The Policy Strategy Summit on Unarmed Crisis Response is a free-to-attend, invite-only, one-day event taking place in person in the City of Los Angeles (venue announcement coming soon). The audience will be staff members from elected City, County, and State offices, with a mix of legislative and field staff. In addition, we will invite service providers and subject matter experts within the field of unarmed crisis response to join panels and engage in thoughtful discussions with our audience.

RSVP deadline extended to Monday, October 27, 2025.

For more information, contact Jason Enright at Jason@LAForward.org.  

Context

In 2024, the City of LA with the advocacy of LA Forward Institute, launched the Unarmed Model of Crisis Response (UMCR) pilot. This program diverts six call types typically attended to by armed police to trained mental health care providers and crisis interventionists. After its first year, this program has proven its ability to save LAPD and LAFD capacity by freeing up other first responders to answer other calls; save money by costing a fraction of what other first responders cost to answer these calls; and most importantly, save lives, by ensuring the most appropriate type of service responds to each call.

However, the program currently only covers about 40% of the City. As we face an uncertain budget future, we need to collaborate across multiple levels of government to grow this program in scope and geography. To this end, LA Forward Institute, with the assistance of Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, is launching the City’s first Policy Strategy Summit on Unarmed Crisis Response, to bring together champions of this work — from LA to Sacramento – to carve out the future of this program.