Durham police enact mental health plan
Action follows an inquest into officer’s fatal shooting of naked man on Ajax street
Durham regional police intend to establish a standing committee on mental health, in the wake of the 2013 fatal police shooting of Michael MacIsaac in Ajax.
The Durham police services board was provided with an update from the force at its Monday meeting on the response to non-binding jury recommendations stemming from the coroner’s inquest last year into MacIsaac’s death.
The 47-year-old man was shot and killed by Const. Brian Taylor while he was naked on an Ajax street in December 2013. Police said he was advancing with a table leg. MacIsaac’s family believes he was suffering from the effects of an epileptic seizure earlier that day.
His sister, Joanne MacIsaac, told the Star she has difficulty having confidence in the police service’s plan for dealing with individuals in crisis. She also wants to be on the standing committee once it’s set up.
“Without outside pressure, I don’t see anything changing,” she said.
Durham police spokesperson Dave Selby said Deputy Chief Uday Jaswal met with MacIsaac at the Monday board meeting, though MacIsaac said she found him “absolutely noncommittal” as to whether she could be part of the committee.
Selby said the committee would include representatives from the mental-health community, including experts and people who have lived with experiences of mental-health issues, and would advise police on policies and training.
A senior officer will be assigned to the group.
Selby also said a partnership was formed last year with several universities and other agencies “to look at frameworks and ways to improve enhancing education and training methods for police officers.”
According to the police update presented to the board Monday in response to the inquest recommendations, the partnership includes Brock University, Laurier University, Queen’s University, UOIT, members of the Mental Health Commission of Canada and Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences. Durham police mentioned the partnership in its response to several of the 25 recommendations from the inquest jury directed at the police board and police service, which included training officers “in strategies to disarm subjects possessing weapons of opportunity” and emphasizing “the need to create time and space during police interactions with individuals in crisis.”
Selby said Jaswal will be providing the board with a more detailed report on its response to the recommendations, likely at the next board meeting.
The deadline in the MacIsaac case is Feb. 28. A spokesperson for the coroner’s office said Monday that no organization has responded yet.
The other organizations to which the inquest jury made recommendations are the Ontario Police College, the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
Joanne MacIsaac is anxious to see the responses from the other organizations, pointing out that many of the recommendations at the inquest into Michael’s death, which wrapped up last August, had already been made at a number of other inquests into police shooting deaths.
“The continued lack of action is definitely part of the reason that this continues to happen,” she said, referring to fatal police shootings.