A Windsor councillor would like to see the city look into a pilot project being rolled out in Toronto.
The pilot will see crisis workers respond to non-emergency calls involving people in crisis with a goal of freeing up police for more urgent matters.
Councillor Rino Bortolin says Windsor police officers spent a lot of time attending crisis calls and he'd like to see those resources put to better use.
Bortolin believes this is the biggest issue facing policing today.
"Police calls have been going up and up and up and over the last three years they've skyrocketed. A good chunk of those calls are for non-crime related issues. So what we're doing is we're using police, which is one of our most expensive resources, to address these issues," he says.
Bortolin says a program like this would ensure people are getting the help they need.
"When the police are deployed, they're not actually professionals in that field. So the people that are calling or the person that's on the other end of that call isn't getting the proper help that they need. All the while, at the same time, those police officers are now kept busy sometimes for hours," he says.
Bortolin says this would help reduce response times as well.
"Other people who are saying that they called the police and the police didn't respond or they came hours later, it's because of the large volume of calls that we've had. So police officers are kept busy on these types of calls and then when there are crime related calls, whether it's break and enters or other types of crime, they haven't been able to respond in a timely manner," he adds.
Bortolin says he'll be following the progress of Toronto's pilot project and plans to ask local administration for a report on launching a similar initiative in Windsor.
With files from Patty Handysides