Police Dealing with Mentally-Ill Persons

A recent item in the Globe & Mail features some continuing discussion of the challenges faced by Canada's police organizations when it comes to dealing with mentally-ill persons:

Police Dealing with the Mentally-Ill

There is a constant barrage of attention paid to police use of force incidents where it appears on the face of things that officers have engaged in excessive force to control a suspect or person of interest. Certainly there is no shortage of instances where police officers have been found to be culpable (and their departments liable in civil and criminal court) for brutality and unecessary use of force. However, one of the most complicated and compelling circumstances involves those individuals who are suffering from some form of mental illness of incapacity. This is an area that the police have been at pains (literally) to distance themselves from through various approaches. One excellent option adopted by many progressive police services involves teaming up with mental health professionals who are trained, skilled and qualified to deal with individuals who demonstrate or display characteristic signs of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or a host of other psychological or mental disorders.

Police officers are not, in the first instance, selected, trained or equipped to deal with this particular category of individual. The qualifications required to competently handle such individuals are of an especially high order and do not result from a cursory awareness program that might be possible for police in-service training programs on other topics, such as, drug recognition, identification of impaired drivers, counterfeit currency recognition, etc. Clearly, the government policy direction which has seen many individuals with mental health challenges placed into group homes and "de-institutionnalized" had led to the reality that police officers must confront people with mental disorders on a more regular basis. The results have been both lethal and unforgiveable from an accountability perspective. No police officer, no police executive and no police service should be put into the position where they need to make split-second decisions regarding individual, public or officer safety when dealing with a person who should be under constant and competent care.

Many "experts" have weighed in on this particular matter and the fact that our public police tend to be true first responders when situations go bad and require intervention is an unfortunate commentary on our capacity to care for individuals who are mentally compromised. Much of the controversy over the use (and mis-use) of the conducted energy weapon (CEW) results from police interactions with persons who exhibit signs of mental disorder. Police are tasked with maintaining public peace, public safety, and public order. We tend to be intolerant of any disruption of those things and we place enormous pressure on police organizations, and individual officers, to ensure that our streets, our public spaces and our communities are not disturbed. Often this is a legitimate expectation. When it comes to the complex circumstances of people with mental disorder, we are not in Kansas anymore and things become complicated and cannot be handled in ways that any police policy or procedure manual could adequately prescribe.

No amount of training will ever prepare today's police officers with the wherewithal to deal with the highly volatile, unpredictable and problematic behaviour of the mentally-ill individuals they may confront in their daily activities. We do need to consider and act upon appropriate ways and means for making this a societal challenge and not a police risk management crisis.