Bill Pringle has attempted suicide eight times and police have always been the first to arrive at his home to save his life.
Pringle moved to Saskatoon shortly after, where he said his experiences with police have been mixed depending on if the responding officers appear to be trained in assisting people in crisis. “When I didn’t have difficulty with police, my stays in hospital have always been shorter and recovery more complete,” he said. “Them being responsive to my needs more than the system’s needs made a significant difference.” Police forces are experiencing an unprecedented surge in mental health-related calls, according to statistics HuffPost reviewed from eight services and all 13 RCMP divisions.
Police services in Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Ontario’s Peel Region declined to provide information for this story without HuffPost filing a freedom of information request that can take months to complete.The data provided to HuffPost does not represent all police interactions with people suffering from mental illness, as some incidents may be filed as an assault, weapons complaint, suspicious occurrence, or noise complaint, among other situations.
This should be the law that every police department has this service available 24/7. Easy to find the money within each department.
Maybe we should redirect some funding from the police into a new health crisis response team that specializes in emergency mental health and addictions care. Defund the police to fund health, as it were.
Is that why they’re just shooting them, then?
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