Across Canada, training dedicated to mental illness is also sporadic. For new recruits, it ranges from one to 24 hours, according to a 2008 study co-authored by Dr. Cotton. “There are many police officers, who, the only formal training they would have had would have been in the police academy,” she said.
Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews said it’s inevitable response will differ across the province where geography and populations differ. “It’s not going to be the same across Ontario. Having said that, there are certain standards that we need to implement provincewide,” she said.
In British Columbia, a 10-hour training program in crisis intervention and de-escalation will become mandatory for all officers in the province on Jan. 30. It is a result of recommendations made by the public inquiry into the death of Polish émigré Robert Dziekanski, who was tasered five times by RCMP officers at Vancouver Airport and died in 2007.
And the city of Hamilton and York Region have adopted a training model that was developed in Memphis, Tenn., that gives front-line officers an extra 40 hours of training in de-escalation and recognizing mental illness.
Michael is a part of that training. On this day, he addresses the crowd of plain-clothes police officers with confidence, his bipolar and borderline personality disorder under control. They hang off his every word. Until this point, they’d heard presentations and talked about how to react in certain situations, but when Michael took centre stage, it allowed them to put a face to the people they’re responding to.
“You have the opportunity to be the first person on the scene of a crisis,” he told the class, “and you can make all the difference.”
With reports from Josh Wingrove in Edmonton and Sunny Dhillon in Vancouver
