and forget about the call — we still monitor it if we need to go back,” Griffin said. “But if it’s somebody in their own home and nobody else is associated [with it] and they don’t have plans to go outside and it’s going to make it worse if we’re pressing the situation, then, yeah, we’ve walked away from those.”

Del Norte’s Providing Access to Hope mental health crisis team has a dedicated phone number — (707) 464-0899 — and can respond to people in crises anywhere. People can call on behalf of a loved one and an individual can call themselves if they are in distress.

According to Hogan, staff will ask questions during a call for help to determine if there is a medical concern such as an overdose or if public safety is involved. If a weapon is involved, Hogan said, the PATH team will defer those calls to 911.

Since it launched on Feb. 3, the PATH team has responded to calls throughout the county. However, because only two positions out of a total of eight are filled, its hours of operation are limited. 

“Many of these calls have been out in the community whether it be to someone’s home or to a community location — it’s really been all over,” she said. “We’re tracking where we’re going. I would say a big piece to it is we’re going out to people who maybe otherwise wouldn’t come here [to the Behavioral Health Branch].”

Hogan said the PATH team is made up of certified peer support specialists and certified behavioral health specialists. Another certified peer support specialist is expected to start on April 8.

Del Norte received a $2 million Behavioral Health Community Infrastructure grant to develop the PATH program. It created PATH after a needs assessment conducted by the independent consulting firm the Indigo Project found that residents experiencing a mental health crisis were either taken to the emergency room or, if they had committed a crime, jailed.

“The goal of mobile crisis [programs] through the state was to respond in lieu of law enforcement, knowing that having a mental health professional there might be the better match to who should respond,” Hogan said. “Obviously there are scenarios that might exist where we’re not best suited to respond and they should be diverted out to those other entities.”

Mobile mental health crisis programs also offer another resource for law enforcement and medical professionals, Hogan said. If, in the case of law enforcement, they respond to a call and find a crime hasn’t been committed, they could turn the situation over to mental health professionals. The situation could also be reversed if a weapon is involved or a crime has been committed, Hogan said.

Both Griffin and Scott referred to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals July 2024 ruling in Scott v. Smith when describing the difficult decisions officers may face when responding to mental health calls.

The appeals case involved a Las Vegas resident named Roy Scott, who was unarmed and in mental distress when officers detained him in March 2019 after he called 911 for help.

According to the appeals court’s ruling, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers Kyle Smith and Theodore Huntsman determined that Roy Smith met the qualifications for a hold due to his “mental health and safety.” Though Scott complied with their orders, the officers pulled him to the ground, put his hands behind his back and used their body weight to restrain him. Scott lost consciousness shortly thereafter and was later pronounced dead.

According to the lawsuit his daughter, Rochelle Scott, filed against the two officers and the police department, Roy Scott died of restraint asphyxia, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion states.

The appeals court upheld a Nevada Federal District Court’s decision stating that the officers did not have qualified immunity and had violated Roy Scott’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force.

“Scott was not suspected of a crime. Instead he was taken into custody because of his mental health,” the appeals court’s ruling stated. “Though they were presented with an individual experiencing a mental health crisis and presenting no obvious danger to others, Smith and Huntsman crushed Scott’s back and neck to subdue him while handcuffing him…. Reasonable officers would have known that their force was not reasonable and that it created a serious risk of asphyxiating Scott.”

Qualified immunity protects government officials, including law enforcement, from lawsuits alleging that they violated a plaintiff’s rights. Those suits are allowed only when officials violate a clearly established statutory or constitutional right, according to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

According to the Del Norte County sheriff, the appeals court’s ruling has prompted law enforcement officials in California to think twice about whether to respond to mental health calls.

For example, in February, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper enacted a policy not to respond to non-criminal mental health calls, CBS Sacramento reported. This decision prompted concern from the Sacramento Metropolitan fire chief over whether police will be available to secure a scene during an emergency.

Scott said the concern he and his colleagues across the state have boils down to liability. He said it’s important for his deputies to understand what their personal liabilities are. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling didn’t say law enforcement shouldn’t respond to mental health calls, but to use caution, Scott said.

This can be a tough call for Del Norte County law enforcement, according to the sheriff.
“There’s probably only one deputy going to that call and the force being used can sometimes be more than if it was two cops because that deputy’s alone,” Scott said. “We don’t want to get into a situation where we … [know] that we’re going to have to use force.”

According to the sheriff, when someone calls 911 for help and informs the dispatcher they’re in a mental health crisis, the dispatcher will find out if that individual is alone and if they’re a threat to public safety. If the individual experiencing a mental health crisis isn’t a public safety threat, the dispatcher routes them to Behavioral Health’s mental health crisis hotline or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Sheriff’s deputies and Crescent City Police officers receive ongoing training on how to respond to individuals in distress. This also includes critical incident training, which focuses on de-escalation, according to Griffin. He said his department is “one cop away” from receiving that critical incident training.

“I have regular de-escalation and advanced de-escalation training that we’re doing through Pro-Forma Labs online,” Griffin said. “The level of training we do is not minimal at all. It’s ongoing training all the time.”

Even though critical incident training gives them a better understanding of how to respond to mental health calls, Scott said he thinks that law enforcement officers take on greater liability than their Behavioral Health and medical counterparts.

It’s something the higher courts, including the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is starting to pay attention to — removing law enforcement from the “mental health realm and the medical realm,” the sheriff said.

“There have been lawsuits over the years,” he said. “If law enforcement officers are helping an ambulance crew and they’re getting involved with saving someone’s life and maybe that person passes. That medical crew didn’t have a liability but that officer did. When you have a crisis situation, if there’s no criminal element, what law enforcement is having to do now is really think outside the box.”

According to Hogan, though the county has offered educational stipends and loan forgiveness to staff the PATH unit, Del Norte’s limited resources are making things difficult. That includes a dearth of affordable housing.

“We’ve had a couple of applicants we’ve offered positions to and they’ve not been able to find housing here and had to decline the position as a result,” she said. “That’s one big barrier that’s beyond just Behavioral Health to solve.”

Hogan said she appreciates the efforts of the county’s new human resources department to streamline the staffing process and hopes an impending salary study will result in increased pay for PATH employees.

Still, the program’s limited hours shouldn’t deter people from calling if they’re experiencing a crisis, Hogan said. She also directed people to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline after hours. Hogan also urged people to call the local 24-hour hotline at (707) 464-7224.

“That team is trained to talk through a crisis or refer if we need to contact an ambulance to respond,” she said. “The mobile crisis team, while it might be physically able to only come Monday through Friday 8-5, there are other crisis supports that are available 24/7 by phone.”