LPD officials push for changes to local mental health crisis response

As mental health crises continue rising in Laredo, police officers are increasingly filling roles traditionally handled by psychiatric facilities, clinicians and social workers — exposing what officials describe as major gaps in the local behavioral health system.

“Our city currently does not have the capabilities to fully treat a lot of these cases. There are a lot of gaps,” Assistant Chief Ricardo Gonzalez said during a Laredo Rotary Club meeting. “It’s unfair that for a city our size — where we’re really good at what we do but still have certain needs — we’re not getting that support.”

The system now leaves the police department handling situations that extend beyond traditional law enforcement, particularly once a mental health crisis escalates to the point of an emergency detention. While LPD works alongside agencies such as Border Region Behavioral Health Center and the 988 crisis line, officers often become the primary responders once a crisis can no longer be managed voluntarily.

Under Texas law, peace officers can place someone under an emergency mental health detention if they believe the person poses an immediate danger to themselves or others. Once that happens, Laredo police officers become responsible for a broader process involving hospital evaluations, placement searches and long-distance transports because the city does not have a dedicated mental health hospital.

Because of the city’s limited psychiatric infrastructure, patients are frequently transported to facilities in San Antonio or the Rio Grande Valley. Cases involving additional medical conditions can require placement even farther away, sometimes up to 350 miles from Laredo, while officers may handle multiple long-distance mental health transports in a single day. Gonzalez said as many as five patients can require out-of-town transport in a single day.

The burden further increased in recent months after changes in state law shifted responsibility for mental health transports to the agency initiating the emergency detention. In Laredo, that is often the police department. Previously, the Webb County Sheriff’s Office handled many of the long-distance transfers through a dedicated transport team, but LPD is now absorbing that workload while continuing its regular policing duties.

The entire process, from lengthy hospital evaluations to out-of-town transports, can sideline officers for hours at a time, leaving fewer officers available to patrol the streets and respond to calls. Gonzalez said the strain also generates overtime costs, fuel expenses, additional wear on department vehicles and other unexpected expenses.

Gonzalez said those costs have become harder to absorb amid recent funding cuts that have placed additional pressure on an already strained department in a medically underserved community, especially when it comes to mental health.

“We’re being loud,” he said. “We’re having conversations with our representatives to make sure we get that funding down here because the already limited funding that existed is no longer there.”

As hospital placement and transport delays stretch for hours, officers have at times personally paid for meals for patients who had gone most of the day without eating, Gonzalez said.

“When we don’t budget for meals, the guys have been kind enough that when, for whatever reason, a patient hasn’t been fed since the morning and it’s already late in the day, they’re buying meals for patients out of pocket,” he said. “We’re not incurring those expenses as a department. They are.”

However, Gonzalez said the department is now reassessing its operations and resources to better manage the growing demands tied to mental health response despite ongoing funding challenges.

“That’s our reality, but we can no longer just say we don’t have the money and not do anything about it,” he said. “We need to look at our operations and restructure. We’re trying to see how we can better manage resources to be able to do yet another thing that’s asked for us to do.”

Among the changes LPD is pushing for is a broader co-response model that Gonzalez said departments across Texas have increasingly adopted, pairing officers with EMS personnel, clinicians and social workers during behavioral health calls.

Under that approach, officers would initially secure scenes before medical and behavioral health professionals take leading roles in crisis intervention and stabilization.

“It’s one of the best models, one of the best practices,” he said. “We want these teams with more than just officers. We’ll be in the forefront, make sure everyone is safe, and then we take the backseat and their assistance comes to the front.”

Still, while the city waits for additional funding — which Gonzalez said could still take years to translate into expanded mental health infrastructure even if approved today — the larger question is whether police departments like LPD should continue serving as the community’s primary behavioral health response system at all.

Officers, Gonzalez argued, are trained primarily for law enforcement rather than long-term mental health intervention. He warned that relying too heavily on police response could discourage people in crisis from seeking help if mental health emergencies become too closely associated with law enforcement intervention.

“All we have is people in uniform, and the only way they’re trained to restrain someone is with handcuffs, and the only transport vehicles we have are average caged vehicles,” Gonzalez said. “So when someone has a crisis, we’re treating them like criminals. Is that the best we can do for our community? I say no.”

Sgt. Heriberto Avalos, who leads the department’s Mental Health Unit — formed in 2021 and staffed entirely by police officers — said those conversations have become increasingly urgent as mental health cases have continued rising since the COVID-19 pandemic.

That growing urgency is reflected in the city’s suicide numbers. In 2024 and 2025, Laredo recorded 18 suicides each year. Just five months into 2026, the city has already recorded eight.

“After 2020, with COVID-19, things just blew up and we’ve seen increases every year in emergency detentions, crises we respond to and even suicides,” Avalos said. “Of the eight so far this year, three of them have been high school students, which itself should be scary.”

Ultimately, Gonzalez said that regardless of funding constraints and an increasing workload, LPD — along with hospitals, behavioral health agencies and other organizations — will continue operating within a system that officials increasingly believe cannot rely on law enforcement alone.

He said LPD is seeking support from policymakers to fund a co-response model involving trained professionals alongside police officers, an approach he said would ultimately benefit not only the department, but more importantly, patients and the community at large.

“Right now, the system is putting this on the police department, which we don’t mind because we love to help, but we’re doing a disservice to patients because these are not criminal cases and we shouldn’t be the ones,” Gonzalez said. “We want to help, but we shouldn’t be doing it alone. Our community deserves more than what police alone have to offer.”