This year, the City of Pleasanton won the Helen Putnam Award for Excellence for its commitment to minimizing uniformed police response to non-criminal incidents related to mental health.

“Through that listening session, we heard the need for more mental health support on the street,” said Pleasanton Mayor Karla Brown.

The League of California Cities presents the award annually, “to recognize and promote the outstanding efforts and innovative solutions by city governments.”

Pleasanton launched the Alternative Response to Mental Health program in January 2023. The unit is a part of the Pleasanton Police Department and works closely with Bonita House, a non-profit mental health agency headquartered in Berkeley.

“We saw that the model of having a licensed clinician respond along with law enforcement to people in crisis was working around the country, and we wanted to see if this was going to be a model that would work for Pleasanton,” said Pleasanton Police Captain Kurt Schlehuber.

Where it began

Talks began as early as 2020, in response to the killing of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer. Pleasanton’s city council held several community listening sessions, where residents voiced concerns about improper police use.

In response to the sessions, the Pleasanton City Council unanimously approved a task force to reduce police intervention in mental health cases, culminating in forming the Alternative Response Unit (ARU) in 2022. The unit consists of one police sergeant, two officers, and two licensed Bonita House clinicians.

While all police officers receive standard de-escalation and crisis intervention training, the ARU officers are selected for additional instruction to manage the delicate situations that can arise in mental health incidents.

“They go to crisis negotiation school, they also take part in the Bonita House training that is provided to all of their clinicians… then a lot of one-off training with the different types of support groups or service groups that are in the area and in the county,” said Schlehuber.