Monterey County looming lawsuit over crisis unit issues

news source. thousands of gallons of water gushed into the ocean after an emergency breach on the san lorenzo river in santa cruz today. it’s part of an effort to prevent flooding on city streets. officials are hoping the breach stops flooding on streets near the river lagoon. water has been seeping into lawns and even basements in that area because of the built up sandbar. crews were digging up the sand to create a channel that runs from the ocean through the river to release the water. *scott collins, assistant city manager’we havent had a lot of rain coming we havent had a lot of pressure pushing out against the sand bar for many years now the sand bar gets bigger and bigger each summer so its becoming a worse issue each summer.”* this was the second breach this year. the city organized a similar breach back in august. a long time monterey county behavioral health employee is threatening to sue the county over what she’s calling mismanagement and unfair treatment. she says she was put on administrative leave after she blew the whistle on some things being done that put the mental illness population at risk… news channel 5’s jake reiner has the story. standup intro: this is devon corpus..for the past 7 years she’s been the county cris supervisor. she started the hostage negotiation team allowing crisis workers to go along with law enforcement to high risk situations. she also revamped cris intervention team training academy for law enforcement to name a few things…today was the first graduation for those officers without her… *trt:1:54 outcue: standard:* 34-38 46-521:12-1:261:32-1:40 nats…26 experienced officers on the central coast…armed with new knowledge..mcmillin “currently i think in salinas we’re about 73 percent of our officers are trained and our goal is to get about 100 percent saturation because we believe the training is that important”dealing with the mentally ill–things can get out of hand quickly, but after 40 hours of training for these officers–it’s about slowing things down.marty hart- monterey pd lt “you give the public what they deserve, right, everybody deserves to be listened to, uh everybody has a voice and you work with it”for devon corpus–she says her voice was silenced…devon corpus “before being placed on leave, i would say i had a dream job. for 7 years i had been the crisis supervisor for the county”after filing a claim at the beginning of this month–the woman who was in charge of this challenging training and crisis department is prepared to sue..devon corpus”i had brought some complaints forward about patient care concerns um some of the mis-management of funds and um, i was put on administrative leave for six months and then asked to come back”but asked to come back in a different role–while the programs she started continue without her.amie miller, dir. of behaviorial health “we’ve never made such a huge investment in our relationship with law enforcement. mobile cris is all new for us, having social workers in every region. being called out with law enforcement to do