A heavy LAPD and LAFD presence, including a police helicopter, descended on North Larchmont Boulevard on Wednesday after a woman attacked a man, acted erratically, and smashed a storefront window with a chair before being taken into custody by the department's Mental Evaluation Unit. The man she is accused of attacking declined to press charges, according to LAPD officers, and police said the woman was not arrested.
According to Larchmont Buzz, witnesses told the outlet the woman attacked a man before turning erratic and using a chair to break a window at Larchmont Cleaners. Staff at the cleaners told the Buzz they had never seen anything like it before. The woman then ran across the street to Healing Hands Spa, where LAPD and LAFD units, including the helicopter, converged with several vehicles.
How the Standoff Resolved
Police officers and mental health clinicians responded together to the scene, per the Buzz's reporting, and the woman was ultimately taken into custody at Healing Hands Spa by LAPD's Mental Evaluation Unit rather than arrested on criminal charges. That distinction traces back to California law: under Welfare and Institutions Code Section 5150, officers or designated clinicians may detain someone for an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold if there is probable cause the person is a danger to others, a danger to themselves, or gravely disabled, according to Disability Rights California. That hold can later be extended up to 14 days under a separate code section if the criteria still apply.
The legal bar for such holds shifted at the start of this year. Effective January 1, 2026, California Senate Bill 43 expanded the definition of “gravely disabled” under the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in Los Angeles County to include people unable to provide for their own safety or necessary medical care, as well as those with severe substance use disorders, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. It marked the first update to the state's involuntary commitment law in over 50 years, giving county evaluators broader authority during crisis calls like the one on Larchmont.
A Department Under Scrutiny Over Armed Response
The response on Larchmont fits into a wider debate over how LAPD handles mental health emergencies. An October 2025 audit from the City of Los Angeles Controller's Office found that LAPD's Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team, or SMART, operates on a patrol-first, armed-response mandate in which armed officers clear a scene before clinicians can engage — a model that resulted in an involuntary psychiatric hold in 86% of the calls SMART handled in 2023. The same audit found that 35% of LAPD officer-involved shootings that year involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis, a statistic that has fueled citywide demands for reform following the fatal shootings of three people in crisis in January 2023.
SMART itself dates back to 1993, when LAPD partnered with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to pair a plainclothes officer with a clinician for high-risk 911 calls, according to the Alternative Mobile Services Association. The unit operates within LAPD's Mental Evaluation Unit and receives round-the-clock triage support. As of March 2026, more than 6,400 LAPD personnel had completed the department's 40-hour, POST-certified Mental Health Intervention Training course covering crisis communication and de-escalation, per LAPD Online.
Unarmed Alternatives Expanding Into Wilshire
Los Angeles has also been building a parallel, unarmed response system. The City Council voted 12-0 in February 2026 to permanently adopt the Unarmed Model of Crisis Response, creating a centralized dispatch system that routes non-violent 911 mental health calls to specialized unarmed clinicians instead of armed officers, according to MyNewsLA. City reports showed about 96% of the more than 20,000 calls the program handled since its 2024 pilot were resolved without police involvement.
That system is now expanding into the neighborhood where Wednesday's incident unfolded. The City Council approved a municipal budget in May 2026 that funds growth of the unarmed crisis teams from nine to 15 LAPD divisions, including the Wilshire Division, which covers Larchmont Boulevard, per LAist. Advocacy groups such as LA Forward have pushed to expand unarmed response citywide ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games, according to the same reporting.
For individuals who repeatedly trigger emergency crisis calls, LAPD also runs the Case Assessment Management Program, known as CAMP, a follow-up unit established in 2005 that pairs police detectives with county mental health clinicians. The program averages 15 to 20 new cases per week and keeps cases active on an ongoing basis to try to prevent repeat emergency encounters, according to LAPD Online.
The Mental Evaluation Unit that took custody of the woman on Larchmont has faced its own losses in the line of duty. LAPD Sergeant Shiou Deng, who spent roughly 17 years of his 26-year career in the unit, was killed on the 405 Freeway in June 2025 while assisting a disabled vehicle, and prosecutors filed murder charges against the driver a year later.
