To serve and protect includes the mentally ill

Reasonable people accept that policing is extraordinarily challenging work at the best of times. Police officers are expected to exercise public authority — up to and including the use of deadly force when circumstances demand. They are also expected to show polite respect for the individuals with whom they must deal.

Often these individuals are among the most difficult among us — they include criminal sociopaths, people whose judgment is impaired by mood-altering substances both legal and illegal, people in the grip of serious personality disorders, people with severe mental illnesses, the desperate, the despairing and the distraught. Often police are required to make split second assessments which are then subject to secondguessing in the court of public opinion and media commentary. None of which should deflect our concern for the core issue, which is that too often mentally ill persons who come into conflict with authorities are being slain by our — and their — protectors.

Last week’s report in The Vancouver Sun that the number of persons killed in police shootings in British Columbia has now reached seven — already tied for the highest number in the last 12 years with more than two months yet to run (and we know this largely because this newspaper now keeps its own annual tabulation) — must cause deep concern to all reasonable people. Especially when it is reported that more than half of the 48 people killed since 2004 were experiencing some kind of mental health crisis when fatally shot.

The report occurs just as the CBC airs a documentary, Hold Your Fire, which concludes the number of police shooting fatalities involving mentally ill people is on the increase not just in B.C. but across Canada. Its researchers estimate 40 per cent of police shooting victims across Canada since 2004 were in the grip of some kind of mental crisis or disorder.

By way of comparison, the admittedly uncertain numbers assembled by the documentary’s researchers — Canada does a poor job of keeping accurate statistical records of such events — suggest a mentally ill person in conflict with police is perhaps 10 times more likely to be killed here than in the United Kingdom, which has about twice Canada’s population. British police don’t carry firearms. Guns are reserved for a few highly trained, carefully selected officers. They are deployed only under the direct supervision of a senior officer at the rank of inspector or higher.

Clearly, there is a problem with the way in which our police respond to crises involving individuals who are of unsound mind. It’s estimated one in five Canadians — about 4.5 million people — will experience mental illness at some point in life. Yet more than half won’t seek care from a health professional.

The number is more troubling for young people. Fewer than 20 per cent receive therapeutic intervention. Most pose no risk to the public. Yet considering the CBC documentary reports police in Vancouver had 30,000 interactions with mentally ill persons in 2014 alone, these violent responses by the state’s law enforcement agents to people who are not responsible for their actions should alarm everyone.

These shooting victims are not aliens. They are sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, friends, neighbours, colleagues.

As our reporter Lori Culbert reported last week, 2015’s spike in fatal police shootings of mentally ill people occurs despite 95 per cent of all frontline officers and supervisors in B.C. completing new training on how to defuse situations with mentally distraught people. It seems obvious the training and procedures for apprehending the few mentally ill individuals whose condition has put them and others in harm’s way are not working effectively.

This matter urgently needs revisiting. It demands to be addressed swiftly. Establishing order in the community shouldn’t involve the state killing the most vulnerable among us in growing and record numbers.

2015’s spike in fatal police shootings of mentally ill people occurs despite 95 percent of all front-line officers and supervisors in B.C. completing new training on how to defuse situations with mentally distraught people.