HALIFAX, N.S. — Commissioner Harry Critchley is ready to make a move in how mental health calls are handled in HRM.
Many residents have told the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners that they or someone they know have been harmed by a police response to a mental health call.
At Wednesday night’s board meeting, Critchley was on the agenda to bring forward a motion that the board write to the provincial ministers of justice and health to draft regulations for the Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Act to allow “someone other than a peace officer to remain at the place of a medical examination and retain custody of a person undergoing a medical examination until such examination is completed.”
According to the law, police officers are required to be there on mental health calls if there is a concern the person will injure themselves or others, until they are released by a doctor.
Critchley is also looking for additional funding from Nova Scotia Health for more clinicians to work on the mental health mobile crisis teams. There are four teams — made up of police officers and mental health professionals — that provide phone and mobile crisis support for people of all ages.
Detaching the police from mental health calls was one of the recommendations from the 2022 Defunding the Police report.
Some commissioners had to leave after three hours and all matters — including Critchley’s motion — were deferred, likely until December.
Acting Halifax Police Chief Don MacLean said that 12 of the 24 new positions he is looking to get funding for in the next budget cycle would be people highly trained to handle mental health calls.
He said he is strongly in favour of transitioning many mental health calls to community health providers.
HRP is also working on a pilot project with the health authority where one police officer can guard more than one person at the hospital, using secure rooms and camera monitoring, freeing up others to take more calls.
Police officers often spend over 12 hours at a time at the hospital, according to the HRP’s budget document presented at the meeting on Wednesday night. And increasingly, HRP is seeing waits of close to 24 hours at a time.
A $98 million HRP budget
HRP is looking for a $98,132,100 operating budget, which is an increase of 6.3 per cent, in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. That includes $1,388,700 for the proposed 24 new positions. Those new positions would cost another $2.9 million in 2025/2026.
MacLean said those positions are needed because HRP’s workload is increasing and the staffing levels are difficult to maintain. And even if they didn’t have to respond to mental health calls at all, MacLean said, these officers would be needed for other tasks like proactive work, which HRP hasn't been able to do because they’ve had to divert officers to the frontline response.
Several officers have resigned or retired recently and another 208 are eligible to retire within seven years and the record-high number of officers on long-term leave has only recently started declining.
The Halifax District RCMP, also citing explosive growth and stretched staffing, are asking for another seven new positions for the new fiscal year in addition to those that were approved last year.
Aligning the work to make change
At council on Tuesday, councillors voted to align the work being done on the Wortley Report, the Defunding the Police report (which several councillors argued needed a new name) and the Mass Casualty Commission’s report along with the HRM’s Public Safety Strategy.
Staff will meet with provincial representatives from the departments of justice and community, as well as community stakeholders to figure out options for how to act on all those reports’ recommendations. Staff will report back to the board on their progress.
