Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia has released a sweeping report on the LAPD’s Mental Evaluation Unit, exposing how the department’s so-called co-response model still relies on armed patrol officers as the first line of response to mental health crises rather than trained clinicians.

The findings come as Los Angeles faces growing scrutiny over how it handles 911 calls involving people in psychiatric distress. The Controller’s assessment found that the LAPD’s Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Teams, or SMART units, are dispatched alongside patrol to mental health calls but rarely take the lead. Patrol officers, who may not have received any mental health training, control the scene, decide whether clinicians can engage, and often handcuff people before evaluations begin.

In 2023, 86 percent of all SMART calls resulted in an involuntary psychiatric detention under California’s 5150 statute, suggesting the program functions more like an enforcement mechanism than a health service. The report also found that LAPD’s 36-hour Mental Health Intervention Training had little measurable effect on reducing use of force. Officers who had taken the training used force in roughly the same proportion of incidents as those who had not.

The Controller’s office reviewed more than a hundred incident reports and found disturbing racial disparities in how officers describe encounters. When use of force occurred, officers documented the subject’s mental health crisis in less than half of reports overall, and in just half of cases involving Black or Latino individuals, compared with 70 percent of cases involving white individuals.

The city spends about $12.8 million each year on MEU staffing alone, yet the LAPD tracks no data on outcomes such as peaceful resolutions or successful connections to care. Instead, SMART’s performance is measured only by how quickly it relieves patrol officers from on-scene duties. There is no evidence that the program reduces violence, de-escalates crises, or fulfills its stated mission to prevent tragic outcomes.

Mejia’s office is calling for unarmed SMART clinicians to take the lead on calls that do not involve weapons, for the LAPD to collect data that measures actual impact, and for the city to expand its Unarmed Model of Crisis Response pilot. In his letter to Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council, Mejia wrote that living with a mental health condition or being in crisis should not be a death sentence and that the city can no longer rely on armed police officers in situations that require care and de-escalation.