Violent mental-health calls in Winnipeg are escalating, police say
Posted February 14, 2024 1:06 pm.
Mental-health calls to Winnipeg police are becoming increasingly violent in nature, the force is decrying.
The Winnipeg Police Service wants more done to ensure the trend does not continue, advocating for ways to deescalate situations before the safety risk happens.
“Our members are seeing an increase of violence out there in regards to a whole bunch of different types of calls, including mental health, including family trouble, checks of wellbeing, meth calls, addiction calls,” Winnipeg police Acting Chief Art Stannard said.
“This seems to be a common thread of either violence or weapons attached to those calls. And that seems to be becoming a common occurrence for our members.”
The WPS says the number of wellbeing checks – violent or not – increased four per cent from 2022 to 2023. Officers attended to 21,000 checks, roughly 58 a day – 16 per cent higher than the five-year average.
Wellbeing calls are the top “citizen-generated call for service” in Winnipeg for the fourth year in a row, the police force says.
“And it’s important to note we don’t often know what the risk to safety is until after we arrive,” said Bonnie Emerson, the WPS superintendent of community engagement.
“Mental health can deeply impact people’s wellbeing. Events are emotionally charged. And our members have limited information when they’re responding.”
Stannard and Emerson held a news conference Wednesday after Winnipeg police say officers fatally shot a 59-year-old man wielding a “large, edged weapon” at his North End home Tuesday morning.
Officers were at the home to transport the man to hospital for a non-voluntary physician examination as mandated by the Mental Health Act of Manitoba (MHA).
The MHA breaks down how police officers can take individuals who have a mental-health issue into custody for involuntary medical examinations. The order is authorized by a Justice and can be obtained by a family member, community worker, a physician, or a psychiatric facility.
“We’re the only ones mandated to do this,” Emerson said. “And we cannot do this alone. Officers are human beings. they are required to make life-and-death decisions in high-stress situations and unknown risk. They do the best they can with the circumstances they’re presented with and the training and equipment they’ve been given.”
Emerson says there were more than 2,000 occurrences coded Mental Health Act in 2023 – roughly six calls a day. Of those, police needed to detain more than 1,100 people.
“We are seeing an increase in year-over-year averages,” she said.
Winnipeg police already have a number of initiatives that collaborate with community partners, such as the Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis (ARCC), a response team made up of an officer and clinician.
Emerson wants more coordination with community actors and other partners “involved in the social safety net” in a preventative way, before situations escalate.
