Police dealing with mental health scenarios

It’s an issue that takes up a lot of police time, gets a lot of attention, and has spurred a nation-wide public demand for change — how police deal with the mentally ill and emotionally disturbed. For the first time in Canada, a conference in Toronto has gathered together police chiefs, mental health professionals, and those who use mental health services — to try and address that issue.

It’s become the number one, priority issue, for Canadian police chiefs. The conference — jointly sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Commission, and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police — is hoping to build a strategy to deal with the emotionally disturbed.

When Steve Mesic was shot and killed by Hamilton police last year — it brought the issue of police dealings with the mentally ill, into sharp focus. There are no federal statistics on how many people like Mesic have died at the hands of police in Canada — but this room — full of hundreds of delegates, wants to change that.

Jim Chu is both the President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police — and the Chief of the Vancouver Police service: “What gets measured gets worked on. Mental illness is a factor in 21 percent of our calls.”

With over a million calls last year — that represents a staggering amount of police time. But in even the most serious cases — Chu’s service, has an exemplary record: “We apprehended 27-hundred individuals under the MHA and there were no fatal incidents last year.

By comparison — the Hamilton Police Service apprehended nearly two-thousand Mental Health Patients last year — and there were nine fatalities. One — Steve Mesic — by police use of force and eight others by suicide.

Terry Coleman is the former Police Chief of the Moose Jaw police force — and is now a Public Safety Consultant at Athabasca University, specializing in mental health issues: “I don’t want to second guess every incidence that’s gone bad, but police officers — I was one — are not very good at backing off.”

In 2010, Coleman co-authored a study that said 50 percent of police officers believe that dealing with the mentally ill takes up too much of their time. Jim Chu says — that attitude must change: “We’re not able to say anymore than it’s not our job. Rightly or wrongly, it has become our job.”

And Chu says police officers need five things to do that job: “Training. Education. Policy Direction. Supervision, and back up resources.”

And policy direction, says Coleman, begins at the top: “Very much. Very much. The person at the top — and I was at the top of an organization — they set the tone.”

And it’s a tone that this conference wants to set nationwide.