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Today HUMBOLDT CONVERSATIONS wraps up a series on the City of Eureka’s efforts to tackle homelessness and the mental health crisis — specifically, the work coordinated by the UPLIFT Eureka program.

Today we get the law enforcement perspective on these efforts with Commander Lenny La France, who leads the Eureka Police Department’s Community Safety Engagement Team, which is charged with responding to many of the city’s calls relating to homelessness and people in crisis. 

Previous episodes in this series included:

With that: Commander La France. Video above, transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m here now with Commander Lenny La France, who is the Community Safety Engagement … part of the Community Safety Engagement team … that’s quite a long sentence … for the Eureka Police Department.

Commander La France, great to meet you. Thank you so much for talking to us.

LA FRANCE:

Thank you.

O’CONNOR:

Now, you’ve started the CSET, which is a partnership with the City of Eureka’s Uplift Eureka Program and the EPD. When was the program started?

COMMANDER LEONARD LA FRANCE:

The program was created in July of 2018 when we were looking at addressing certain issues along the waterfront in Old Town.

O’CONNOR:

And what is the mission of the CSET program? 

LA FRANCE:

The mission of CSET now has transformed from where it began initially to where it is now. So, it’s really focused on addressing issues of mental health, substance use disorder, and then mental illness.

O’CONNOR:

And it’s really helping the most vulnerable in the community isn’t it, that’s what it’s aimed for.

LA FRANCE:

Yeah, it’s really more of a less policing unit, more of a social service program, but also has the ability, obviously, to enforce laws as well. But it’s much more able to directly connect people with resources in the field and to do much more proactive outreach with folks.

O’CONNOR:

And the main area you’re covering, it seems to be Old Town, the waterfront, city parks as well, but it does actually cover the whole city.

LA FRANCE:

It does. So, initially the goal was to really look at city parks, Old Town and the waterfront. However, as this program kind of blossomed, we looked at more mental illness and mental health issues across the whole entire community. And so now CSET responds to 40 percent of all mental health calls within the city. They respond to people in crisis calls.

O’CONNOR:

We’re going to be talking to Jacob Rosen as well, because that’s another partnership that the city has created. But when I spoke to Jeff Davis from Uplift Eureka, he described the CSET program as being very, very successful — highly successful, I think he says. So what progress has been made in the five years that it’s been running?

LA FRANCE:

So I think a lot of it is just the human connections we’re making with folks that are either on the street or having often going to crisis or mental health issues or want to go to treatment. So the ability to actually directly connect people to from the street right to a rehab facility or from a street into a housing program. That’s been a success for us. I think over the past … since 2018, about 220 plus people directly from street to rehab centers. And then of course with our partner Uplift, which is our outreach side of our sibling unit, they’ve done I think it was 150 people in housing. That’s probably a low number, but we’ve done a ton of folks in housing besides our other programs.

But there’s a lot of other data we collect. So people connect to resources including housing, you know looking at food, clothing, whatever, to really meet those needs and those gaps that are in the community that we just fill until we can send them off to a much larger organization to kind of do the long-term work.

O’CONNOR:

And who are those organisations that you’re partnering with?

LA FRANCE:

So, we work with a lot of people. The biggest one obviously is the county, DHHS. We also work with Betty Chinn, the Mission, Salvation Army, St. Vincent DePaul, or Free Meal. I think there’s 50 partners we work with overall.

O’CONNOR:

And actually a new warming center opened in the city a couple of weeks ago.

LA FRANCE:

There is, yep. So that’s been a project of ours since probably a couple weeks ago. The chief had this idea and handed it over to us within about a week and a half. We had the warming center operational and in partnership with Lifehouse and also with Betty Chinn Day Center. And so, actually opened tonight at Betty’s and it’s been, we’ve had any numbers any between 3 to 12 people staying there. But again, that’s 3 to 12 people that are not on the street when it’s most vulnerable with the weather. 

O’CONNOR:

The weather has been very harsh this year, it’s been very difficult. So how do you see the program developing in the future?

LA FRANCE:

That’s a good question. Our vision is really to have a three and a half prong approach to addressing again the issues of mental health, homelessness, and addiction. We have CARE, which is the mental health component for the city. We have Uplift, which is our homeless outreach team. We want to add a medical component, so either a paramedic embedded with this team who can address simple issues like if someone has a foot injury or wound care, they can address it in the field versus taking an ambulance and sending them over to St. Joe’s, taking them to a bed — which are pretty rare right now, beds. We can address those, and the half prong will be law enforcement, because we’re not always needed, but we are definitely needed in certain times. So it’s a three and a half prong approach.

O’CONNOR:

We had an interview on Humboldt Today with the mayor — actually, over a cup of tea. She brought up homelessness and there was a very surprising reaction from the audience who were saying, you know, homelessness, mental health issues, etc. They’re the problem of the individual. They’re not something that the city should be diverting resources to. I’d really like to get your feedback on that. It seemed very callous to me.

LA FRANCE:

Yeah, I would disagree. I think when you look at issues, some of the biggest issues in this community are correlation is going to be homelessness. But once you peel back the onion more, you see mental health appeal more, you see substance abuse appeal more, you find childhood trauma. And so, of course, that’s just the surface layers. We have to go further back. And there’s lots of correlation. And then, of course, there’s correlated crime as well. So crime, blight. And so we have to address these issues proactively versus saying, hey, it’s not our problem, we can walk away.

O’CONNOR:

And following on from that, some of the criticism was that if people aren’t encouraged to help themselves and the resources are put there, then the situation is just exacerbated again. And it seems a very heartless thing.

LA FRANCE:

I agree. Sometimes you have to some folks that want no assistance at all. Our 2022 survey data It was around 30% said they’re at our homeless individuals that we surveyed said they’re happy with their life. I believe it’s 30%, or somewhere in that range.

So, again, we can’t create that will for them. But the ones that are truly, truly mentally ill, that can’t make decisions for themselves are truly on a daily basis are having trouble with making decisions, we can at least push them in a certain direction or provide services. We can also use as law enforcement officers, and also use the court system if we have to to back door the system to get people to help that they actually need. 

O’CONNOR:

Well, it’s having a great impact. It’s been five years now and obviously it’s having an impact on the street. So, congratulations, and let’s hope for future success. Commander La France, great to meet you. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us for a Humboldt Conversation and join us for another Humboldt Conversation very soon.