Volume of mental health calls to police in Halifax shows alternatives needed: professor

New data raises questions about what role, if any, police in Halifax should have in responding to mental health calls, says a Dalhousie law professor.

Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP's Halifax detachment released reports this week to the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners on the number of calls officers are responding to related to mental health. 

The data shows Halifax Regional Police officers respond to 2,000-2,500 of these types of calls every year. Meanwhile, Halifax RCMP saw a 22 per cent increase in wellness checks from 2021 and 2022.

"Should the police be responding to mental health calls at all?" said Archie Kaiser, who teaches a course at Dalhousie University that looks at the criminalization of people with mental health issues. "Probably not, and the reason is that these are not policing problems," he said.

Kaiser said police have become responsible for these calls only because there aren't adequate alternatives.

"It's an issue more of public health and discrimination and failure to deliver equitable mental health care and community support for people in crisis," he said.

'Significant impact' on police resources

The numbers alone don't show the full effect mental health calls are having on Halifax RCMP resources, the police commissioners report says.

"It's a significant impact," said Jeff Christie, the officer in charge of the detachment.

Christie said RCMP receive three to four mental health calls every day in the Halifax area. He said officers spend a lot of their time in hospitals after transporting someone experiencing a mental health event.

Nova Scotia's Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Act requires police officers to remain at the facility and keep the person in their custody until the medical examination is complete.

Halifax Regional Police declined to be interviewed for this story.

Chief Don MacLean said at this week's Halifax Board of Police Commissioners meeting that his officers also spend an "inordinate amount of time" at a hospital due to mental health calls.

"We were kind of hoping that there were going to be some changes in the [legislation] to kind of mitigate that," MacLean told the board.

The Board of Police Commissioners did hear at this week's meeting Halifax Regional Municipality staff will be reviewing more than 150 different civilian-based mental health response models used in different jurisdictions.

Christie wouldn't say if he thinks his officers shouldn't be responding to every mental health call, but he did say it's important to explore options.

"Clearly, mental health clinicians, people and experts in this area are obviously the preferred mechanism, but at the current time, it's important we continue to support people for safety," he said in an interview.

Not the best option

Kaiser said police departments in Canada and around the world are acknowledging they aren't the best option to help people who need mental health care.

The City of Toronto launched an initiative last year that now sends mental health experts instead of police to calls in parts of the downtown core involving people in crisis.

The partnership between the city and community services is the result of the police department realizing something had to change, and working with the public, Kaiser said.

In England, the commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police simply declared earlier this year that officers will no longer respond to mental health calls.

"The Metropolitan Police in London say, 'We are collectively failing patients by sending police officers and not medical and social service professionals,'" Kaiser said.

He said it's a good thing police in Halifax are sharing data around mental health calls, but the solution doesn't begin with them.