Ottawa Police Department vowed to change how they respond to mental health calls amid criticism of a $15 million increase in police budgets.

The city council on Wednesday approved the $402.1 million budget after police argued they needed additional money to hire 25 officers, create a body camera project and strategize for future events.

A small group of protesters turned up to urge the council to vote against the budget. Despite budget approval, some councilors have focused on changing the response to mental health emergency calls, saying there must be a way to route emergency calls to better-trained officers and crisis responders.

Councilor Shawn Menard voted against the police budget, arguing that more money would not help prevent crime. Instead, he proposed a motion to reallocate funds from the budget to improve social services. The application was not accepted.

“We need to reduce the stressors and anxieties in people’s lives that lead to social dysfunction and problem-prone social investment environments,” Menard said. That way more can be done to prevent crime than a bigger police budget.”

Police Chief Eric Stubbs said his department is evaluating the success of a mental health pilot in Toronto and is already beginning to transform the dispatch center to better accommodate people in crisis.

“We’re investing money in our dispatch center to train our dispatchers and we’re onboarding mental health workers into the dispatch center to be the first line of contact with people calling in crisis situations,” said Mr. Stubbs.

In February 2022, a pilot was launched in parts of Toronto to respond to calls to 911 for mental health emergencies. Instead of mobilizing police as first responders to such calls, two-person teams, which may include a harm reduction officer and a nurse or de-escalation expert, are dispatched to the field.

The workers could thus meet the person in crisis to determine what they might need. The intervention teams also came back two days later to meet the person and provide additional support.

As part of this pilot program, teams responded to 400 incidents and rerouted those police calls.

The City of Toronto announced in July 2022 the implementation of two additional community crisis pilot projects in two other parts of the city.

“The Toronto Community Crisis Service pilot program is an opportunity to revolutionize the way we respond to mental health crises and support communities that are often over-watched and under-supported,” said Michael Anhorn, CEO of Toronto Community Crisis Service at the time Canadian Mental Health Association.

Stubbs said he fully agrees with the Ottawa Police Department’s improved response to mental health calls.

Donna Gray, the city’s director general of community and social services, said her team is finding ways to redirect emergency calls to more appropriate emergency services. “We’re working with the chief and members of the governing council, the community, to build another lineage aimed at a mental health response,” Gray said.

———

This story was produced with financial support from the Meta Exchange and The Canadian Press for News.