CRISIS INTERVENTION TEAM IS IN CRISIS

By bob Walsh

Regular readers will remember that some weeks ago I wrote about a Mental Health Crisis Intervention Team concept developed and implemented by the city of San Francisco in hopes that they could successfully move much of this workload from the police to mental health professionals, to the betterment of all concerned.

It has actually pretty much worked.  Past tense.  For reasons yet to be made clear San Francisco has withdrawn the mental health clinicians from the teams and replacement them with additional emergency medical techs.  The problem is that now there is no one immediately available who has the legal authority to sign a 5150 order.  This means that the teams have no way to compel someone into mental health treatment who clearly NEEDS the intervention but is unwilling to go along with the program.  

So far London Breed, the mayor of the People's Republic of San Francisco, has been unable or unwilling to explain the reasoning behind this shift.  It does, however, mean the teams are MUCH less effective than they were.