One American city is using a unique approach to deal with situations that would usually involve the presence of police without calling in law enforcement.
Denver, Colorado has sent social workers instead of police through their STAR program (Support Team Assisted Response) to over 2000 low risk calls arising from public health and poverty, including trespass, welfare checks, intoxication, and mental health, and never had to call for police back up.
Ward 3 councillor Rino Bortolin joined AM800's The Morning Drive on Friday to discuss, and says we have to move in the direction of having social workers and mental health support workers respond to low risk social calls as they're more social related.
"I think there needs to be some changes in the police act, in the police services act overall, to allow for more of those things to happen technically speaking. So when you call 9-1-1 and they ask you fire, ambulance, if you're experiencing a moment of crisis those can be diverted to the speciality teams," he said.
A partnership between Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and the Windsor Police Service led to the creation of the Windsor Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team (MCRRT), which consists of two dedicated crisis intervention Trained Windsor Police Officers and two dedicated CIT Trained HDGH mental health social workers that make up two units.
The MCRRT responds to dispatched calls to individuals presenting with symptoms of mental illness, substance abuse, behavioural disorders, or people in acute crisis situations within the City of Windsor.
Bortolin says the most interesting thing to him about the Denver information was the lack of police intervention being needed.
"Of the 2,000 calls none of them needed police backup at all. Because that's always the concern when you show up to some of these calls a lot of time you don't know what the nature is and they're very leery to send in a social worker or a mental health support worker without police backup."
Bortolin says we're seeing more and more alternatives like this pop up in North America, and it's something Windsor should continue working towards.
"Because as we know a large number of our call volumes to Windsor Police are not crime related calls, they're actually more things tied to social issues. It's a mistake to use one of our most expensive resources to deal with situations that they weren't really trained for and don't really deal with the situation in the best possible way."
The current Memorandum of Understanding with HDGH for the MCRRT team was done for a pilot project, which means that it will end at some point.
Given that this is not just an issue in Windsor but province wide, Bortolin says we need to see more changes at a systemic level to not only allow for programs like the one in Denver but to promote them because people everywhere are dealing with these kinds of issues.
- with files from AM800's The Morning Drive