Board OK's recommendations from Borderline task force, focuses on psychiatric care

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors has OK'd all 26 recommendations from a task force studying how to prevent mass shootings, focusing in particular on the panel's call to expand high-level psychiatric care.

Supervisor Linda Parks, who asked for the study shortly after 12 people were killed at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, urged approval before the board's vote Tuesday night.

"If we approve these recommendations and follow through, I am convinced it will save lives," she told the board and a crowd of several dozen people who gathered for the supervisors' meeting in Thousand Oaks.

Among those who turned out for the event at the Civic Arts Plaza were several people whose relatives were killed in the shooting on Nov. 7, 2018 as well as members of the task force that began its deliberations almost a year ago.

Focus on mental health

The Mental Health & Safety Task Force called for widespread efforts to identify early warning signs of potential violence and measures to bolster mental health and safety programs in a 51-page report issued last week. 

But supervisors held their most extended discussion over the call for additional psychiatric inpatient beds and short-term stabilization units where patients stay for less than 24 hours. The latter provides a place where people in crisis can receive in-depth care and possibly avoid involuntary hospitalization.

Ventura County is facing "a severe lack" of inpatient beds and stabilization spaces, the report says. 

"This overall lack of beds needs to be addressed by all health care systems within the county by coordinating the creation of additional (such services)," the report says.

County managers said that only two hospitals in the county — publicly funded Ventura County Medical Center and private Vista Del Mar, both in Ventura — offer inpatient psychiatric units.

Together, they provide less than 100 psychiatric beds in the county of 850,000 residents. The county also offers a short-term stabilization unit for adults at VCMC. An outpatient stabilization unit that could serve 1,100 patients a year is scheduled to open in October at St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.  

Vista Del Mar offers 55 beds for psychiatric care, down from the 87 that existed before a portion of the hospital burned in the Thomas Fire in 2017. The hospital plans to increase the figure to nearly 120 within approximately two years, CEO Jenifer Nyhuis said. 

Call to action: Borderline task force calls for training to identify potential shooters

Family members said in interviews after the board meeting that they considered the recommendations at least a beginning.

"It's a good starting point," said Michael Morisette, whose 20-year-old daughter Kristina, was killed at the bar. "It's not going to fix everything."  

Morisette, who lives in Simi Valley, approved of the report's emphasis on mental health. 

"Mental health is the right thing to focus on when things like this happen," he said. 

Lorrie and Dan Dingman, who lost their 21-year-old son Blake, called the report "a great first step," but said they believe so much more needs to be done.

Task force launched

The task force began deliberating a few months after Newbury Park resident Ian David Long launched his November 2018 attack.

The 28-year-old combat veteran who floundered in civilian life after leaving the Marine Corps killed 11 people and struck Ventura County Sheriff's Sgt. Ron Helus multiple times before fatally shooting himself in the head, officials reported. Helus was fatally struck by a round fired from the rifle of California Highway Patrol Officer Todd Barrett as the two officers were responding to the shooting, a ballistics study shows.

Borderline shooting:Sgt. Ron Helus honored with donation from Mastro's

The report did not conclude that Long was suffering from underlying mental illness. But the document says he showed concerning behaviors that were observed by others during three key time periods before the incident. 

Those periods occurred when Long was in school, when he returned home from military service in the Marine Corps and when law enforcement trained to handle mental health crises visited his home in Newbury Park several months before the attack, the report says.

Those interactions provided the foundation for an exercise aimed at improving the response to troubled individuals and led to an initial list of recommendations.

They included expansion of a training program to assess threats in schools and elsewhere; an effort to inform the public about early-warning signs, how to report concerns and the availability of a crisis line for veterans; and expansion of a mobile phone reporting system used by police to track encounters with people in crisis.

The bulk of the recommendations were tied to ways to fill gaps in the available services for psychiatric care, educate the public about options that already exist, boost the number of patients who are receiving care and keep firearms out of the hands of people threatening violence.

Parks read the names of the 12 victims that were displayed on screens around the Thousand Oaks City Council chambers at the beginning of the board's discussion. 

"I know we have some family members here," she said. "We can't do more than to tell you how much we love you and back you and how much we want to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Officials did not estimate the cost of implementing all 26 recommendations, but the report indicates that about 40% would require funding while the other 60% would not.

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To see the full report, visit https://www.ventura.org/board-of-supervisors/agendas-documents-and-broadcasts. Go to the agenda for Jan. 21 and scroll to Item 41.

Kathleen Wilson covers the Ventura County government, including the county health system, politics and social services. Reach her at kathleen.wilson@vcstar.com or 805-437-0271.