This editorial is written in honour of the victims, families and police officers affected by violent confrontations between persons in crisis and the police.
I have written before on mental health - its debilitating effects on families, the emotional trauma for police officers responding to tragic events, as well as my personal thoughts on the lack of effective strategies for chronic offenders suffering from mental illness and addiction. Mental illness is top of mind for the public, the media and the police because of its consistent presence.
Many have taken aim at the closure of Riverview as the catalyst for the substantial increases in mental health-related calls for service. I caution this narrow explanation because police across Canada, along with many other industrialized
nations, are dealing with the same phenomenon. This is not a Metro Vancouver problem, it is not a British Columbia problem. It is a social problem that transcends socio-economics, national borders and political philosophies. It is far more complicated than a single factor: we consider the use of marijuana and the anecdotal and physical evidence of its links to schizophrenia; we consider lifestyle and social pressures; we consider that people today are more likely to reach out for help when acute crisis hits. When we provision for all of these factors, we realize the magnitude of the problem and the need to think outside the box in creating solutions.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2013 there were nearly 70,000 police officers working across Canada who dealt with over 2.1 million criminal code incidents. This does not include calls for service where no crime has occurred, easily doubling this statistic. Within this vast number of police contacts, there are
times where the police must use force - either for personal or public safety. Violent confrontations between police and mentally ill persons, particularly those that end up fatal, are a rare exception in the millions of calls for service in a year. Regardless, it is unusual that more than a day or two goes by without media coverage of a violent confrontation between the police and a person suffering from a mental health crisis.
Often the media will cover a single incident over a period of time, analyzing every decision, reconstructing a scene and criticizing the actions of police. These reports are often based on unverified anecdotal accounts and bystander opinion. This focus on rare and sensational interactions does not reflect the daily realities of the police work being done in this country.
I believe media scrutiny is necessary. Police accountability in Canada has justifiably high standards. The police carry powers that average citizens do not, and with that
comes greater responsibility. However, there needs to exist a level of critical thinking regarding why and how a situation escalates to the point where police are required.
The fact is police are called when a situation becomes too dangerous for the public, when circumstances become so volatile that people fear for their
safety, yet the vast majority of calls end peacefully.
The rarity of fatal police contacts in no way undermines the tragedy of those outcomes. As police officers, we put on our uniforms every day in an effort to keep our communities safe. A police officer does not commence his or her shift thinking they will seriously injure or kill a person. However, when these conflicts
do occur, the police are trained to deal with these threats with varying levels of force.
According to a report commissioned by the Canadian Mental Health Association, British Columbia, the Justice Institute has some of the best training for municipal police officers in Canada. Officers are trained in conflict resolution, crisis intervention
and de-escalation, verbal judo, non-lethal use of force and to identify various behaviours that may indicate acute mental illness. They are also trained in lethal use of force and they carry guns. They are trained to do everything in their power to defuse dangerous situations, but they must also protect themselves and the lives of innocent bystanders when faced with violent and unpredictable circumstances.
Even with all the training, and continued demands for more, those extremely rare, fatal conflicts do occur. The police are not doctors, nurses or social workers. No policy, procedure or training standard will change the fundamental requirement of the police - the role of last resort when a citizen has reached his or her breaking point and has become violent.
In a perfect world, nobody would die at the hands of police. The reality is our world is far from perfect and the expectation that police can bring every conflict to a peaceful conclusion is, unfortunately, not possible.
Mental illness is not a crime and those that suffer from mental illness are not criminals. More accurately, people with mental illness at times become victims of a flawed public system. Fatal police interactions are completely tragic, but we cannot, by default, place the blame squarely on the shoulders of our Canadian police officers.
