Police to launch crisis response unit

A crisis response unit pairing Brandon police officers with mental health professionals will hit the streets as early as next month, the city’s police chief told the Sun.

The new initiative came out of the Brandon Police Service’s Downtown Public Safety Strategy engagement summary released last Friday.

The summary highlights the “remarkably consistent” themes of discussion that arose from several consultation meetings, with an emphasis on mental health.

“Everyone just wants a safe and viable downtown. We want downtown to be a welcoming space, receptive to business, so that we can see people shopping and enjoying the spaces down there and just feeling safe. Everyone’s on that same page,” Insp. Dana McCallum said.

The public consultation process consisted of five meetings — two with downtown residents and one meeting each with community partners, business owners and BPS members.

BPS also held three “action sessions” in May, June and August with members from each of those sectors.

BPS has formed a steering committee with representatives from each group. BPS representative McCallum and downtown resident representative Deveryn Ross are the co-chairs of the steering committee.

“That steering committee, we’re going to decide what we can action and what is realistic in terms of implementation,” McCallum said.

One of the proposed actions in the summary that is about to be implemented is establishing “collaborative crisis response units,” which McCallum said she is looking forward to seeing in action.

Each unit will pair a police officer with a psychiatric nurse to help respond to mental health calls.

“I think it’ll be very beneficial to actually have trained professionals dealing with those mental health calls,” McCallum said. “And have the officer there for the safety side of things, but then … have the health worker that has the experience and knows how to guide them to the services they require.”

Brandon police Chief Tyler Bates said the crisis response team will allow for meaningful and empathetic intervention and ensure people who are in “significant distress” are navigated to the resources available in the community.

“Historically, we’ve responded to mental health calls for service alone. Police officers are not mental health professionals or practitioners,” he said.

“Whether we’re dealing with somebody who is a threat to the community, somebody that is in a psychotic episode or otherwise, as much as it becomes a public safety issue, at times, it really is a health issue.”

If these issues aren’t resolved with the proper resources, Bates added, police will deal with the same situations over and over again.

Bates said it’s also important that the community has those resources available, which was a common theme throughout the summary. Multiple groups raised concerns about a lack of resources for people experiencing mental health crises, homelessness and substance abuse.

One of the proposed actions from BPS members was for a dedicated mental health hospital or recovery centre to be built in the city. Brandon’s Mental Health Centre closed in the 1990s.

Co-chair Ross said its closure has had a lasting impact on Brandon. Throughout the summary, over-concentration of social services in the downtown area was brought up several times.

“Other areas of the city need to step up and shoulder their share of the burden as well,” Ross said. “We’re asking a lot of the downtown area and have for a long time. I’ve lived in the core for 55 years … The burden just gets heavier.”

He added that it’s not only an issue of fairness but also capacity.

Ross said it was insightful listening to the other groups’ perspectives on safety downtown, and it’s the first time in more than 50 years that residents have been consulted on this issue.

“It has impacted us directly in terms of our safety, in terms of property values, in terms of quality of life, and yet, no level of government, including city hall, has ever taken the time to talk to us about how their decisions were impacting us. So, I give the chief a ton of credit for doing this … for finally giving us a voice,” Ross said.

Mosaic Engagement compiled the information from the more than 90 participants into one document to create the engagement summary.

The summary outlined four priority areas — communication, augmenting enforcement, resources and infrastructure.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com