By Flor Sanchez
DAVIS– At last Monday’s Police Accountability Commission (PAC), the commission received an update from the Mental Health Subcommittee.
Formed just last month in April 2021, the subcommittee was tasked with looking at “into the intersection of law enforcement and mental health.”
The PAC discussed plans for Michael Gennaco, the independent police auditor, to conduct a random audit of “either ten 5150 calls or ten calls that were determined to be mental health calls.”
As stated by ferc.org, 5150 calls are “number of the section of the Welfare and Institutions Code, which allows a person with a mental challenge to be involuntarily detained for a 72-hour psychiatric hospitalization.”
MacBrine explained that the approach to the audit would be an inquiry first and an audit second in order to gather more information on how mental health calls are handled.
The inquiry aspect includes “a request to the chief…to give us more data about mental health [and] how they handle mental health calls.”
The PAC voted in favor of a random audit.
Flor Sanchez is a third-year student at UC Davis, currently double majoring in Communications and Managerial Economics. She is from Patterson, CA, and enjoys traveling.
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