Program aims to prevent crime
Shifts policing focus away from addiction, mental-health issues
Ottawa police are set to begin a program in September aimed at reducing police involvement in mental health and addiction issues and upping their partnerships with community groups to prevent crime.
It’s modelled on the Community Mobilization program in Prince Albert, Sask., which Sgt. Brent Kalinowski says has brought violent crime down 32 per cent since it began in 2011.
In a presentation to nearly 200 municipal leaders at the closing day of this week’s Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa, Kalinowski said the program brings together teachers, addictions experts, social workers, health-care workers, police, mental health advocates, probation officers, First Nations and academic analysts.
“Police are only part of the equation,” he said, noting that involving all these people with various expertise gets closer to the root of the problems that create crime.
He also said it could help to reduce policing costs by taking the burden of dealing with mental-health issues and addictions, for example, off the police plate and getting expert help for those most in need. This creates a “functioning community,” and helps in crime reduction because those people aren’t getting into trouble, he said.
Kalinowski said Prince Albert took the data showing the success of their program to the Saskatchewan government and got more support from Premier Brad Wall. Cashstrapped municipalities in Ontario are already taking note, and an 11-community working group is meeting to create programs here that would address the same issues. Toronto is rolling out a pilot project in Scarborough.
Ottawa police Sgt. Teena Stoddart with the Crime Prevention Section has been in touch with the United Way to help bring community partners to the table as early as September and get the project off the ground “as soon as possible.” She said she expects a lot of heavy lifting in the first year.
“It’s a lot of up-front work — building relationships and getting the structure in place — but, once that’s done, I think you’ll see this project take off very quickly.”
Staff Sgt. Cori Slaughter said the first steps are to educate the force internally and figure out how to adapt the program to Ottawa’s unique challenges.
“This is one of the inherent problems in the policing: we go, we arrest or we lay charges or we hand out tickets — but, that’s not the answer,” she said. “How can we get out to these families in order to address some of the problems they’re having instead of just showing up in crisis mode? ’ Cause that’s what we do: we show up in the middle of the night and we deal with the immediate crisis, but we’re not looking at what’s causing it.”
So, if it’s a mental-health issue, Slaughter said, the idea is to consult a mental-health professional and find the resources needed to solve the problem that is causing the criminal behaviour.
The group’s initial meetings will focus on where the program could be most effective and which neighbourhoods could benefit from a pilot project.
The group will collect data and statistics to prove the efficacy of the project, find what needs work, and lobby for funding from the city and the province.
Both women are excited at the prospect of what they call this “paradigm shift” in policing.
“The reason why we arrest the bad guys is so they don’t have another victim, right? We want to help. We want to make society a better place. And, when you get into policing, you really believe that you’re going to make a difference,” said Stoddart.