New Sacramento sheriff policy will change how others respond to emergency mental health calls
Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper recently implemented a new policy that stops his deputies from responding to mental health calls unless the situation involves a crime.
Cooper fears a court ruling last year now puts his office and his responding deputies in legal jeopardy if someone dies. The sheriff also said his deputies aren’t adequately trained to help someone in a mental health crisis.
“Why am I putting my deputies in harms way,” Cooper said Tuesday in a news conference announcing his policy change. “They don’t want to have to take someone’s life. No one wants that to ever happen, it’s very traumatic on our officers.”
Within the first six days of implementing the change in January, the Sheriff’s Office received 320 mental health calls, and deputies didn’t respond to 18 calls for help, Undersheriff Mike Ziegler said.
The sheriff’s policy change will change how firefighters and a countywide crisis intervention team responds when a family or a patient themselves calls for immediate help.
Battalion Chief Parker Wilbourn, a spokesperson from the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District, said the policy could put lives at risk and offered a bleak glimpse of what one of these calls for help could look like.
He said firefighters could be forced to wait outside a home while someone inside is threatening to harm themselves, because the situation inside is not safe.
The firefighters, he said, will try call the person who reported incident to determine if the situation is safe.
“If we can’t, then we’re not going in,” Wilbourn told The Sacramento Bee. “We are very concerned about this situation. Ultimately, it could extend medical response times and put our firefighters at risk. If a firefighter is hurt or killed, who’s going to bear the responsibility of that.”
The battalion chief all Metro Fire personnel have been sent an information bulletin notifying them of the sheriff’s policy change. He said the firefighters will continue to serve residents as best as they can, “because backup is not coming,”
“They do have a duty to protect the community,” Wilbourn said about sheriff’s deputies. “And now they’re not going to show up.”
Suicide threat with a gun
The sheriff’s change in policy is the result of a federal appeals court ruling in July. The appellate decision meant that two Las Vegas police officers must face excessive force claims for the death of a mentally ill man after they responded to a 911 call from him and restrained him by kneeling on his back, Courthouse News Service reported.
In social media posts Wednesday, Cooper reiterated his stance on the issue. The sheriff said he implemented the change to comply with the court ruling and to get the best help available to those suffering in a mental health crisis.
“This is not about drawing a line in the sand or calling out a bluff,” Cooper said in the social media posts. “Being mentally ill is not a crime. If no crime is occurring, law enforcement simply shouldn’t be there.”
Cooper said his deputies will still respond to mental health calls when when a crime is in progress, when a crime has been committed and when someone is at risk of injury or death. But not when only the person experiencing a mental health crisis is at risk of injury or death.
In the first several days of implementing the new policy, Cooper said his office received a report of a person who called a help line threatening suicide with a gun to their head inside a home. Nobody else was in that home. The sheriff said his deputies didn’t respond, and that person was still alive this week.
“If we had gone, this person has a gun,” Cooper told news reporters. “Are they going to shoot my deputies? Are my deputies going to shoot them? That’s the big issue. It’s not an easy issue. It’s a very tough issue.”
The Sheriff’s Office has its own communications center that receives 911 calls and other emergency and non-emergency calls within the unincorporated areas of the county. The center also receives calls for emergencies in Rancho Cordova, which contracts the Sheriff’s Office for police services.
The sheriff’s call takers will ask callers reporting a mental health emergency questions to determine whether a crime is involved, Cooper said. That information is reviewed by communications center supervisor, who will decide whether to send deputies. Cooper said a sheriff’s watch commander or another on-duty manager will then review the call again as deputies are dispatched to ensure a crime is involved.
Ziegler said introducing law enforcement into a mental health crisis when no crime has been committed can exacerbate the situation.
“If we show up with a badge and a gun with that ability to take someone’s civil rights away and take them to jail, just by us being there, escalates the situation,” Ziegler said.
During the news conference, Ziegler floated the idea that the county’s Co-Response Intervention Team ride out to mental health calls with firefighters and not law enforcement officials as they do now.
The Metro Fire spokesperson said that idea is not possible, and the intervention team still wouldn’t go into a situation they believe is not safe.
Intervention team
The countywide Co-Response Intervention Team, a name they chose to reflect their collaborative role with law enforcement in mental health emergencies, responds to 911 emergency calls for immediate clinical assessment and crisis intervention.
The intervention team members remained paired with officers from the Citrus Heights, Folsom and Galt police departments, said Elizabeth Zelidon, a county spokesperson.
“Sacramento County Behavioral Health Services remains committed to prioritizing the health and safety of both our staff and the community,” Zelidon said in an email Thursday. “We are working closely with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and WellSpace Health on this updated policy and will continue to adjust our procedures as needed to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of services while maintaining a safe environment for our team.”
The county’s Behavioral Health Services supports the intervention team along with the Community Wellness Response Team, which responds to 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline calls at any time of the day and year-round.
Cooper said his office will promote the 988 hotline more, and his call takers will now transfer calls directly to the hotline when a mental health call doesn’t involve a crime. Before, the Sheriff’s Office would ask the caller to hang up and dial 988 for themselves.
“988 works. Most of these 988 calls resolve over the phone,” Cooper said in the news conference.
The county’s 988 hotline in December received 1,292 calls from people seeking help, and 1,210 calls were deemed resolved, data collected by Community Wellness Response Team shows. There were 80 calls referred to CWRT, and two other calls were resulted in authorities checking on their wellbeing.
The CWRT data shows that 53 calls screened were deemed as someone with substance abuse and potentially harming to themselves or others, one of the calls reported someone in possession of a gun and three calls resulted in someone detained and taken involuntarily to a hospital for treatment.
Behavioral health and technology
Andy Flannagan, the CEO of the Iris Telehealth company, said the situation in Sacramento County is a problem seen around the country. His company has been providing behavioral health services online since 2013, and technology is the way to a solution because there are not enough mental health clinicians available in this country.
“I have huge empathy for first reponders. They show up and don’t know what to do,” Flannagan said Thursday. “This problem is not going away, and it’s getting worse.”
He said this has to be a countywide problem, and counties need to invest with targeted money to alleviate the problem. Flannagan also said there needs to be a universal understanding by law enforcement, firefighters and medics in the county on how to respond to mental health crisis situations.
Behavioral health services, Flannagan said, can be provided virtually through a clinician offering real-time treatment as authorities respond to a mental health emergency. For instance, firefighters can use a digital tablet to immediately connect with a psychiatrist.
“Counties are the place where people go to for help,” Flannagan said. “They have the infrastructure; just not enough resources.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 1:30 PM.
