Convenience Big Store: League City police seek grant to improve response to mental health calls

League City seeks $200K federal grant to develop mental health police task force.

Have you ever called the police on someone because that seemed like the only option?

Once while visiting a friend in Pasadena, we noticed a man just walking and wandering through his backyard.

When we called out to him, it didn't seem to register, and he seemed disoriented, talking to himself. We decided the only option was to call the police. Not because we wanted him to be taken to jail, but because he seemed – from our perspective – lost.

League City is hoping to create a new police unit designed to respond to mental health-related calls like this, where the person seems to need help rather than an arrest.

According to LCPD Chief Cliff Woitena and Patrol Captain Stephen Antley, these calls take up the department's time and resources.

The department believes the new unit would help solve that issue because the time and resources involved would be accounted for and the training to handle these calls would be specific.

Woitena and Antley told me that all law enforcement agencies have officers who seek out mental health related calls because they have an inherent empathy for people in crisis.

These are the officers most likely to apply for this new task force, they said.

When two officers – a male and female - arrived at my friend's home in Pasadena, they spent more than an hour with the man who been wandering around in a stranger's backyard.

As we watched it play out from a distance the officers seemed to be just talking to him, maybe trying to ease his anxiety. At least that's what it looked like to us.

The officers eventually left with man in the back seat of the police car. I don't know where they took him, but hopefully he got help.

Yvette Orozco, Suburban reporter producer

yvette.orozco@houstonchronicle.com

Education

Books at the Audrey H. Lawson Middle School team center are lined up against the wall Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023 in Houston. The school transformed its media center to a team center. The principal said the students can still check out books from the team center.

Photo by: Yi-Chin Lee, Staff Photographer

Texas school districts ban 625 books from classrooms, libraries in 2022-23 school year.

Texas school districts rank second in U.S. for most books banned.

Openings and Closings

Steam Kaffe is a "coffeehouse for the community," according to its Facebook page. The veteran-owned coffee shop opened in Dickinson in August and serves hot and cold brews and baked treats.

Address: 1837 FM 517 Road E., Dickinson.