Crisis Unit Proposed for Thousand Oaks

Citing a need for quicker emergency responses, Ventura County’s Health Care Agency wants to reestablish its mental health mobile crisis unit in Thousand Oaks at the start of the new year.

The Board of Supervisors will consider approving a proposal today that would place emergency response workers at the Sheriff’s Department’s East County station on Olsen Road. The initial operation was shut down nine months ago because of personnel issues.

But the Behavioral Health Department has proposed to reconfigure its staff and service schedule in order to place crisis workers back in the area. The crisis team provides mental health assessment and intervention services seven days a week.

Under the new configuration, some crisis team members would be transferred from their headquarters at the Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura to the sheriff’s station in Thousand Oaks beginning Jan. 4.

Linda Shulman, director of Behavioral Health, said the plan would better accommodate the needs of all county residents by reducing crisis response times in the east county region.

“We’re trying to make ourselves more available because a big bulk of the calls we get are housed in the east county,” Shulman said. “By definition, a crisis doesn’t have 45 minutes to an hour to wait.”

Shulman said the east county would always have at least two people on duty 12 hours a day seven days a week, while the west county would have two professionals on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Fourteen mental health workers would staff the two outposts.

Shulman emphasized that both outposts would have the same number of staffers on duty.

“Some of it’s controversial because we’re splitting them up and

The plan has met with opposition from crisis team staffers who say it would reduce resources in the west county, thereby increasing the danger to staffers and the public.

“I would anticipate the consequences of this change to have quite a negative impact on the crisis teams’ ability to adequately and safely serve the community,” Dale Hewlett, a licensed psychiatric technician, wrote to the Board of Supervisors. “The workers who will be implementing this plan ... have great concern over this change. I have not heard one voice of support for it.”

But officials point out that at least two recent incidents involving mentally ill people in the east county have driven home the need for locating a crisis team there.

In April, a 19-year-old mentally ill man was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy as he approached a Thousand Oaks swim school armed with a box-cutter-type knife.

James Daniels was shot eight times, including six times in the back, and his family has since filed a lawsuit against the county and the city of Thousand Oaks.

In August, a distraught 48-year-old Thousand Oaks man pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s station on Olsen Road and began firing at the entrance to the building with two high-caliber handguns. Greg Wynn Hackett was subsequently shot to death in a gun battle with officers.

“Just in light of several cases and things that have happened, it makes perfect sense to me,” Supervisor Judy Mikels, who represents Simi Valley and Moorpark, said of the proposal to reestablish the east county crisis unit. “Why have everybody in the same spot?”