Facing Mental Health Challenges Doesn't Make You Weak

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vermont for hosting this Special Order hour on mental health.

Mr. Speaker, so long before I came to Congress when I served on the board of the Los Angeles Community College, we would hold monthly board meetings throughout the district, and it is the largest community college district in the country. We had nine campuses, and so we would visit them regularly.

These meetings were oftentimes very long, they were open to the public, and lots of people would come. Lots of people, lots of characters, and lots of mental wellness issues were often on display.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was contracted with the district, and it was the sheriff's department that would provide security for these meetings. I would watch these officers, mostly men, but I would keep my eye on them to see how they were doing. I would watch them take into account the changing surroundings based on the meeting and the topics and adapt to the circumstances of the evening.

On occasion, these men, these good men, would have to manage a mental health episode by an attendee of the meetings, a mental health episode that verged on the unsafe.

I have to tell you; these sheriffs were not trained for that. They did not apply to become a sheriff to do that kind of work. In reality, they should not have been doing that. Yet, we dump more and more social, economic, mental, and physical healthcare issues on their plate.

We are asking ill-equipped law enforcement members to be responsible for managing the mental health crises of our communities. No wonder they are under duress.

Police officers report higher rates of depression. Thirty percent of responders develop some kind of behavioral health condition, compared to 20 percent of the general public. Law enforcement officers have a 54 percent increase in suicide risk when compared to the civilian population. Correctional officers in our prisons have suicide rates much higher than other law enforcement agencies or even the military.

Yet, Republicans want to crack down on mental unwellness in every instance except in cases regarding fentanyl. I wonder why that is the case? By bolstering the institutional policy status quo, you are not helping the mental health of our officers or those that they interact with.

I am actually floored that Republicans have the audacity to talk about supporting police when they have done nothing but put these folks in more danger. For the past 2 years, House Republicans have closed the Labor, Health, and Human Services account for Community Project Funding requests, obstructing funding from flowing into our districts to support those struggling with mental health.

House Republicans also barred nonprofits from applying for Community Project Funding within the Community Development Fund--Economic Development Initiative for HUD, preventing organizations that specialize in addressing homelessness from receiving vital Federal funding and placing additional burdens on law enforcement.

It is hypocritical to say this is Police Week and you want to support law enforcement when you are vehemently opposed to funding, supporting, or uplifting any of the initiatives that actually would do the most to help police, including their mental health, and including the mental health of those they interact with.

Instead, let's commit to legislation like H.R. 6202, the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act. This legislation diverts Federal funding away from supporting the presence of police in schools and toward evidence-based and trauma-informed services that address the needs of marginalized students and improve academic outcomes.

I have to tell you, the most common reasons why police officers are called are for issues related to parking, noise nuisance, poverty, domestic violence, and mental health episodes, and none of these, truthfully, require police intervention. Most demand mental health intervention, especially when you are dealing with someone in crisis.

By investing in mental health crisis intervention initiatives, we can actually better ensure the safety of both our communities and law enforcement.

I generally don't like to talk about another State or somebody else's district, but I want to share a little bit about what has been happening in Oregon. In Eugene, Oregon, they instituted this initiative called CAHOOTS, Crisis Assistance Helping Out On the Streets, a program with the city's police department, and it has had resounding success.

For nearly 30 years, the program has dispatched crisis response professionals to assist people who are intoxicated, mentally ill, and/ or disoriented to assist the responding officers, reducing police service calls by almost 9 percent every year. It has also cut down on workers' compensation issues and other liability claims.

This program actually inspired me to introduce and pass into law the C.R.I.S.E.S. Act in the California State Legislature, which established a pilot grant program to support similar community organizations that provide stability, safety, and culturally informed and appropriate responses to mental health crises to people experiencing homelessness, to challenges with domestic violence, and also to natural disasters.

Law enforcement was supportive of this because they don't want to take mental health crisis calls, but I don't know if Republicans care about them or about this country's mental wellness because they are certainly unwilling to support policy changes and crucial investments at the Federal level that would address mental health crises and mental health episodes.

In closing, I am going to think back to my time in the California State Legislature working with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and listening to stories of correctional officers battling depression, battling alcoholism, feeling isolated, being abused by other correctional officers, and being afraid to talk about it. I think about the conversations I had with the parents of correctional officers who died by suicide at their job.

All of these examples are examples of a mental health crisis happening in our homes, our streets, and our facilities, where we are asking folks to show up every day of sound mind and work on behalf of a locality, county, or community to help keep it safe, and we are not even doing our part. Republicans are not even doing their part to help them be safe.

I hope that Republicans are done playing hooky at a courthouse in New York today and will come back here and focus on this immediate, critical, and important epidemic that has taken hold of the very people they claim to support.

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