Increased hours for crisis unit might not have prevented fatal New Year's Eve shooting, Winnipeg police say
ARCC program hired 2 more staff in October but still hasn't expanded hours to cover weekends
The fatal shooting of a man by Winnipeg police over the weekend happened at a time when a special unit for people in crisis was off duty.
A shortage of mental health clinicians has delayed plans to increase the operating hours of the alternative response to citizens in crisis (ARCC) program to include weekends.
Police now say they're almost ready to expand the program, but even if the service had been available, it might not have prevented the deadly New Year's Eve shooting.
The ARCC program matches plainclothes police officers with mental health workers.
Its purpose is to de-escalate situations and avoid potentially deadly confrontations with police.
"It's a more sensitive and humane way of responding to people who are thought to be or are having a mental health crisis," said Chris Summerville, CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada.
Currently the program only operates between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., Monday to Friday.
In June, the Manitoba government announced $400,000 to make the program permanent, and expand it from five days a week to seven.
In September, Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth said the service was having trouble finding enough clinicians to staff the extra hours.
At the Dec. 8 Winnipeg Police Board meeting, Smyth said the program would expand its coverage soon.
"I know there's another pool of employees that have been brought on by Shared Health, so as they work their way through their process, I expect that they'll begin to integrate with us so that we get up to that seven-day coverage," Smyth told reporters after the meeting.
Summerville says the service needs to be available whenever people are in crisis.
"You can't schedule around when people may be having a mental illness."
The ARCC program hired two additional staff in October to support seven-day coverage, a Shared Health spokesperson wrote in an email.
However, the spokesperson noted that the unit only responds to "non-criminal, non-emergent" crisis situations.
Winnipeg police shot and killed Afolabi Stephen Opaso after responding to a call about a man acting erratically and who was possibly armed, with other people in an apartment.
The call came in shortly before 2:30 p.m. Sunday, when the ARCC program was not on duty.
A police spokesperson told CBC News it is only after officers confirm a situation is safe that alternative supports can be called in.
Therefore, the situation would not have met the criteria for ARCC deployment, police spokesperson Const. Dani McKinnon wrote in an email.
There are currently five officers assigned to the unit.
Winnipeg police Insp. Eric Luke says the ARCC program has been approved to expand to seven days a week, but neither police nor Shared Health provided a date for when that would happen.