in 2019, that triggered community demand to divert mental-health distress calls away from the police to a team of health professionals trained in crisis care. Both Abdi, a Black man, and Ritchie, an Ojibwe man, were suffering from mental-health problems when they died.Now, seven years after Abdi’s death, the City of Ottawa has finally done the right thinga 24-hour mental-health hotline and a mobile crisis response team to serve people in distress. We can all heave a sigh of relief.
“We desperately need alternative mental-health response because in many cases, the person you want to call is not police because behaviour is not necessarily criminal,” Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster said.
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