70% of the people shot dead by the police in the last 20 years in Quebec had a known mental health problem, expressed suicidal ideation or made worrying remarks before the event, according to the analysis of the coroner’s files carried out by The duty. Are police officers doomed to transform themselves into social workers? Third and final part of our investigation on this subject.
The number of 911 calls concerning people in crisis has exploded in Quebec. In Laval, these calls have almost doubled over the past five years, to reach 2,000 last year. To the point that the Social Emergency division of the Laval Police Department (SPL) was called in to support the field as part of a pilot project where duos of interveners now have access to police waves to work alongside the police. with people in crisis.
“If you have a mental health problem, you are seven times more likely that the police will have to intervene physically. We started from there to see how we could be more proactive to prevent the escalation of tensions. From January, two Urgence sociale patrol vehicles will be deployed day and night, ”says Martin Métivier, head of the Social Emergency division of the SPL.
“Depending on the level of danger, we try to mobilize the person, to support him towards services. The goal is to take the isolated person home, without services, and bring them back to the health network, ”explains Mr. Métivier.
The results of the initiative speak for themselves: the number of suicidal people entrusted to organizations has increased by 40%. And thanks to the suicide risk assessment carried out by teams during interventions, the number of transports to hospital has fallen by 95%.
The social emergency patrollers are the only workers to have direct access to the police waves. “You can also chat with the police. In some cases, we already have a file about the person involved and we can provide relevant information to the police before our arrival, ”explains Valérie Beaudry, a social emergency worker since 2013.
For safety reasons, patrollers must always be accompanied by a police duo when they go to the scene of an intervention.
“You have to be in a situation where you can establish a minimum of communication. There are situations where we intervene, but where we are forced to back down because the person is too disorganized and that requires police intervention, ”explains Martin Métivier.
The social worker by training hopes that the approach of his patrollers will rub off on the way police officers communicate with people in crisis. But he does not consider it realistic to ask them to transform themselves into social workers.
RIC training for all?
Two years after the death of Alain Magloire, a homeless man suffering from mental health problems shot dead by police officers in 2014, coroner Luc Malouin insisted in his recommendations on the need to “increase the number of police officers trained in response in crisis intervention (RIC) in order to achieve a ratio of one police officer trained in RIC per car patrol ”.
Introduced by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) in 2013, this 40-hour training course teaches patrollers to gain time to find a peaceful outcome and avoid the risk of injuries related to the use of force with people in crisis. To date, only 17.5% of the SPVM staff have taken this training, on a voluntary basis, and no upgrading is planned in the years to come. However, in Montreal, the police must respond to more than a hundred calls every day related to mental health problems.
Since 2015, the Longueuil Agglomeration Police Service (SPAL) has also encouraged its patrollers to take RIC training. Marie-Christine Beaudin is one of 44 SPAL agents to have received this training. The police force has 286 patrollers.
“The role of the RIC agent is really to establish communication to try to de-escalate and then get the person to cooperate. What I say to my colleagues is that, if they think they need a Taser during an intervention, then they should also need an RIC agent, ”explains Mme Beaudin.
The RIC patroller admits that, during her interventions, she unfortunately does not always have access to the mental health history of people in crisis, unlike mixed teams in the field made up of a police-social worker duo. This is the case of the Psychosocial Emergency Support Team (ESUP) at the SPVM and the Mobile Psychosocial Interventions Team (EMIP) in Sherbrooke, to name a few. Coroner Luc Malouin had also recommended in 2016 to “increase the number of mixed support teams for psychosocial emergencies throughout the territory. [montréalais] and in all shifts ”, which still has not been done.
A role called to change?
Étienne Blais, professor at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal, also underlines the importance of reviewing the selection criteria for aspiring police officers.
“We want police officers in good shape [physique]. The reasons why they want to become police officers are far removed from the reality of day to day work, in my opinion. What does a policeman do? When I look at my statistics, I see that from 7 to 31% of calls are about mental health issues. After that, there is traffic, ”recalls the criminologist.
Detective Sergeant Éric Roger, from the EMIP of the Sherbrooke Police Department, observes that new recruits are better equipped in terms of mental health than previous generations of police officers. However, he remains aware that young police officers do not necessarily choose this profession to intervene with people with mental health problems.
“You join the police to arrest people and put an end to offenses. There, the patrollers are asked to team up with a social worker to intervene with people who are disturbed, suicidal, etc. At the beginning, let’s say that the patrollers were not delighted to intervene mainly with these people, ”admits Sergeant Roger.
Moreover, the National Police School of Quebec is training more and more aspiring police officers with other professional backgrounds. Mental health worker, youth center educator, ambulance driver, intellectual disability worker and SPVM civilian employee, the future police officers met by The duty during his time at the ENPQ were used to intervening with people in crisis in their “other life”.
For these people, met in a course where we teach the de-escalation of tensions, it is the helping relationship that motivated them to reorient their careers. “We are a new generation”, also mentions Jimmy Deshommes. The future police officer does not fear the reception of patrollers trained at another time. “We had access to new training. I think it will also be up to us to give the bite to our colleagues by telling them: “I just got out of the police academy, I know what mental health is, so go. ” “