Established in 2022, the Crisis and Incident Response through Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE) program has trained mental health workers to respond to nonviolent 911 calls throughout the Los Angeles area.
A Different Kind of Incident Approach
As homelessness issues expand throughout the city, the program’s 80-person staff take on 911 calls from a perspective of care and concern rather than having the city dispatch armed police officers to the scene, which may escalate the situation unnecessarily.
Calls regarding issues involving unhoused individuals, including loitering, noise disturbances, substance abuse, and indecent exposure, are all more effectively addressed by CIRCLE’s mental health staff working in 24-hour shifts. They even perform more mundane well-being checks for these individuals, demonstrating quality of life concerns and consideration.
CIRCLE’s Origin and Expansion Efforts
When the program began, it only served the Hollywood and Venice areas but moved quickly into downtown and South Los Angeles, the Northeast Valley, Lincoln Heights, and the Harbor Area. Amid the program’s success, Mayor Karen Bass announced CIRCLE’s expansion into Manchester Square, Oakwood, Mar Vista, Palms, Playa Vista, Playa Del Rey, Westchester, and Dockweiler Beach.
CIRCLE has not yet established a decompression center in West Los Angeles. Still, mental health director Latoya Stevenson states that they are essential to the services they provide.
“It’s a place for respite for people experiencing homelessness to come back for a short period of time to meet with the care coordinator, to meet with the mental health worker, get a break from being out in the elements,” Stevenson said.
The Role of Decompression Centers
Rather than a drop-off or walk-up site for immediate crisis attention, these decompression centers are available for CIRCLE staff to use during a mental health interaction. From this point, unhoused individuals and others suffering from mental health issues are encouraged to use established services, such as shelters and clinics. These decompression centers enable CIRCLE staff to meet these individuals in need where they are and help them move forward.
Why CIRCLE Is Expanding
Mayor Bass acknowledged the program’s effectiveness on Monday, saying, “If you can address a person who is having a mental health crisis early, you can prevent that person and that crisis from deteriorating to the point where you have to have police because that individual has become violent, or that individual has hurt someone.”
As much of the Los Angeles community has voiced quality-of-life concerns regarding the unhoused population, CIRCLE’s program offers a beneficial solution. Theirs is a preventative tool, responding to community concerns while addressing the crises these unhoused individuals face.
Helping Refocus Police Efforts
Over 14,000 nonviolent 911 calls were handed over to CIRCLE teams just last year, demonstrating the program’s reliability and effective response to issues involving unhoused individuals and those experiencing a mental health crisis. Their efforts have enabled armed police officers to focus on fighting crime rather than entering preventable altercations.
As Mayor Bass has apparently realized, the city of Los Angeles stands to benefit from police officers’ free allocation of resources toward more pressing matters. CIRCLE has made a lasting impact on the community and how a city can respond to various activities and crimes, making realistic distinctions between where resources need to be allocated at a given time and where one response would be more beneficial than another.
As former Mayor Eric Garcetti said when he first expanded the program in 2022, “CIRCLE is about strengthening the human bonds that are essential to public safety, and using a nonviolent response to homelessness so that we can help, not punish, our most vulnerable Angelenos.”
