Front Burner - Should police be on mental health calls?

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Ejaz Choudry. D’Andre Campbell. Rodney Levi. In the last few weeks, several Canadians struggling with their mental health have been shot and killed by police after authorities were called. Today on Front Burner, Jennifer Lavoie, a criminology professor who helps train police on how to handle mental health calls, talks to Josh Bloch about why this issue persists, and how it can be stopped.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Josh Bloch. On Saturday night, Ijaz Ahmed Chowdhury was shot and killed by police in his apartment in Mississauga, Ontario. According to family members, he suffered from schizophrenia and was having an episode. Paramedics were called, but because Chowdhury had a knife,

the family says paramedics were called, but because Chowdhury had a knife, the family says paramedics called police. When police officers arrived, family members say they pleaded with police to be allowed to help. If you come in with guns and scissors, he's going to react. He's schizophrenic. So just wait. Escort a family member upstairs.

They went from the back of the balcony with a ladder, and they stood outside. Three of them stood outside. In a video taken by a bystander, three officers are seen kicking open the door and yelling into the residence. A series of gunshots can be heard before all of them are even in the apartment. Ijaz Ahmed Chowdhury was 62 years old. He was married and had four children. The youngest is seven years old.

This is just one of several deadly police interventions in recent weeks involving people who struggle with their mental health. Police were called when Korchinski-Paquet became distressed. DeAndre Campbell suffered from schizophrenia. Rodney Levi was shot and killed after RCMPs say they received a call of an unwanted person. There's also renewed attention to these cases because of calls to defund police across North America. Proponents argue that money used to fund police departments should be funneled to support services instead, like mental health workers. Today, we take a closer look at why that I'm here with Jennifer Lavoie. She's a criminology expert who is developing a training program for police

in how they should be interacting with people who live with mental illnesses. Jennifer, hello. Hi, Josh. So I want to spend a moment to talk about what happened at Chowdhury. According to Ontario's Special Investigation Unit, which is now investigating this case, officers used a taser and then fired less lethal rounds before they shot and killed him. Police say they believed Chowdhury had a weapon and was a danger to himself. His family says otherwise.

I swear to God, he was so frail, he could not attack the officer that had all this stuff on him. And I wonder what you make of that degree of force used. What do you think that might point to? It's difficult to make judgments about what happened in this specific case until it's really investigated. Based on what we know about what happened, it sounds like there was a fairly lengthy engagement with the gentleman in his home. He was barricaded there. They had set up communications with him. In this case, because he's barricaded, likely what happened was there was a special tactical force that was deployed there. Sometimes they're called emergency task force and these are officers that are

specially trained in assault strategies. They're often used for example hostage taking situations, terrorist activities and these are the teams that also respond to people who are in mental health crisis where they're barricaded or have weapons. The SIU says police entered when communication with him stopped. The statement says officers used plastic bullets before discharging a firearm multiple times. Chowdhury died at the scene. Unfortunately because it is an SIU investigation I can't get into the specifics at this time but it was weapons that he had access to inside the residence. I think there were also a couple of important challenges in this case, the first being that Mr. Chaudhry was not fluent in English,

and so there was the serious, likely breakdown in communication. And there's also communication issues around speaking with someone who has a serious mental illness. Hashim, first of all, I'm sorry for the loss of your uncle. When we told them that let family intervene, because that is one of the interventions when someone is schizophrenic. Let the daughter de-escalate him. Let the son de-escalate him. Why do you think you as a stranger is going to de-escalate him? No, that's not going to work. And they just pushed us back. They just pushed them back. You're speaking to him in a language that he does not understand.

He's not going to respond to you. He's going to lose a lot of his voice when he's yelling. Well, I want to ask you more about that in a moment. But I am struck by how just in the last few weeks, there have been several deadly encounters with police and people with mental illnesses that have ended up in the news. And I wonder why is it that police officers are responding to so many mental health calls in the first place? There has definitely been a rise in police

responses to people with mental health crisis over the past number of decades. And that coincides with how the government changed the way that mental health services were accessible for people. that mental health services were accessible for people. So during the 50s and 60s, there were closures of large residential institutions. There was the advent of medications that were helpful, but the government promised that there would be community mental health supports, services and treatments that would be available to citizens living in the community. And that didn't come through to the extent that it needed to. So what ends up happening is the police service is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week service.

So to the extent that families can't get access to appropriate mental health services or treatment, they often find that they have to wait until the crisis reaches a breaking point in order to call the police and have access to services. So when people fall through the cracks of the mental health system, it's often the police that are the ones that end up interacting with them. I think that's a very accurate statement. The Canadian Police Association says the movement of recent decades to take people struggling with mental health out of institutions forced police to respond to more calls. It was not something that we were

trained to be involved in to the extent that we've become involved in it. The group says in recent years, there's been improvement in mandatory training and awareness and in de-escalating volatile situations. When you read about cases like Ijaz Ahmed Chowdhury, it's hard not to think about whether the officers involved were equipped to deal with it. Can you tell me about what kind of training do officers receive for mental health calls like these ones? So the bad news is there is no standardized training that officers receive to respond to people in mental health crisis. officers receive to respond to people in mental health crisis. And that's the real shame in what's happening is these calls have been here for a long time. If you look at the Yakubuchi report, which was a report that was written following the Sammy Yateen case.

Toronto Police Constable James Fursillo firing his Glock service revolver nine times at Sammy Yateen armed with a knife on an empty streetcar. for Sillo firing his Glock service revolver nine times at semi-ateam, armed with a knife on an empty streetcar. The premise of the report is the target should be zero deaths. It is clear that the police are part of the mental health system. Preventing deaths includes preventing the crises in the first place, as well as helping police to deal with these crises better. There's been ombudsman reports, there's been numerous inquiries, all talking about the need for a standard in training for police when they are responding to mental health crises. And what

we found, my team and I, I work with researchers from Ryerson University and the University of Victoria, is when we went to the Ontario Police College and we were invited to observe training at different services across the province, we found there was a real diversity in the quality of training that's available. Most of the training that is being offered, and it's haphazard at best, has never been tested empirically to show whether or not the kind of training that officers are doing actually results in better de-escalation or better responses to people in mental health crisis. And why is it so hard to have standardized training? That's an excellent question, Josh. I wonder if it's about priority.

I think it may have taken a moment like this for the public to really stand up and demand improvements in the way that people living with mental illness are being treated. I mean, we could ask the same questions about why after 50 years have there not been improvements in the accessibility of mental health supports and services and treatment in the community. It's all part of the same parcel. Right, well I'm struck by how so many of these deaths at the hands of police actually begin with a call for help. And I'm thinking about, you know, DeAndre Campbell, who lived with schizophrenia. He called the police because he wanted to get to a hospital in Brampton.

The police arrived and found DeAndre in the kitchen holding a knife. After a brief encounter, the officers shocked DeAndre with their tasers. Moments later, one of the officers shot him dead. They shouldn't be going to a house with mental

issues with guns. For what? They're going to a house with mental issue with guns. For what? They're going to fight a war? Regis Kortensie-Paquette, her family wanted to get her to the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in downtown Toronto. Somehow, she ended up going over the balcony and falling to her death. But I asked the police yesterday if they could take my daughter to camp. H and my daughter ended up dead. So I don't understand.

And officers who arrived at Chantelle Moore's home in New Brunswick because they were asked to do a wellness check. Her family want to know why the officer who checked on her shot her and killed her. How can we ever trust any police force? Why should we even answer the door for a wellness check? How in the hell did that happen? And I'm curious to get your take on what's going on here. Like, what is it about the training that police officers currently receive that works against

some of the things that you're talking about in terms of strategies of de-escalation and other perhaps more effective ways of dealing with people who have mental health issues? There's two parts. The first is responding to a check well-being call is we have to remember that officers are going on the information they have received from dispatch. So in a call like that, there may not be a lot of information to go on. The police really need to have the skill set to be able to respond to a variety of different situations. Imagine if someone comes to the door, the officers will engage that person, ask them questions, assess maybe their mental health, take a peek in the home,

that person ask them questions, assess maybe their mental health, take a peek in the home, see if everything looks okay. But you can imagine how that would be different if they were greeted by someone at the door with a knife or a bat and how that interaction would change what the officer would be required to do there. Take a number of steps back and begin to assess for threat, begin to assess for officer safety, public safety, and all of those pieces. So I suggest or tell the story to indicate that there's a real ambiguity in a lot of the work that police do, and they have to be prepared for really any kind of eventuality. And the second part of my response would be around the training that they receive, which is an over-reliance on use of force training. And it's to the detriment of really evolving de-escalation skill sets, communication strategies that are really, really important.

And we know, based on inquiries and the Yacobucci reports, etc., that that's a major criticism of police training today is that there seems to be a lot of focus on the use of force, but not so much focus or value on de-escalation. And particularly, there needs to be more training on de-escalating people who are in mental health crisis when there is elements of threat that are in that scenario. Officers need to be much more adept at being able to negotiate those kinds of situations and find alternatives where possible without using force. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

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system. How much does that need to be taken into account in the training when it comes to talking about crisis intervention? Officers have to keep in mind that when they're responding to members of BIPOC communities, that there are legacies of very negative policing experiences that may have been experienced personally by the person that they're responding to or their families or their communities. And those legacies can't be ignored by police. They have to be addressed. And our training offers strategies to officers in examining their own biases and then interrupt how those biases may affect our behavior.

So thinking about how an officer arrives, all the authority that's invested in that person when they're arriving on scene for a person who is in mental health crisis, and the person, for example, is Indigenous, you can imagine that it would be likely highly escalating for that person to now be faced with a police officer. So it's very important that the officer consider their own presence. Moore was shot and killed by Edmonston police inside her home. According to Lorraine Whitman, the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, fear and distrust is inherent in any encounter an Indigenous person has with the police. And that fear is within, and I can't imagine how this young lady would have felt that hour of the morning and a police officer coming to the door and knocking.

We've been talking about training of police officers, but there's also this question of police culture. I'm thinking about someone like Abdurrahman Abdi who died after this violent altercation with police where, you know, they used batons to hit him over and over again. There was multiple hits to his face with closed fists. Police have been responding to multiple calls from a neighborhood coffee shop that a woman had been sexually assaulted. Video footage that was recorded after the confrontation showed Abdi handcuffed, bloodied, and lying face down on the ground. And eyewitnesses tell a story of police violence. Aside from the most violent forms of bar or hockey fights, I've never seen somebody administer blows like that.

Is there something bigger about police culture that also needs to be addressed here? I would agree that police culture would definitely have to be examined because it is known to be a culture that emphasizes masculinity, toughness, to the extent that that is harming how police go about providing a humanized, compassionate approach. You can see how there may be some conflicts there between what I'm advising, which is a more compassionate approach with people who are living with mental illness or are in crisis or are members of BIPOC communities, for example,

where those kinds of cultural sensitivities and safety is really required in order to do good policing. Sometimes around, again, hyper-masculinity or toughness. In fact, it's a culture where officers themselves often are experiencing mental health challenges of their own, but they don't feel comfortable enough to come forward to say that they're struggling. I guess there's also this question of whether police should be doing this kind of work at all, which is one of the arguments behind defunding police and redirecting that money to support services. Right. I would say that I've always been a proponent of more funding for community mental health services, treatment, etc. But it's also an unlikely scenario to be sending a social worker

into a situation where a person has barricaded themselves into their home with an edged weapon. In that case, I would still argue that there would have to be a specialized team that has the right tools and training in place that can safely resolve that situation. I don't know if it's the emergency task force. I don't know if it's a team of people that are trained in assault tactics, etc. I don't know if that's the right team to be doing that kind of work. And these are, they're rare. I have to emphasize that most

mental health crises, they're not violent. The ones that we're hearing about that result in tragic consequences, those are, they tend to be more complex. There's a weapon involved. It's not a situation I can envision a social worker being a part of. There are questions around, you know, what was the urgency in entering the space? I think the paradigm shift that a lot of services are entering now is around time. Take time. There's no rush. Usually there is no rush in these kinds of situations and they tend to be more successful if time is taken. Why at that moment was there a need to enter the space? Because it caused a chain reaction of events, which was fairly predictable. Why enter at that moment? Because it all you saw i'm sure the video very very quickly

do you think time would have made a difference in the jazz chowdhury's case i i absolutely do think that time would have made based on the information that that i have i don't know why the the communication was cut off so something happened there that that we're not aware of as as the public and um i do know that his family was close by and they were wanting to uh to connect and to reassure well when you see someone attacking you all these cops and then you have a task force breaking through your back door what do you think is going to happen so what do you do you tell me how how you're helping by sending someone with that into the situation? I'm supportive of that because oftentimes people in crisis, they're scared. They've often armed themselves because they're frightened.

They feel threatened. So that's why they often have a knife with them. knife with them and hearing from a loved one may have provided some understanding and some reassurance for him. Not every crisis is possible to prevent, but in those cases, we need to be able to rely on the police service to provide a response that will be safe for everyone that's involved. Jennifer, thank you so much for your insight into this. You're most welcome. Some related news before we go. A Kelowna woman has filed a civil lawsuit against an RCMP officer in B.C.

Mona Wang alleges that she suffered from physical and emotional abuse during a wellness check. A surveillance video shows the officer in question dragging Wang across the floor. You can see the officer stepping on her head and pulling her by her hair. The Mountie claims she used reasonable force in the encounter, and none of the allegations have been proven in court. That's it for today's show. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.