Mayor Karen Bass ordered an independent review of how the Los Angeles Police Department handles encounters with people in mental health crises, following three fatal incidents this summer.

Executive Directive No. 21, issued Sept. 24, directs the Board of Police Commissioners to hire an outside firm with expertise in constitutional policing and behavioral health crisis response. The firm will examine five years of LAPD uses of force and custodial arrests that resulted in death or serious bodily injury.

"That's why I'm ordering an independent review of how the LAPD responds to people in crisis so we can ensure officers have the training and tools they need to respond safely and save lives," Bass said in a statement accompanying the directive.

The directive follows two fatal July encounters and a third fatal shooting in early August, as reported by the Westside Current.

On July 15, Jose Carlos Hoyos-Munoz, 58, died after officers at the Van Nuys Regional Jail used force on him. Department-released security camera footage showed officers piling on top of Hoyos-Munoz and striking him while he was pinned down and in handcuffs, according to the Westside Current. The Los Angeles Times reported he had been uncooperative and spit on officers beforehand.

On July 29, officers fatally shot Alejandro Garcia, 33, under the 10 Freeway overpass on Normandie Avenue. Garcia was walking through traffic holding a bat. Body-worn-camera footage showed Garcia holding the bat with both hands and not appearing to swing it at officers, contradicting earlier officer accounts, the Times reported.

In early August, two officers fatally shot Canas Zimran in Boyle Heights after LAPD officials said he approached them with a tree trimmer.

The training gap is central to Bass's concern. She told the Times that patrol officers lack specialized intervention training for mental health crisis calls. SWAT teams and some other units receive that training, but it is not standard across the department.

The review will assess how officers identify people in crisis, including people with disabilities such as autism or deafness and those under the influence of substances. It will also compare incidents that ended in force with calls resolved without it, and examine detention and restraint protocols, procedures for transferring detainees to medical care, and mental health support available to officers after critical incidents.

The directive explicitly excludes open use-of-force investigations from the review's scope.

The directive builds on an October 2025 assessment by City Controller Kenneth Mejia that found LAPD's Mental Evaluation Unit (MEU) was addressing crisis calls with a patrol-first, armed approach and failing to meet certain goals. That assessment examined operations data from 2020 through 2022 and use-of-force incidents from 2021 through 2024.

LAPD officer-involved shootings have dropped to 16 so far in 2026, down from 34 in 2025, according to the Westside Current.

The Police Protective League, which represents LAPD officers, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Westside Current. The hired firm must deliver its recommendations to the mayor's office and the Board of Police Commissioners within six months of its contract date.