Nearly six years after the murder of George Floyd ignited a national reckoning on issues of policing and public safety, California is facing another bellwether moment.
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a revised state budget proposal that could determine whether one of the most promising public safety initiatives to emerge from that period continues to grow, or begins to unravel. His plan would force local governments to shoulder the cost of mobile crisis response teams, putting the future of many of these programs in doubt. That decision could have significant implications for public safety across the state, and it couldn’t come at a worse time.
In the years immediately following 2020, communities across the country experienced troubling increases in violence and other crime, driven in part by the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a retired law enforcement professional, I saw firsthand how those spikes strained police departments, hurt communities, and rattled public confidence.
Today, the trend line looks very different. Crime is falling in cities across the country, including in California. Policymakers must respond by reinforcing the investments that have supported these gains—not by stepping back and undercutting their impact.
In California, crime has declined as state leaders have worked to build a broader, more effective public safety ecosystem. Many of these investments—including an infusion of state and federal funds to mobile crisis response programs beginning in 2023—reflect a growing recognition that police are not the best response to every call for service. Increasingly, cities are dispatching unarmed community responder teams and other specialists to certain low-risk calls.
These programs are designed to respond to people experiencing mental health or substance use crises—situations that too often fall to police by default. In communities across California, mobile crisis units are responding to thousands of calls each year that police would otherwise be expected to handle. In places like Sonoma County, these teams safely handle thousands of incidents annually, providing de-escalation and care while allowing law enforcement to focus on serious crime.
Data has shown that these programs can reduce unnecessary arrests and incarceration, divert people from emergency rooms, and connect individuals to care instead of punishment. By helping stabilize people in moments of crisis and linking them to ongoing support, they can also reduce the likelihood of future interactions with the criminal justice system. They also free up police officers to focus on the work we are trained to do: preventing and solving crime.
In other words, they make the entire system function better. That’s what makes Newsom’s budget proposal so concerning.
Under the plan, California would remove mobile crisis services as a guaranteed, statewide benefit, instead leaving counties to decide whether they can afford to continue them.
This would likely drive many existing programs out of operation. Counties already under fiscal strain would be forced to absorb new costs or scale programs back. The result would be a return to the uneven, patchwork system California has spent years trying to fix, where access to crisis care depends on where someone lives.
From a law enforcement perspective, that’s a clear step backward. The investments of the past several years have made crisis services more consistent and reliable by supporting infrastructure development, workforce hiring and training, and integration into a broader behavioral health system.
That work is starting to pay off, especially in less affluent counties, where tight budgets have historically limited access to effective crisis response—and where recent investments have finally begun to close those gaps. Local officials have been clear about what’s at stake if funding is pulled now. Some programs would shut down entirely, at great cost to people in crisis and to police officers, who will once again become the default responders to these incidents.
None of this is to deny the very real fiscal challenges facing California. The state’s revenue structure makes it particularly sensitive to economic swings, and difficult budget choices are inevitable. But not all cuts are equal.
While mobile crisis programs are already delivering results, they need sustained support to maintain operations and reach their full potential. Without consistent, long-term investment, efforts to build a more robust public safety ecosystem will continue to fall short, denying Californians access to more effective crisis response and placing an unmanageable burden on police.
There is still time for California to get this right. The Legislature’s final proposal in June offers an opportunity for lawmakers to maintain a statewide commitment while these programs continue to mature.
Other states are likely watching closely, meaning California’s decision will have an outsized impact on the national conversation around public safety. If California retreats from the investments it has spent years building, it will roll back progress on mental health throughout the state and across the nation.
The past few years have shown that evolutions in public safety can help drive tangible results. Many communities in California and across the country are now seeing the benefits of a more thoughtful, balanced approach to crisis response.
The question now is whether California will follow through on that progress—or abandon it before it has the chance to fully take hold.
Lt. Diane Goldstein (Ret.) is a 21-year police veteran and executive director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), a nonprofit group of police, judges, and other law enforcement professionals who support policies that improve public safety and police-community relations.