New 911 pilot will triage mental health crisis calls away from Peel police

The teams, which include staff from the Canadian Mental Health Association Peel Dufferin, Punjabi Community Health Services and Roots Community Services, will now be tasked with de-escalating crises and referring individuals to necessary supports.

“Individuals who call police because they’re experiencing a crisis can now get support from trained crisis workers rather than from police officers,” said David Smith, CEO of the CMHA Peel Dufferin.

The goal is to reduce the stigma and criminalization of mental health, while also freeing police resources and easing the burden on hospital emergency departments, he said.

Baldev Mutta, CEO of Punjabi Community Health Services, said a key part of the design was to make the response model culturally appropriate — an important concern in Peel.

“Police are trained to look at crisis from a legal point-of-view, not a mental health view, so sometimes the outcomes are deadly for the client,” Mutta said.

This project is on top of the three crisis workers now embedded inside the Peel police communication centre to triage calls related to addictions and mental health. It also supplements existing services such as the Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team, which was formed in early 2020 and pairs police officers with crisis workers, and the Crisis Outreach and Support Teams.

The model allows for a tiered response “right from the decision tree at the 911 communications centre,” said Chief Nishan Duraiappah.

Police will still be required in cases involving violence and weapons, but those are the types of situations the crisis dispatcher can now triage, he said.

Duraiappah said officers spent 41,000 hours on mental health calls and responded to roughly 900 opioid overdose calls in 2021.

He added that the pilot allows his officers to hand off “situations that our partners are far better equipped to deal with.”

A recent Peel police report into use-of-force touts that among 6,700 calls for service involving persons in crisis, there were only 48 use-of-force incidents — though the data provided does not cover the severity or nature of the force used.

Peel police have faced particular scrutiny after a series of high-profile police killings of racialized people in crisis, including Ejaz Choudry and D’Andre Campbell.

“If we had a program like this in place, that responded to those issues, maybe those people could still be alive,” said Angela Carter, executive director of Roots Community Services.

“We believe we can save lives with a program like this.”