County May Set Up Mobile Team to Respond to Mental Health Crises : Thousand Oaks: If approved, it would be based at the East Valley Sheriff’s Station and would free deputies for street patrol.

An out-of-control man was wandering through Thousand Oaks, smashing windows and kicking in doors. The police got the call. They responded immediately.

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But as soon as he arrived at the scene, Chief Deputy Bob Brooks recognized that the vandal needed psychiatric counseling, not jail time. Like many violent outbursts, this one stemmed from “a mental health problem, rather than a criminal problem,” Brooks said.

With the county’s mental health team stationed a half-hour away in Ventura, however, the police had to step in. Six sheriff’s deputies, a fire engine company and an ambulance crew spent hours trying to subdue the troubled man and get him into custody.

Soon, such massive deployments may not be necessary.

The county’s mental health department plans to set up a mobile crisis team in Thousand Oaks to handle flare-ups ranging from domestic violence to suicide threats to child abuse.

Despite a countywide budget crunch, mental health director Randy Feltman believes he has found enough money--about $500,000 a year--to run the mobile crisis team. The county’s special mental-health account, which is fed by the sales tax, will pick up about $300,000 a year, Feltman said. Medi-Cal and private insurance companies will cover the remaining costs, as reimbursement for patient services.

The county once had a mobile crisis team in the east end of the county, but disbanded it in the 1980s because of funding cuts.

“This is becoming such a high priority that even if we had to cut back on something (in our budget), we would cut back on something else,” Feltman said.

“Obviously, a crisis requires a timely response,” he added. “If we’re in Ventura while a crisis is in Westlake . . . by the time we get there, the situation may have gotten worse. This has been a serious problem.”

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To create a swift, mobile response team for the east county, Feltman plans to hire eight more staffers, buy a new van and renovate a room in the East Valley Sheriff’s Station for on-site counseling. The center would be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and would serve Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Simi Valley.

The Thousand Oaks City Council, which owns the East Valley Sheriff’s Station and must approve all renovations, will vote on the proposal Tuesday night. The Board of Supervisors will consider the funding issue within the next month.

In pitching the proposal, Feltman emphasizes two goals: better service for patients, and relief for sheriff’s deputies who now spend significant chunks of time dealing with mental-health crises.

While he could not estimate the number of hours deputies spend counseling, Chief Brooks called the incidents “routine enough to be significant.”

A mother might call 911, for example, to announce that she will kill her toddler if he throws another tantrum. A man might tie up the switchboard with complaints about a neighbor’s barking dog. Or a citizen might report a dazed-looking stranger stumbling through the streets.

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The police now handle most such calls. But if approved, the mental health crisis team could take over the burden and “leave police on the streets, where we need all the patrol time we can get,” Brooks said.

The patients would benefit as well, because they would be treated by trained psychiatrists or psychologists, said Irene King, a member of the nonprofit Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Thousand Oaks.

“It certainly helps to have a team come in and talk to them in very soft voices and reassure them,” King added. “If left to the police department, it could become a more volatile situation. Sometimes when people are in these episodes, they are frightened of the police, or they have resentment toward the uniform.”

Such arguments have persuaded Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski to support the program. Calling the lack of local county-run counseling “a real gap in our social services,” Zukowski said she would welcome a quick-response team in the East Valley Sheriff’s Station.

“We see a need,” she said, “and if we can meet it in this way, well, let’s go for it.”