On Wednesday, the Protective League of the Los Angeles Police Department union proposed a list of 28 potential calls that should be responded to by unarmed officers or service providers rather than dispatching a standard armed police response.
On the list are radio calls about noise complaints, illegal vending and drinking in public, to name a few. The union proposed the list to counter LAPD’s understaffing issues, such as delayed response times to emergencies, and address the public’s concerns about potential dangerous escalation in these calls for service.
According to the proposal, officers will still respond if the situation becomes violent, but only after the initial call is routed to an agency or affiliated nonprofit.
The top three scenarios among these listed calls are non-criminal and non-violent homeless and quality of life-related calls, non-criminal mental health calls, and non-violent juvenile disturbances or juveniles beyond parent control calls (refusing to go to school).
The driving force behind this proposition is “long-term, chronic understaffing” of the police department that is said to have increased neighborhood crime and decreased overall officer morale, the Alternative Response Proposal said.
The union says that this initiative will allow armed officers to dedicate more of their focus toward violent crimes.
“We welcome the support of the Los Angeles Police Protective League in calling out the importance of establishing an alternative non-law enforcement service response to non-emergency calls,” LAPD Police Chief Michael Moore said in a statement provided by the department’s media relations division. “These emerging alternatives have already diverted thousands of calls away from a police response, allowing officers time to focus on our most essential activities.”
While several benefits could come from this new development, some people are concerned about the potential repercussions following it.
“The police wanted to make a change, they’re just not trained to deal with issues like mental health and family issues,” said Laurie Levenson, Professor of Law at Loyola Marymount University. “We need other services other than police forces.”
Billion Godsun, a community organizer with Fight 2 Save Black LA, agreed that the proposal could provide more resolutions than instant citations and arrests.
However, he shared his concern, “With those officers no longer actively patrolling the lesser crimes then, is it a need for more violent responses?” Godsun said.
Godsun believes that a spike in violent crime should be expected with a prospective recession on the horizon. “The thing to be would be to go ahead and invest funds and alleviate that need – let’s anticipate the violence to see how we can possibly divert it,” he said.
The implication of this proposal holds a lot of power and potential to make a change in communities, especially those that are overpoliced, such as South L.A. However, it is a challenging fix, according to some community leaders.
Keyanna Celina, the lead organizer with Coalition for Community Control Over the Police, shares how she believed this proposal would be in the communities best interest.
“It needs to be an organization that is democratic and that has long-standing roots in the community and not something of their [the LAPD’s] choice,” she said. “Organizations that haven’t become swollen, there are a lot of poverty pimps too; we’re looking for authentically grassroots organizations that have ties with therapy [resources] and things like that.”
This proposition is still pending as different perspectives weigh in on the possible LAPD change.