El Cajon is no longer automatically sending police officers to some mental health crisis calls.
In May, the city’s police department quietly halted automatic deployments when someone threatens to harm themselves, if there’s no apparent crime or danger to others. That has meant clinicians from the county’s Mobile Crisis Response and the Psychiatric Emergency Response teams sometimes also didn’t respond to those calls or couldn’t get police support when they sought it.
A log obtained by Voice of San Diego after a public-records request details more than a dozen instances since mid-May where the county and its contractors reported that El Cajon police declined to intervene, including six instances where someone threatened suicide and had a plan to harm themselves…