San Diego City Attorney Heather Ferbert abruptly reassigned an attorney helping the city push for conservatorships.
by Lisa Halverstadt
San Diego City Attorney Heather Ferbert has paused her office’s
conservatorship petition filings in Superior Court, an unconventional
tactic that her predecessor
pursued to try to force the county’s hand.
Since 2021, the city attorney’s office has assigned at least one lawyer to the Lifesaving Intervention For Treatment program.
The program focuses on people police and firefighters are constantly
responding to, regularly churn in and out of jails and hospitals and
often have complex physical and behavioral health challenges.
For years, the city’s last-ditch effort to save people they argued
could otherwise languish or die was to go to probate court to seek a
conservatorship after other efforts to aid a person failed. City
attorneys would appear before a judge and face off against the county,
which could then potentially be forced to provide care for the person.
County officials detested this approach. Now the city attorney has
decided to halt her office’s probate court filings – at least for now.
Late last month, Ferbert abruptly reassigned the attorney most
recently dedicated to the LIFT program, triggering concerns from city
officials who work with the program and at least one who once did that
some people could die without legal intervention.
The change comes three years after Councilmembers Marni von Wilpert and Jennifer Campbell successfully rallied for a $546,000 budget allocation to bolster staffing for what they described as a homelessness-focused conservatorship and treatment unit.
In a statement following questions from Voice of San Diego, Ferbert’s
office wrote that her team decided to halt the conservatorship filings
“due to several factors, including changes at the county management
level and resource challenges” tied to a tight city budget. Her office
also noted that the conservatorship petitions were “resource heavy” and
had come with “significant challenges.”
“We look forward to continuing to work with the county on its
approach to conservatorship petitions as the newly shaped Board of
Supervisors selects the next county counsel,” Ferbert’s office wrote.
Her office also wrote that Ferbert “looks forward to finding ways to
work with the county to do this work without the city needing to expend
substantial and limited resources on conservatorship petitions.”
In the meantime, Ferbert’s team said her office would continue to
advise staff on the LIFT Program, noting that three attorneys provide
legal support to the Fire-Rescue Department that houses it.
All this represents a shift for Ferbert, who said during her campaign that she expected to bolster the program.
“It is an incredibly important program and as the next city attorney,
I plan to continue to expand that work,” Ferbert said during a Politifest debate
last October. “And I think on the other side of it, the City Attorney’s
Office and the city as a whole really needs to engage the county in
trying to put more resources to programs like this because these are the
people we see on the street who really break our hearts.”
Ferbert, a Democrat, noted at the time that the city filings weren’t
ideal and that she wished the city and county could work together to
support LIFT patients.
Now, with a Democratic majority on the Board of Supervisors and the appointment of an acting county counsel following the abrupt retirement of the previous one, Ferbert seems to think that might be more possible.
County spokesperson Tim McClain said Monday that county staff were
unaware of changes to the LIFT program and will continue to work with
the city.
“Helping those struggling with mental health issues, substance use
disorders, and alcoholism by linking them with the right services for
their unique needs is challenging and also the heart of the county’s
mission,” McClain wrote in an email. “We thank the members of the city’s
team for their tireless effort in this space.”
The LIFT program first began in 2021 under former City Attorney Mara
Elliott. Her office quickly grew frustrated with the county’s response
to it.
John Hemmerling, a former assistant city attorney who retired in
2022, said the program was spurred by conversations about an increase in
repeat misdemeanor offenders who also had constant encounters with the
city’s Fire-Rescue Department.
For some, the City Attorney’s Office decided conservatorships would
be appropriate. Hemmerling said county officials soon stifled the
office’s efforts to pursue mental health conservatorships. Hemmerling eventually discovered another way to push the issue: probate conservatorship filings in Superior Court.
“I found legal authority to be able to file those, and we did, and it pissed them off,” Hemmerling said.
McClain did not respond to Voice’s question about how county officials viewed this tactic.
By early 2023, the LIFT program had ramped up.
In a March 2023 presentation to the City Council’s Public Safety
Committee, Elliott and two other attorneys described efforts to first
try to link patients with other programs. These patients included a
person with schizophrenia and developmental disabilities who’d had more
than 50 detentions for potential short-term mental health holds since
2015 and forgot “new information 10 minutes after being told.” Another
had more than 220 emergency room visits from 2020 to 2022, harassed
neighbors, vandalized her apartment complex and struggled with both
schizophrenia and serious medical conditions.
When LIFT program staffers were unable to successfully connect them
to lower-level services and remained concerned for their safety, city
attorneys asked the county to consider mental health conservatorships.
As of March 2023, Elliott said her office had referred more than 20
people to the county for mental health conservatorships and when that
didn’t work, sought probate conservatorships for some of them.
“The county has opposed every petition we have filed,” Elliott said at the time.
The city attorney later dialed back staffing for the program, and the city moved the program to its Fire-Rescue Department.
Deputy Fire Chief Becky Newell said a LIFT program manager in the
Fire-Rescue Department has since then coordinated with health care
providers, case managers, the patients themselves and others to try to
document what care a person has received and where they need more
support. The program manager makes referrals to agencies such as federal
Veterans Affairs and county Adult Protective Services.
When those efforts weren’t successful in the past, details the LIFT
staffer collected helped a city attorney prepare a probate court
petition.
Since 2021, the Fire-Rescue Department reports that the LIFT team has
successfully argued for 26 probate conservatorships. Only two were
officially denied. The program has served 81 people since its
inception.
“LIFT exhausts all other options,” Newell said. “Nobody here wants to
take anybody’s rights to make their own decisions away. In the case of
filing for conservatorship, it is because they’ve done multiple
assessments to show that the person is not able to make decisions on
their own.”
Now the LIFT program manager is operating without the help of a
dedicated city attorney who can file those petitions. She and others who
work with the program are concerned.
Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association,
said he met last week with the LIFT program manager, a sergeant on the
police department’s Homeless Outreach Team and the city’s behavioral
health officer. All were upset about the city attorney’s reassignment
and what it could mean for vulnerable San Diegans.
“This was a great tool for holding the county accountable for dealing
with the worst cases out there and without it there is not a good means
to do that,” Wilson said.
Wilson, whose organization reached out to the City Attorney’s Office
after the meeting, said the Police Officers Association was assured that
Ferbert’s office supports initiatives like LIFT and is “figuring out
ways we can make them effective.”
Hemmerling was caught off guard by the City Attorney’s Office change,
which he said means fewer solutions for people whose lives are at risk
who are also draining public safety resources.
“Putting forward a few staff members to reduce that front-end
inefficiency was the whole point of it,” said Hemmerling, who argued the
city attorney should be expanding the program even during tough budget
times.
Von Wilpert, a longtime advocate of the LIFT program, wrote in a
statement that she is hopeful that the county – rather than the city –
will step up now in the advent of behavioral health reforms at the state
level.
“In light of Proposition 1 passing and CARE Court
being implemented, I look forward to the county’s new leadership
fulfilling its responsibilities to help San Diego’s most vulnerable
residents,” von Wilpert wrote.
Campbell, who also championed the expansion of the LIFT program,
struck a similar tone. She’s hopeful that sitting county supervisors,
including those who make up the Democratic majority, and a new county
counsel will shift the county’s approach.
“The county should step up,” Campbell said. “I think we’re waiting to
hear from them now: Are you going to step up and take this on?”
Ferbert’s office said it remains focused on prodding the county too.
“From the start, one of our office’s goals in supporting LIFT has
been to motivate the county to fulfill its responsibilities to care for
people who cannot care for themselves,” Ferbert’s office wrote in a
statement. “The city attorney is still very much committed to this
goal.”
Full Article & Source:
City Attorney Halts Conservatorship Filings – and Looks to the County to Step Up
