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Mission
The Mission of the Pasadena Police and Los
Angeles County Department of Mental Health’s Homeless
Outreach-Psychiatric Evaluation (HOPE) team is to provide effective,
collaborative, and compassionate mental health and law enforcement
emergency response to those in need of mental health, housing, and
related social services.
The HOPE Team will utilize proven, creative, and innovative methods of
street-level, residential, commercial, and public mental health crisis
response, while entering into mission-oriented, problem-solving
partnerships with mental health and social service provider agencies.
Program
The Pasadena Police Department created the
HOPE Team on January 8th 2002. In keeping with its core values and
commitment to excellence, innovation, and integrity, the police
department entered into a partnership with the Los Angeles County
Department of Mental Health to better handle homeless issues and to
provide cooperative, compassionate, mental health/law enforcement teams
to assist those in need of accessing mental health and social services.
This unique police officer-civilian clinician team-approach pioneered
the “HOPE” model of mental health crisis response.
What makes the HOPE Team different from similar units in other
departments is that HOPE Team members are first responders to emergency
mental health crisis calls, and are proactive by continuously seeking
out contact with people who are in need of services prior to potentially
volatile situations occurring. The team’s target population are
street-level and sheltered homeless, as well as mental health consumers
within the city limits.
Another major aspect of the HOPE approach is working on relationship
building and “planting the seed” of trust for the next contact. This is
critical in convincing people to accept services prior to them
being in a crisis and critical in being able to de-escalate a situation
when they are in crisis. This applies to anyone in our target groups
that we contact.
Community Partnerships
The HOPE Team has forged many working
community partnerships with a host of public and private social service
organizations throughout the city.
The HOPE Team also provides leadership to the Pasadena Mental Health
Advisory Committee (PMHAC).
HOPE Team Officers are specially trained in crisis communications,
Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA), Suicide-Homicide Bomber
Terrorist response, and are graduates of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)
Training Academies throughout the state. HOPE Teams also specialize in
multi-agency, long-term psychiatric problem solving, often involving
suspected suicidal/homicidal subjects.
The Hope Teams
HOPE 1 Officer Bill Shipman (January
2002-Present) and Clinician Jim Recio, RN (June 2009-Present)
HOPE 2 Officer Victor Cass (February
2007-Present) and Clinician Guillermo Vasquez, RN (January 2009-Present)
We can be reached by phone at (626)
744-7054
