Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger honored two Santa Clarita Valley deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) for their work in protecting and serving the community on Monday.

Barger honored Sgt. Brandon Barclay, who supervises Mental Evaluation Team (MET) operations in Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster, as well as Lt. Logan Foley for his work at the SCV Sheriff’s Station Security Unit, which regularly patrols the unincorporated areas of Stevenson Ranch and Castaic.

“(Mental health) is a real passion of mine,” Barger said. “I know first-hand that the interaction that the Mental Evaluation team has with individuals keeps people from being arrested, but also deescalates situations that might otherwise end up possibly with someone being injured in the attempt to try to deescalate the situation.”

Barger spent nearly 20 years as former Fifth District Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s health deputy, a passion she has expressed still guides her policy-making decisions to this day.

The foundation of the MET as it is today was created at the beginning of the 1990s, when the Sheriff’s Department approved the first co-responders program in the country, pairing deputies with clinicians from the county Department of Mental Health to work full-time in the field responding to mental health crises.

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The usual MET response team consists of a specially-trained deputy with 700 hours of additional training paired with a licensed clinical social worker, working together to break the stigma of mental illness and try to de-escalate crisis scenarios, according to Barclay.

“When people are at their absolute worst day, we try to make it more manageable,” Barclay said. “That is if they are cutting their wrists, suicidal ideations, we even have extreme cases like barricades where we call the mental health evaluation team.”

Santa Clarita did not receive a dedicated MET unit until 2016, when three units were added to cover the Antelope and Santa Clarita Valleys.

Today, the MET has 33 regional units deployed across Los Angeles County, along with a single unit contracted out to the city of West Hollywood. They are responsible for handling high-risk mental health crises for the entire county, with officials estimating that roughly 20% of the population suffer from some degree of diagnosable mental illness.

The Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission for Los Angeles County recommends at least 60 teams be operational for the best service to the community, according to Barclay.

“It’s often a thankless job. It’s not exotic arrests or the pursuit, the adrenaline dump,” Barclay said. “It’s dealing with somebody on their absolute worst day and making their day a little bit more manageable.”

Santa Clarita falls under the MET’s North Patrol Division, which also includes Lancaster and  Palmdale. Barclay serves as a MET supervisor for this division, with only about 11 MET deputies assigned to the area. Combined, these 11 deputies handle about 40% of psychiatric emergency calls in the North Patrol Division, according to Barclay.

A regional MET unit generally consists of a deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and a county mental health clinician, who arrive at situations in “plainclothes” and unmarked cars, all in an effort to help de-escalate mental health crises.

Barclay encouraged members of the community to be open to their support systems, especially with the mental stress of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Focus on self-care. 2020 was an absolutely tough year for a lot of folks, and this is coming from somebody that didn’t take a day off once this year,” Barclay said.  “Focus on self-care, take care of yourself, take care of your loved ones.”

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