How Laura’s Law Helps Protect California’s Mentally Ill

A homeless man sits at a bus stop in Los Angeles, Calif., on May 5, 2013. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Commentary

The tragic case of four Minneapolis police officers overreacting to an individual, to the point of the detainee’s death, has been disturbing for most of us for the past year and a half. The main perpetrator, Derek Chauvin, has already pled guilty and is now serving time.

The three other officers are currently on trial for their actions, or lack thereof. Use of force has again become a serious topic of discussion.

Having four police officers involved in a tragic incident and hearing “I can’t breathe” is not new to those of us in Orange County.

In the summer of 2011, four Fullerton police officers encountered mentally ill and homeless Kelly Thomas. They did not asphyxiate him with a strangle hold, he literally drowned in his own blood when they beat Kelly Thomas to death.

Shortly after the video recordings of the incident became public, parents of adult children who suffer from schizophrenia came to a Board of Supervisors weekly board meeting and, after waiting until early evening to speak during the public comments section, shared their frustrations that Orange County had not adopted Laura’s Law.

Laura’s Law, which allows for court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment, was enacted with Assembly Bill 1421 by then-Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, D-Davis, and was signed into law in 2002. But for the next 12 years it languished. Only Nevada County had adopted it, but did so as part of a 2004 settlement with Wilcox’s family after the law’s namesake, Laura Wilcox’s death at the hands of a mentally ill person in 2001.

Before that evening, no one had ever mentioned Laura’s Law to me. It started me on a journey to find the answer to the question, “What is Laura’s Law?” And to understand its legislation to see if its court-ordered encouragement of assisted outpatient treatment could be implemented in Orange County. So did the local media.

What I found was a lot of pushback from the mental health bureaucracy.

Serving as the inaugural chair of the Orange County Commission to End Homelessness gave me the privilege of having it hold a hearing on the subject. As chair of the Orange County Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, I tasked the Sheriff, District Attorney, Chief of Probation, the Superior Court Presiding Judge, the Director of the County’s Health Care Agency and Behavioral Health Services Director to assist in the process of possibly adopting Laura’s Law.

The result of our studies found that it should be implemented, but due to the Great Recession, the county was lacking the necessary funds. The Mental Health Services Act, a creation approved by the voters with Proposition 63 in 2004, known as the Millionaire’s Tax, was providing adequate revenues, but it was determined that it could not be used for Laura’s Law.

It did not make sense that Prop. 63 funding for assisted outpatient treatment, which provides some semblance of independence for those suffering from mental illness thanks to the assistance of proper medication, and leading to a normative life, would not be eligible. I set about to pursue a remedy.

While advancing Laura’s Law the rest of the state was watching. The Sacramento Bee’s Editorial Board weighed in:

“If Moorlach succeeds, Orange County judges would be empowered to decree that severely mentally ill people undergo intensive mental health care while continuing to live in their homes. Orange County would be the largest county in the state to fully embrace the law. All counties in the state should adopt it, or programs similar to it.”

I then went to Sacramento and met with Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s office, the author of Prop. 63, and requested legislative assistance. In 2013, he authored SB 585, which would permit the use of these revenues to underwrite most of the costs for counties adopting Laura’s Law. It’s nice to have the leader of the State Senate as your author, as his bill successfully made it to Governor Brown’s desk and received his signature.

SB 585 became effective on January 1, 2014, the beginning of the eighth and final year of my service as the County Supervisor for the then-Second District. After hearing compelling testimonies from constituents, my Board colleagues unanimously approved adopting Laura’s Law, and we inserted the costs and offsetting revenues in the County’s 2014-2015 annual budget.

Orange County had become the second California county to fully adopt Laura’s Law and the first county to fully adopt it voluntarily. It would soon be followed by other highly populated counties, like San Francisco and San Diego. Some twenty counties have subsequently adopted Laura’s Law.

A few years later, a study on the efficacy of the implementation in more than a third of California’s counties determined that it was doing what it was intended to do and concluded with the admonition that the remaining counties should also adopt it.

In my final year in the California Senate, I was a co-author of Assembly Bill 1976 (Eggman). It discontinued the need to renew AB 1421 every five years, making the law permanent, and it now requires counties that have not adopted Laura’s Law to provide Sacramento with a good explanation for not doing so.

With a significant portion of homeless individuals suffering from some form of mental illness, now Orange County parents have a tool to be of greater assistance in keeping their adult children off of the streets. The death of Kelly Thomas, a homeless individual with schizophrenia, prompted serious reform. And it was an honor for me to be the tip of the spear in moving Laura’s Law forward.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.