RNC, health-care system mend broken relationship
RNC Chief Joe Boland says mental-health mobile crisis response team is the right approach
The RNC and the province’s health-care system are well on the way to mending a broken relationship that developed after the RNC was called out more often over the years to deal with people with mentalhealth issues, RNC Chief of Police Joe Boland said Thursday.
Boland, addressing a Rotary Club of St. John’s meeting, said police officers weren’t trained to deal with what, in fact, were not justice-related but healthcare matters.
The chief described an incident about four years ago when parents called 911 for help after their 19-year-old daughter had a meltdown from the stress of university exams, and they couldn’t control her. The RNC was sent to the home. Seeing the uniformed officers, the young woman started throwing things at the officers — injuring one of them — and ended up being forced to the floor, cuffed and arrested.
Boland said the young woman’s mother told the RNC that had she known, she would never have called 911.
“After hearing that story, I said to myself, we have to change this. In the community there was a frustration within policing about health issues being downloaded to a police service and that not being the right response,” Boland said.
“And it really had an impact on us in the community and with people who are in crisis, but it also had an impact on our relationship with health care, and so we are very proud to say we worked hard to get that corrected. And we are now heading down the right road with the Memphis model.”
The Memphis Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, according to the U.s.-based website Pubmed Central, was developed following a fatal shooting in 1988 of a man with a history of mental illness and substance abuse by a Memphis police officer.
A community task force comprised of law enforcement, mental-health and addiction professionals, and mentalhealth advocates developed what has since become an internationally known CIT model.
The primary goals of the model are to increase safety for all involved in encounters with people suffering from mental illnesses, and divert them from the criminal justice system to the health-care system.
Boland said the RNC began pushing the idea 3 1/2 years ago. In a presentation to a House of Assembly all-party committee on health, Boland pleaded the case for a Mental Health Mobile Crisis Response Team based on the Memphis model.
He said Thursday the team should be operational in the St. John’s area early in the new year, and it will follow later in other RNC jurisdictions in the province.
“What that team looks like is there is a health-care professional in an unmarked vehicle with a police officer who will be in plain clothes,” he said. “It is to have safety for everybody involved, for the health-care professional, the person in crisis and their family. The role of the police in this is to not go in and try to figure out what is going on, it’s to go in so that people stay safe. It’s a totally different level of response to that particular need.”
Stress of job
Boland also said the RNC is looking for answers to help deal with the increasing cases of mental-health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among its members.
“It’s not about saving their careers, it’s about trying to save their lives, quite frankly,” Boland said. “It would break your heart to sit and listen to a young officer stand across from you in a room and share an experience of something they saw, something they had to do, that has changed their lives literally forever. And from a policing perspective, from the chief, how do you protect them from that?”
Boland said the RNC has contacted other police forces, the military and other firstresponder organizations to try to find answers, and it’s not an easy task.
“We’ve gone back, we’ve looked at recruiting. Can we identify persons who will be at risk?” he asked.
“What is the training you have to give to that person so you protect them from what they are going to see? What book do you get that can guide an officer that has been to a traffic accident where a child is killed and they have to go to the home and tell the parents that the child is never coming back? What book is out there that can make that family feel any better or accept that news, and how does the officer walk away and close their eyes at night and not replay that over and over and over?”
Pressures on youth
Boland told Rotary members he has his own opinion as to why young people appear to be experiencing more problems with mental-health issues these days.
“I think that a young person coming up now, they have way more pressures in their life. I came from a family of 11, my dad had a minimum-wage job. We did very well as a family coming up through. Sports, for instance, was an opportunity to relax, to get away, to have fun with your friends. Sport now for a lot of children is more pressure than school, is more pressure than anything else that’s in their life,” he said.