Looking for answers

Program that helps police officers deal with mental health calls needs more funding.

It will take political will, and funding, to help the Niagara Regional Police better manage mental health calls, says the program manager of the St. Catharines branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

“It is absolutely a conversation we need to be having as a community,” said Kelly Falconer of CMHA in an interview Tuesday. “We are all responsible for making sure these programs are funded.”

Falconer said a program that has mental health workers riding with NRP officers in St. Catharines and Thorold could be expanded to other Niagara communities with enough funding.

The program, which was launched in 2015, is entirely funded by the Local Health Integration Network, or LHIN, the provincial government agency responsible for funding local health care.

“We are so grateful and thankful the LHIN is funding this program,” Falconer said. “But it’s not easy to just get more funding. To expand this program would probably mean taking money from someplace else and giving it to us.”

The issue of how police respond to mental health calls was the subject of a recent Special Investigations Unit probe into a 2016 Welland suicide.

The unit, which investigates incidents of injury or death that involve police, found that two NRP officers who responded to a call of a man allegedly saying he was going to drown himself in the Welland canal did everything they were supposed to.

The officers spoke to the man at some length, according to the SIU report, and did not find any indications he was actively suicidal. He seemed in good spirits and in good health. He denied that he wanted to harm himself and the officers drove him home.

The next day, the man’s body was found in the Welland Canal. An autopsy revealed he drowned.

Falconer said it can be difficult for mental health experts to know if a person in those circumstances is set on ending their life.

“If a person really wants to do it and knows how to answer questions to get you to go away, it can be very difficult to determine what their intent really is, even if you have a lot of training,” she said. “It is even more difficult if you are not an expert.”

While police officers do receive training in crisis response and mental health, it is not their primary focus.

“To become a police officer you go through extensive training,” Falconer said. “But (mental health) is just a small part of it.”

While the NRP officers did everything they should have, the incident highlighted the limitations of police being the first, and often only, responders to mental health calls.

Last week, outgoing NRP Chief Jeff McGuire said over a 12-hour period as much as 70 per cent of calls for service involve a mental health issue.

McGuire said police officers are not mental health experts, and the volume of mental health related calls contributes to the ongoing issue of the rising cost of policing in Canada.

In St. Catharines and Thorold, some police officers on patrol are joined by a CMHA worker specifically tasked with assessing and helping people with mental health issues. They are also sometimes available for a consult over the phone.

However, police do not have access to mental health workers 24 hours a day, and they do not patrol along with uniformed officers outside of St. Catharines and Thorold.

Falconer said the LHIN is aware of the issue and aware the program works. No announcements of funding to expand it to the rest of the region have been made.

That said, Falconer said CMHA and the NRP have been working together to improve the skill set of police officers.

She said CMHA is running voluntary mental health response training sessions for local police officers.

Although the training is not mandatory, Falconer said “a significant portion of NRP officers are doing it. They understand why it’s important. They get it.”

If a person really wants to do it and knows how to answer questions to get you to go away, it can be very difficult to determine what their intent really is, even if you have a lot of training. It is even more difficult if you are not an expert.” Kelly Falconer of CMHA