With all due respect to the head of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), Fady Dagher, groups of community organizations are indicating that they do not intend to handle calls made to 911 for mental health issues. It’s not their role, they repeated in an interview at the Duty, arguing that it could even harm their work by risking breaking the bond of trust established with those they help.
The Intersectorial Regrouping of Community Organizations of Montreal (RIOCM) and the Support Network for Single and Homeless People of Montreal (RAPSIM) thus respond to the remarks made last week by the head of the SPVM.
On June 20, Fady Dagher presented the 2022 report of the SPVM’s activities before the Commission de la sécurité publique. He said on that occasion that he had no intention of his police officers becoming social workers. According to him, community groups and partners should ensure the relay and take care of the interventions that follow up on calls to 911 concerning mental health issues, when they do not involve a criminal element.
This made community organizations jump.
First, they were not consulted. Worse, Chief Dagher did not even mention this proposal to them, underlined Marie-Andrée Painchaud, coordinator of the RIOCM.
“We have plenty of bodies for consultation and collaboration. Shouldn’t he tell us first? she asked. This is the second time that he has assigned us additional tasks without telling us about it beforehand, ”she adds, recalling that the first was when he publicly declared that he wanted his police officers to carry out training in the environment. community.
But the crux of the matter is here, she says: community organizations are not emergency responders or psychiatrists.
“It’s not our mission. We work in prevention. We will work upstream. “Our objective is to avoid ending up in a crisis situation that must be the subject of a call to 911, sums up the coordinator of the RIOCM, which has 350 member groups and organizations.
According to her, doing such work could even harm the community environment, by breaking the bond of trust that unites the organizations to the communities they serve. Their members must not feel judged, or that they think that they are being criminalized, which could be the case if we find ourselves with the police when they have to intervene, sometimes in a coercive way. “We are often the last net for vulnerable people,” said Ms.me Warm bread. They must not be dropped. »
Because those who receive help and services from various community organizations in Montreal often feel excluded from society and mistrust the police and the health care system. “We are therefore not going to transform our mission to meet the needs of the SPVM. »
Annie Savage, director of RAPSIM, agrees: “Community action is not a tool of the SPVM, nor of the City of Montreal, nor there to serve the objectives and interests of the business community. We are not here to do at low cost what the public network, or our public authorities, do not wish to do. We are here for the community. »
Not to mention that community organizations are underfunded, argue the two officials. Money is needed for prevention, so that certain situations do not escalate to the point of generating calls to 911, and that is where the money should be invested, pleads Mme Warm bread.
With this, Chief Dagher agrees: we must strengthen the community sector and fund it adequately, with budgets that are sustainable over 10 years, he also said before the Public Security Commission in June. According to him, about 70% of 911 calls are about mental health issues.
At the City, the head of public security on the executive committee, Alain Vaillancourt, recently reported that Montreal was working on a pilot project related to 911 calls. to do. There is no service [communautaire] who can answer a call at 4 a.m. and who can be there quickly, ”he explained on June 20. However, the City has already deployed social workers from the Mobile Mediation and Social Intervention Team (ÉMMIS) in three metropolitan boroughs. Their role is to ensure a presence there and to defuse crisis situations instead of the police.
Mme However, Painchaud finds it interesting that the chief of police is asking questions and questioning the model of intervention with people struggling with mental health problems and is considering an approach other than that of the police department.
If we are contacted upstream, “we could contribute to the emergence of solutions”, added Mme Savage.