People in Crisis
Chief Danny Smyth
Introduction
Some in the community assume police have insufficient training and have called for reforms to include more mental health training. Yet in Winnipeg, police recruits and in-service members undergo a comprehensive training program involving mental health. The curriculum includes applied suicide intervention skills training, an overview of The Mental Health Act, scenario-based mental health and de-escalation training, recognition and handling of agitated chaotic events, and sessions on communication and de-escalation. Additionally, the program covers bias awareness, trauma-informed approaches, and various e-learning courses on mental health awareness, emotional disturbance, and critical incident stress management.
Despite the hundreds of hours of training, and the thousands of hours of experience officers may gain during their career, things don’t always end well. Sometimes officers are presented with a threat that compels them to make a split-second decision while under stress to protect themselves or to protect others—and sometimes that requires the use of lethal force. Officers, who are human beings, are required to make life and death decisions in high stress situations. They do the best they can with the circumstances they are presented with and the training and equipment they have been given.
It is tragic whenever a police interaction results in a death. No family wants to hear that their loved one died during a police interaction. Conversely, no police officer - or their family - wants to be involved in a lethal force encounter. No one wants that.
In Manitoba, and most provincial jurisdictions in Canada, police interactions that result in death are investigated by independent investigative bodies. Police officers involved in a death are subject to regulations that make clear the obligations of the officers being investigated. This is done to ensure that police officers act reasonably and within the authority of the law. A public report is released when an investigation is concluded. If investigators determine that police officers acted unlawfully they may be charged criminally. Police officers may also be subject to regulatory sanctions, and they can be sued in civil court. There will also be a provincial inquest to examine the circumstances of the death and make recommendations to prevent future events from resulting in death. While the system is imperfect—for one thing this process takes a long time—there are a lot of layers of accountability built into it.
There are also other dynamics that come into play whenever a death involves mental health, especially if the person is from a minority or marginalized community. Inevitably, community voices emerge that are critical of police practices. We find ourselves in this place once again. There is a lot to unpack.
Why Do Police Attend Mental Health Calls?
Many question why police are tasked with any wellbeing checks or other calls for service that involve mental health. Wouldn’t it be better to divert these calls away from police to civilian mental health responders? It’s a fair question, that has more than one answer. First, The Mental Health Act specifically prescribes that police be involved in the process of involuntary examinations. It is the police that are tasked with taking someone into custody for the purpose of taking them for a psychiatric examination. Another reason police are involved is that often it is difficult for 911 operators to categorize what calls are appropriate to divert. One study of such calls for service in Philadelphia found “that some medical or public health activity initially masquerades as crime or other policing work, and some events eventually determined to be police/crime activity can initially appear to be public health related.” (Ratcliffe, 2021).
Many cities in North America see the value of crisis intervention teams working with police but they also recognize the limits of these teams. As Manhattan Institute researcher Charles Lehman noted:
Real-world evidence shows both the effectiveness and limits of crisis intervention teams. Eugene, Oregon, has for over three decades run CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), a nonprofit-administered program that deploys unarmed CITs to deal with crises involving “mental illness, homelessness, and addiction.
But CAHOOTS responders are highly specialized. In 2019, they covered just 17% of Eugene 911 calls, with 75% of those calls being a welfare check, providing transportation to someone (usually homeless or in need), or assisting the police already on the beat. Even in those relatively limited circumstances, CAHOOTS responders still called for backup in roughly one in every 67 calls for service in 2019. (Lehman, 2021)
In 2020, then Mayor Brian Bowman took part in the Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative. The yearlong program was a collaboration between Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Bloomberg Philanthropies to equip mayors and senior city official to tackle complex challenges in their cities. The initial goal of the initiative for Winnipeg was to reduce or divert the number of calls attended by the police, fire, and emergency medical services in Winnipeg. Police and health officials collaborated with academic expertise at Harvard to establish what would become known as the Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis Unit (ARCC). ARCC is essentially a hybrid of the CAHOOTS program that sees crisis clinicians embedded with police officers to respond to calls involving people in crisis but not deemed violent or a threat to themselves or others.
ARCC began as a pilot project in 2021 between the Winnipeg Police and Shared Health’s Crisis Response Centre at Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg, pairing clinicians with plainclothes police officers who are dispatched to non-criminal, non-emergent crisis situations to better support the needs of those experiencing a mental health crisis. Developed in response to an increase in mental health-related police calls, ARCC has since evolved to include support for individuals calling the Crisis Response Centre’s crisis line when a police response may otherwise be required.
During the pilot period, ARCC engaged in 882 police events involving 530 individuals, providing crisis response and/or preventative response to those in need. The pilot program showed promising results and demonstrated that a collaborative multi-agency approach not only works, it can save lives. The pilot program also exposed limitations. Even with a government funding commitment to expand the program, introducing new clinicians into the program has been challenging. There simply aren’t enough clinicians to meet the demand.
Wellbeing calls for service continue to trend upwards compared to previous years, and remained the top citizen-generated event (at over 21,000 calls) for the fourth year in a row. In addition, suicide and Mental Health Act calls are also trending upwards (WPS attended over 6,800), 11% higher than the five-year average. “When you consider the sheer volume of calls received by police that fit into these categories (not to mention the fact that they’re often received in the late-night or early-morning hours), it becomes clear that we simply don’t have the capacity to shift this particular responsibility in total.” (Mangual, 2021) Regardless of the model in which crisis intervention is deployed to these kinds of calls for service, without clinician capacity, this work will continue to fall on police.
Police Policy and Training
One of the fundamental principles of policing is the value and preservation of human life. Yet it is also recognized that police officers are authorized by law to use force—even lethal force—as long as the officer believes on reasonable grounds that the force is necessary to protect against imminent death or grievous bodily harm. All police and law enforcement agencies should develop policy and training practices that focus on de-escalation and the application of force only when necessary. The WPS adheres to this principle.
Our current Use of Force Continuum model was adopted in 2018. The model reflects the decision-making process that officers of the Winnipeg Police Service use when selecting which level of control will be used to de-escalate any given situation.
In Winnipeg, (and most Canadian jurisdictions), there is emphasis on tactical communication, which includes de-escalation. Policies prioritize the use of communication strategies, mental health awareness, and non-physical methods of handling situations. Officers are trained to employ empathy, active listening, and effective communication to de-escalate potentially volatile situations, with a focus on maintaining safety and minimizing the use of force. Key components of training involve practical scenarios, stress management, and the use of innovative tools like SimVoice. By simulating real-life situations, scenario-based training helps improve critical thinking and decision-making skills. Officers learn to analyze situations and make decisions under pressure.
WPS policies include clear guidelines on the use of force, with a graduated response based on the level of threat encountered. Despite increased calls for service and population growth, the Winnipeg Police Service has demonstrated consistent low use of force encounters, which includes the application of force or the presentation of a weapon (e.g. firearm, TASER) by a police member to gain compliance (illustrated in the table below).
Police officers are first responders. Whenever there are safety concerns in the community, or people find themselves in dangerous situations, police officers respond. Collectively there are far more outcomes that end safely—where people are treated with empathy and compassion—and provided with support to help them cope with life’s challenges. Anyone who has donned a police uniform, does so because they want to help the community they serve. Occasionally, however, things don’t end well. An incident can quickly and unexpectedly turn deadly. Officers, who are human beings, are required to make life and death decisions in high stress situations. They do the best they can with the circumstances they are presented with, and the training and equipment they have been given.