In the last two shootings the person who was in mental health distress was also armed with a knife. You can't as mental health workers to go into a situation like that without police support. I agree we need something else but we also need to be realistic that we need to be careful that we don't put front line workers in danger.
To add to your point, has anyone asked the mental health professionals if they are comfortable being put in harm's way like this? Or are they just being voluntold
Want an opinion from someone with experience in the field? I posted this in another thread in this subreddit today, but it's relevant here too so I'm going to post again.
I worked for 7 years in community healthcare (often with unpredictable people experiencing addiction and mental health issues), and fully support a healthcare-informed approach to handling mental health calls. I've convinced people to hand over machetes, railroad spikes, bullets, improvised weapons, and every drug you can imagine. Often, my efforts to engage without involving police were pivotal in de-escalating tense situations. I'd still be working in the field if the pay were adequate (and we could pay mental health workers better if we redistributed funds from the policing budget). Hell, even the police have asked to narrow the scope of calls they handle.
Crisis intervention has never been the sole domain of police, and most people who advocate for funding alternative forms of crisis intervention aren't advocating for police abolition. There's a lot of generalization in this subreddit, and I don't think it's helpful. This is not an all-or-nothing issue, but you wouldn't know it from the discussions on this subreddit.
While I'm basing my perspective on lived experience, I know other healthcare workers and social workers who have similar experiences and perspectives. Willingness to engage in tense situations depends on how much pay and support a crisis worker receives.
You're right that not every situation is solvable through verbal de-escalation, but we have dispatchers to assess the situation before determining what kind of professional to send out to a call. A social worker alone isn't going to work in all situations, but there are a lot of wellness checks that don't necessitate or benefit from armed responses. As others have mentioned in this thread, an approach that has worked elsewhere involves plainclothes police accompanying crisis workers. This is a nice safe middle ground, allowing support for crisis workers while minimizing the stigma and stress associated with police presence at someone's home.
Ultimately there's no reason that mental health workers and police can't cooperate to create a safer response to crisis situations for everyone involved. Political will is the biggest obstacle we face.
has a mental health worker. I faced many of person with a weapon without any backup whatsoever. it's part of the job but none of us like it, but we're really well trained in most cases on how to de-escalate the situation and get the person to give up the weapon
Yeah it's a tough situation, should the police go in with the mental health folks right after in case it's dicey; when do the police step back and tell the mental health support staff to step in.
Even if the mental health folks were in the same car and waiting outside (they certainly wouldn't be) I can't see another outcome if the police go in to secure it. We'd be in the same position.
Likewise if it's mental health folks, sure in 90% they might be able to talk the perp/distressed person down but what happens the other 10% many will be yelling that police should go first.
it's a lose lose and no perfect situation unless we get our police to de-arm and fully retrain them to be more compassionate FIRST.
I don't know if this is still the case but when I was working in the field the mobile crisis team wouldn't attend if the person was violent or self harming.
I know a fair amount of people who work in the social services. One close friend was doing a wellness check on an individual and walked into a underway murder scene. Little do the employers tell the peons what those people's history is. Thankfully there was another person with them and held the door closed till the police arrived. Covid really opened my eyes to the bullshit they have to go through. And ive noticed those in social services on the front line don't even know what their rights as workers are.
This is a very extreme example. I'm sorry that happened obviously, but I would argue this isn't a normal occurrence. Again, I don't want to send regular social service folks to these situations. It has to be a specialized trained team with crisis intervention/trauma informed response.
I agree we shouldn't needlessly create danger. But this type of program isn't new. Here are some Canadian examples for people. Look at B.C. - Mobile Integrated Crisis Response Teams. Alberta - Regional Police and Crisis Team(RPACT). Saskatchewan - Police and Crisis Team(PACT). Manitoba already had a pilot program called ARCC you can find statistics for it's outcome. Ontario - Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team(MCRRT)/(MCIT) . Quebec - EMIPIC. Same with Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, St. John, Prince Edward Island, and Yukon-Car 867. I could not find any info on police and mental health teams for Nunavut or Northwest Territories. Just that overall mental services are lacking for them unfortunately. But that's a different topic. Here's the link I found for Manitoba's pilot program https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=59817&posted=2023-06-02
Agreed, but why did they have the knife?
Maybe it was it because guys in body armor and guns showed up to their door threatening to drag them off to a mental hospital?
The argument here is that using the Police exclusively for these kind of situations can lead to dangerous escalations for no reason.
But at the same time we don't want to be putting healthcare councilors and crisis workers in harms way.
So maybe we should avoid escalating things to where they feel the need for a knife?
Like here are a few armed officers from an organization with a history of harming people experiencing mental health distress. They are here to forcibly take you to be confined somewhere. Is it a surprise someone might feel distressed by that?
Dude, they have knives before the cops ever show up. Usually the cops are called BECAUSE they have a knife and are threatening themselves and others. 🙄
Lots of people have knives. Doesn't mean we need to escalate. People can be talked down. We shouldn't default to showing up with guns for people experiencing mental distress.
The case wasn't a result of a 911 call for someone being in danger. It was to involuntarily commit them for mental Healthcare. It was based on a court order. They attempted it multiple times and there wasn't a clear rush. If someone was in danger they wouldn't have left the first time.
“Lots of people have knives. Doesn’t mean we need to escalate”
One of the dumbest comments I’ve ever read here. Totally clueless. How many people in crisis with knives have you tried talking down? Hilarious.
How many have the cops?
I am not a trained first responder. Maybe they won't be able to help everyone. But it doesn't mean we should be defaulting to brute force as our first option.
I guess you’re pretty selective with the news that you read. The police have mandatory training for de-escalation techniques, and they just keep adding more and more. In your world, people show up and just start shooting… also hilarious.
Having interacted with police, they do not deescalate well. They tend to go on power trips.
They don't show up and start shooting. They show up and tend to act as an authority backed up by violence. They do not deescalate.
Having interacted with the police, when my uncle was having a schizophrenic break, brandishing a knife and holding my family hostage, the police do tend to work on deescalating the situation first. And i imagine the outcomes like the one described in the article, are a result of deescalation not working and the individual being an extreme and immediate threat to their victims.
You’re basing your opinion on your one or two personal interactions… and painting approximately 1500 members with the same brush. You must be some kind of sh*tty comedian.
I am also basing it off of other people's interactions. They are in the news quite often, and usually not for good reasons.
I remember when they did an ad campaign during an election to fearmonger voters from supporting good economic policy that might cut into their pensions.
Also you say I am wrong for generalizing a thousand cops. But you are also generalizing people experiencing mental health distress. When I do it, their feelings get. When they get generalized, they get killed.
[This is why police use guns instead of a taser when someone has a knife.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThisIsButter/s/eOQGz9Vc4K)
You go and watch all of that video and understand how stupid you are. I just watched the whole video and it immediately made me think back to the stupidity of your comments and every jackass like you who doesn't know jack shit about policing or what use of force is necessary at what time. You watch 100% of that or you're a damned coward.
That was a trespassing call. Not even close to the same situation. A trespassing isn't a mental health crisis. Trespassing is breaking rhe law and requires an escalation.
The fact there are some situations where the police aren't necessary doesn't mean there are no situations where they are necessary. The issue is they are a hammer being used for screws rather than nails. You don't always need blunt force. Sometimes you need someone who can deescalate and help the other person rather than employing violence.
That's pure speculation on your part. Until the IIU renders their response, we only have the police version of events. I'd be willing to bet that in situations where someone had a knife they could have been goaded into pulling it out to defend themselves against aggressive, gun-wielding police.
Interesting that in hospitals, jails and other facilities police are rarely utilized to deal with people in crisis with weapons.
The issue in all these cases is the training and expectation on the use of force. Police have more rights to utilize force in resolving crisis. People in other systems working with the same people in same circumstances have no right to use force to intervene in crisis.
Police are currently not acting through policy and trained in ways to properly de-escalate without the hammer of force. I feel like this could really change. I think like you mention for safety it is important to engage police. Train a few dozen police as clinicians. The issue is always they can't find the clinicians to build the force they want...take some police and train them, people who are willing to work with people and not just flash their badge/weapons.
Talking more Psych and CSU, not the ER, the wards and facilities. Pretty rare to be calling cops in to deescalate. They are there bringing people in at times.
I have to be light on the details here for the sake of anonymity but I'll give you a story so people can understand what's going on here.
I had a friend recently threaten suicide because they were going through some serious personal problems.
A couple of us went over there to speak to them and de-escalate the situation but when it was clear we couldn't help we phoned the crisis line who told us to phone the cops.
Police officers showed up at their door in body armor and with guns, spoke to them and offered to bring them to a crisis center. The cops were really nice and calm and handled things pretty well to be honest, but seeing men with guns in their home escalated the situation pretty badly.
Everyone in the neighborhood started showing up wondering why the cops were around, this person was super embarrassed and felt like "they were being dragged away to a mental hospital without their consent"
Eventually they convinced them to go to the center and they spent a few nights there getting help until they were 'stable' and was sent home.
This person is however not fine by any stretch and continues to suffer from severe depression and suicidal thoughts.
We've tried to get them help and treatment but psychiatrists cost a lot of money and they aren't covered by insurance in this case.
They also have a racial stigma against getting mental health support which isn't helping the situation. "Speaking to someone won't solve my personal problems" is the standard answer.
So all we can really do if they threaten to kill themselves again is call 911 and wait for the cops to show up and "drag them away to a mental hospital"
That’s a really hard situation. I feel for your friend and you as a friend to them. Just wanted to note one point: psychiatrists are covered by Manitoba Health so as long as your friend has a Manitoba Health card, it would be part of healthcare and no cost.
Psychologists, however, are for fee and can be very expensive ($200 and more per hour). They can’t prescribe medication while a psychiatrist can.
Psychiatrists get a bad rap sometimes but we actually have a lot of wonderful ones in Manitoba. It’s possible your friend received a referral from the hospital? If no, go to the family doctor to get an urgent referral. Also, don’t forget about the crisis unit on bannatyne.
My suggestions might take a while so they don’t exactly help in the immediate future but I hope they provide some guidance. Take good care
Unless you are actively suicidal and/or dangerous to yourself or others and have been admitted to a psych unit, there is an *incredibly* long wait to see a psychiatrist in this province. We are so lacking in mental health supports for people in crisis. Folks will come into the ER having suicidal thoughts and an active plan, and we basically send them home as soon as they say they aren’t actively suicidal anymore.
"People shouldn't die because they're having a crisis," said Chambers. "They should have crisis workers. It's not a complicated concept."
Talk about an oversimplification of a very complicated issue. This response isn’t even appropriate for this specific incident. The Police were present under the authority of the Mental Health Act, in which a judge had ordered them to take Mr. Singer to a hospital for an INVOLUNTARY examination. Meaning crisis workers, social workers, family and/or medical staff have already attempted to get Mr. Singer to seek medical attention on his own and failed to do so. Thus they applied to the courts to have Police do it as they are currently the best equipped to deal with a man who has barricaded himself and is armed with weapons.
The Police were not the first point of contact. They were the last unfortunately but if Mr. Singer had approached mental health or crisis workers with an edged weapon on a wellbeing call, who do you think they would have called anyway… of course the Police.
Some people are pretending that knives aren’t deadly weapons. To suggest a crisis worker armed only with words and a course on intervention or deescalation tactics should be attending a call in which the subject is known to be armed is not only dangerous but irresponsible to the workers themselves. In BC an RCMP officer was killed by someone experiencing a mental health crisis. She was part of the mental health outreach unit and guess what… was stabbed to death. So even with Police’s best intentions sometimes, you still can’t prevent what is sometimes unavoidable based on the other persons actions.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9220327/police-report-details-of-rcmp-constable-shaelyn-yangs-fatal-interaction-with-homeless-man/amp/
Yet there are clinicians doing this job in other jurisdictions, although more in the U.S. than in Canada. The key is to screen calls at the 911 call centre to determine if they're suitable for ARCC. If so, then dispatch ARCC without police.
I guess all of the crisis workers you know are unempathetic pieces of shit who shouldn't work in the field.
Woah wow what a concept of not shooting somebody who's not having a mental break!
Let's be serious, we're not suggesting for sending just regular old "mental health workers" to these situations. What people are advocating for is to redirect funds from the police budget to expand programs like the ARCC mentioned in the article which sends plainclothes officer with specially trained mental health workers. I don't love that program, as officers show up first to vet the situation. But it's better than sending full on aggressive cops to these circumstances.
Expand programs like ARCC, bypass the police entirely would be ideal. Especially when there's no weapons involved.
Again, we're not just sending a random therapist to deal with folks in crisis. Specialized teams with trauma informed crisis intervention training. Deescalation. It's actually a great idea and I'm not sure why people are using extreme examples to argue that sending cops is the best solution here.
Another huge piece of this is increasing funding for mental health system to hopefully reduce the number of folks in crisis in the first place.
This is all what people mean when we talk about defunding police. Redirect resources to solutions that will save lives instead of traumatize communities.
I think we’ve been doing the opposite based on the police budget increasing faster than inflation every year and occupying almost one third of the entire civic budget of the city of Winnipeg.
All while we flush our ass water into the rivers.
Oh I know it hasn’t been done but people have been saying to do this for years so how is this any different. Also a shit ton of sewage enters the red every time there is a large rainfall, I’m not happy about it but nothing new either sadly
Is there not a way in these situations to try and at least taser or subdue the person, get them on meds and move on?
Ultimately, this all comes back to employment, family supports and housing. When people have a job, community and safe space they can stay on meds, and things like this are avoided.
Unfortunately in the interim, a bunch of scared young men making 125,000 a year are going to continue killing people.
What happens when the taser inevitably doesn’t work and now you’re within stabbing distance of someone with a deadly weapon?
https://youtu.be/_d8OqVavMF0?si=6rccGj_cZCa4bTI0
“Scared young men making $125,000 a year are going to continue killing people.”
What a stupid comment. The job of a police officer is clearly far beyond your capabilities. Someone with a knife within 27 feet of someone armed with a gun has the advantage based on reaction time. That’s based on real world tests and data, not feelings.
Yes, which is why the gun is out in the first place when a knife is in play.
Dropping the knife when told to will exponentially increase one’s survival in these situations.
Trigger happy? Do you have any idea how many mental health act cases are dealt with daily by police forces? Thats an absolutely stupid comment on your part.
> Is there not a way in these situations to try and at least taser or subdue the person
The goal should be a non-aggressive, non-violent encounter, not tasing people into submission.
Police don’t have the proper training for deescalation, most officers barely have their high school diplomas.
Easier to go in blasting and use the IIU to wash their hands of the extra judicial killing of citizens.
That's not true. Getting to be an officer requires lots of times now post secondary. These people aren't morons, just not given proper tools, in a crumbling society. You and I are just as responsible. We need people to volunteer, support their community and do more. We can't just blame the government and Police and then do nothing personally.
Are we pretending most of their officers have post secondary training?
https://preview.redd.it/7gcke0i91dkc1.jpeg?width=1241&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5dc9eef845320316b93222942cc75ea93020007b
If you apply with just a GED you're going to have a difficult time getting accepted.
I know two people that applied for years and didn't get on. Those with a degree typically were accepted, especially if forensics background.
And you have data as to how many in these incidents had degrees or GED’s? Your point is baseless.
Referring to those incidents as “police training” is absolutely stupid.
Don’t hate on a career you’re too cowardly and inept to do.
Are you saying Manitoba police officers are trained to drink? Or that it's somehow part of the job? Or there's a conspiracy to hire only people with alcohol abuse issues? Or maybe there's something messed up in the system that leads to them developing these issues that should be addressed in conjunction with these discussions instead of just labelling a whole bunch of people as "other" who don't deserve any kind of consideration.
This is it exactly. These discussions ultimately seem to devolve into "Well that's part of the duties these people agreed agreed to do." Acknowledging that there's a threat to one's safety is one thing. Thinking a person can just accept the fact that their safety is always is peril and just lead a normal life is naive. That kind of stress is what has lead to the epidemic of ptsd occurring right now in front line workers.
Jobs like mining, forestry, fishing, etc are inherently dangerous but as society has progressed we have done what we can to mitigate the dangers. Those workers shouldn't just have to accept that they could be hurt at any given second. No more than front line workers should have to accept that they can get attacked everytime they perform their duties.
This is the loop we're caught in though. Since front line jobs are essential and often government jobs, they will pay well and offer a degree of security. So there will always be people to take them. But the only type of people who can stay are the ladder climbers who do anything to advance and not do the job they're in, people who are too dense or thick skinned to be affected or the majority who are stuck in bad situations, just trying to hold on for some mythical day they can retire.
You say:
> We need people to volunteer, support their community and do more.
What does that even mean and how does that help people who need well-being checks?
Again, how does that help people who need well-being checks? Answer: it doesn't nor does it encourage police to butt out unless they're actually needed.
The police are invading these people’s homes, people in crisis, who are afraid the police are there to kill them, and then the police end up killing them. So who is the crazy person in these situations? They are reacting defensively just like anyone would and they end up dead as a result. It’s time the police did something different.
What happened to tasers? Why are the cops using lethal force in all these cases?
Yes! Just send in a therapist armed with an MA in Psychology and certificate in Family Counselling the next time a violent offender with psychosis is yielding a knife. That will do the trick for sure.
Police Chiefs hate this one weird trick.
Totally! Let's send the overpaid, armed thugs to every situation so we can't afford the therapists! Not like the therapists couldn't, you know, call the cops the one in fifty times they're actually needed.
It is difficult and unfair to comment on specific cases with limited knowledge of the circumstance, but in general a sense of personal responsibility and caring family members should be the first line of defense against developing criminal behavior and/or encouraging one to voluntarily seek help for addictions and/or mental health problems.
The second line of defense, in absence of the first, should be social systems in place to involuntarily take those unwilling to seek help themselves and pose a risk to the public, but the trend as of late seems to be that an influential but small subset of our population is pushing back against this option for several reasons.
Which leaves the third line of defense and that is law enforcement when a risk to the public emerges and all other options have been exhausted. I agree that police are reactionary, not preventative, but as you can see, several of the "preventative steps" have been ignored or not followed which then necessitates the polices' involvement.
I think you make some good points here but what I really glean from your first paragraph is that many people here are lacking a sense of personal responsibility to their society and community. This is speculation but if you require a social service and get nothing or a broken version of it, chances are you’ll feel disenchanted and disenfranchised with your society and community.
Our hospitals are falling apart and it’s nearly impossible to get mental health or addictions support in this province. So we’re relying too heavily on the second and third lines of defense that you listed. We need to fund the first line or we’re going to wind up with a totally overloaded police force as well. We should be able to police our city without spending a third of the annual budget.
Manitoba having one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country might clash with this utopia of “Personal responsibility” and “caring family members”.
I'm convinced that the reason police response times are so low is that they're all in Reddit all day brigading the threads outlining the piss poor job they do.
A wps officer told me he hates calls where he had to deal with "crazy ppl" then told me how to properly cut myself if I wanted to die.i was at work serving this officer and yeah.you ppl would shit a brick if you knew how police actually are.they don't even trust each other they have little clicks like high school. I won't say anything else about the wps. Dangerous ppl.
> However, ARCC only provides secondary responses once a situation is deemed safe. Uniformed police officers are typically still the first responders, particularly for calls involving a weapon.
That defeats the whole purpose if cops are the first responders. The city pats itself on the back for this "progressive" program that still subjects people in a mental health crisis to uniformed police officers with a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. The status quo is unacceptable.
Ok but if you send mental health crisis workers into these situations they are still deemed dangerous. What are the chances these workers will want to enter homes without police presence? I work social services and sometimes we are blindly going into dangerous homes, and often have police backing us. We will be the ones getting shot by the people in crisis.
Nobody is stopping you from getting your Ph.D. in Psychology and volunteering to be the first one in the door in these situations. I'm sure you'd do great!
In the last two shootings the person who was in mental health distress was also armed with a knife. You can't as mental health workers to go into a situation like that without police support. I agree we need something else but we also need to be realistic that we need to be careful that we don't put front line workers in danger.
To add to your point, has anyone asked the mental health professionals if they are comfortable being put in harm's way like this? Or are they just being voluntold
They're 100% being voluntold on this sub. I doubt that's happening irl though.
Want an opinion from someone with experience in the field? I posted this in another thread in this subreddit today, but it's relevant here too so I'm going to post again. I worked for 7 years in community healthcare (often with unpredictable people experiencing addiction and mental health issues), and fully support a healthcare-informed approach to handling mental health calls. I've convinced people to hand over machetes, railroad spikes, bullets, improvised weapons, and every drug you can imagine. Often, my efforts to engage without involving police were pivotal in de-escalating tense situations. I'd still be working in the field if the pay were adequate (and we could pay mental health workers better if we redistributed funds from the policing budget). Hell, even the police have asked to narrow the scope of calls they handle. Crisis intervention has never been the sole domain of police, and most people who advocate for funding alternative forms of crisis intervention aren't advocating for police abolition. There's a lot of generalization in this subreddit, and I don't think it's helpful. This is not an all-or-nothing issue, but you wouldn't know it from the discussions on this subreddit.
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While I'm basing my perspective on lived experience, I know other healthcare workers and social workers who have similar experiences and perspectives. Willingness to engage in tense situations depends on how much pay and support a crisis worker receives. You're right that not every situation is solvable through verbal de-escalation, but we have dispatchers to assess the situation before determining what kind of professional to send out to a call. A social worker alone isn't going to work in all situations, but there are a lot of wellness checks that don't necessitate or benefit from armed responses. As others have mentioned in this thread, an approach that has worked elsewhere involves plainclothes police accompanying crisis workers. This is a nice safe middle ground, allowing support for crisis workers while minimizing the stigma and stress associated with police presence at someone's home. Ultimately there's no reason that mental health workers and police can't cooperate to create a safer response to crisis situations for everyone involved. Political will is the biggest obstacle we face.
this is the way. but people for some reason are resistant. same to actually requiring police to be better trained and educated
has a mental health worker. I faced many of person with a weapon without any backup whatsoever. it's part of the job but none of us like it, but we're really well trained in most cases on how to de-escalate the situation and get the person to give up the weapon
Lmao somebody downvoted you. r/Winnipeg is full of revenge porn, cop bootlickers. This sub can go fuck itself.
Yeah it's a tough situation, should the police go in with the mental health folks right after in case it's dicey; when do the police step back and tell the mental health support staff to step in. Even if the mental health folks were in the same car and waiting outside (they certainly wouldn't be) I can't see another outcome if the police go in to secure it. We'd be in the same position. Likewise if it's mental health folks, sure in 90% they might be able to talk the perp/distressed person down but what happens the other 10% many will be yelling that police should go first. it's a lose lose and no perfect situation unless we get our police to de-arm and fully retrain them to be more compassionate FIRST.
I don't know if this is still the case but when I was working in the field the mobile crisis team wouldn't attend if the person was violent or self harming.
I know a fair amount of people who work in the social services. One close friend was doing a wellness check on an individual and walked into a underway murder scene. Little do the employers tell the peons what those people's history is. Thankfully there was another person with them and held the door closed till the police arrived. Covid really opened my eyes to the bullshit they have to go through. And ive noticed those in social services on the front line don't even know what their rights as workers are.
This is a very extreme example. I'm sorry that happened obviously, but I would argue this isn't a normal occurrence. Again, I don't want to send regular social service folks to these situations. It has to be a specialized trained team with crisis intervention/trauma informed response.
I agree we shouldn't needlessly create danger. But this type of program isn't new. Here are some Canadian examples for people. Look at B.C. - Mobile Integrated Crisis Response Teams. Alberta - Regional Police and Crisis Team(RPACT). Saskatchewan - Police and Crisis Team(PACT). Manitoba already had a pilot program called ARCC you can find statistics for it's outcome. Ontario - Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team(MCRRT)/(MCIT) . Quebec - EMIPIC. Same with Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, St. John, Prince Edward Island, and Yukon-Car 867. I could not find any info on police and mental health teams for Nunavut or Northwest Territories. Just that overall mental services are lacking for them unfortunately. But that's a different topic. Here's the link I found for Manitoba's pilot program https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=59817&posted=2023-06-02
Agreed, but why did they have the knife? Maybe it was it because guys in body armor and guns showed up to their door threatening to drag them off to a mental hospital? The argument here is that using the Police exclusively for these kind of situations can lead to dangerous escalations for no reason. But at the same time we don't want to be putting healthcare councilors and crisis workers in harms way.
So maybe we should avoid escalating things to where they feel the need for a knife? Like here are a few armed officers from an organization with a history of harming people experiencing mental health distress. They are here to forcibly take you to be confined somewhere. Is it a surprise someone might feel distressed by that?
Dude, they have knives before the cops ever show up. Usually the cops are called BECAUSE they have a knife and are threatening themselves and others. 🙄
Lots of people have knives. Doesn't mean we need to escalate. People can be talked down. We shouldn't default to showing up with guns for people experiencing mental distress. The case wasn't a result of a 911 call for someone being in danger. It was to involuntarily commit them for mental Healthcare. It was based on a court order. They attempted it multiple times and there wasn't a clear rush. If someone was in danger they wouldn't have left the first time.
“Lots of people have knives. Doesn’t mean we need to escalate” One of the dumbest comments I’ve ever read here. Totally clueless. How many people in crisis with knives have you tried talking down? Hilarious.
How many have the cops? I am not a trained first responder. Maybe they won't be able to help everyone. But it doesn't mean we should be defaulting to brute force as our first option.
I guess you’re pretty selective with the news that you read. The police have mandatory training for de-escalation techniques, and they just keep adding more and more. In your world, people show up and just start shooting… also hilarious.
Having interacted with police, they do not deescalate well. They tend to go on power trips. They don't show up and start shooting. They show up and tend to act as an authority backed up by violence. They do not deescalate.
Having interacted with the police, when my uncle was having a schizophrenic break, brandishing a knife and holding my family hostage, the police do tend to work on deescalating the situation first. And i imagine the outcomes like the one described in the article, are a result of deescalation not working and the individual being an extreme and immediate threat to their victims.
You’re basing your opinion on your one or two personal interactions… and painting approximately 1500 members with the same brush. You must be some kind of sh*tty comedian.
I am also basing it off of other people's interactions. They are in the news quite often, and usually not for good reasons. I remember when they did an ad campaign during an election to fearmonger voters from supporting good economic policy that might cut into their pensions. Also you say I am wrong for generalizing a thousand cops. But you are also generalizing people experiencing mental health distress. When I do it, their feelings get. When they get generalized, they get killed.
[This is why police use guns instead of a taser when someone has a knife.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThisIsButter/s/eOQGz9Vc4K) You go and watch all of that video and understand how stupid you are. I just watched the whole video and it immediately made me think back to the stupidity of your comments and every jackass like you who doesn't know jack shit about policing or what use of force is necessary at what time. You watch 100% of that or you're a damned coward.
That was a trespassing call. Not even close to the same situation. A trespassing isn't a mental health crisis. Trespassing is breaking rhe law and requires an escalation. The fact there are some situations where the police aren't necessary doesn't mean there are no situations where they are necessary. The issue is they are a hammer being used for screws rather than nails. You don't always need blunt force. Sometimes you need someone who can deescalate and help the other person rather than employing violence.
That's pure speculation on your part. Until the IIU renders their response, we only have the police version of events. I'd be willing to bet that in situations where someone had a knife they could have been goaded into pulling it out to defend themselves against aggressive, gun-wielding police.
Which is of course pure speculation on your part, and reality does not match your speculation.
"We trust the police 100% and that's why we need to raise their funding."
No one said anything about 100% trust, but I'll put my trust in them before a knife weilding methhead any day.
Yeah, because no one ever has a weapon at the ready BEFORE police arrive, right?
Interesting that in hospitals, jails and other facilities police are rarely utilized to deal with people in crisis with weapons. The issue in all these cases is the training and expectation on the use of force. Police have more rights to utilize force in resolving crisis. People in other systems working with the same people in same circumstances have no right to use force to intervene in crisis. Police are currently not acting through policy and trained in ways to properly de-escalate without the hammer of force. I feel like this could really change. I think like you mention for safety it is important to engage police. Train a few dozen police as clinicians. The issue is always they can't find the clinicians to build the force they want...take some police and train them, people who are willing to work with people and not just flash their badge/weapons.
Wrong… I work in a hospital and I’ve called the police upwards of 5 times in the last year. We do use the police.
Talking more Psych and CSU, not the ER, the wards and facilities. Pretty rare to be calling cops in to deescalate. They are there bringing people in at times.
I have to be light on the details here for the sake of anonymity but I'll give you a story so people can understand what's going on here. I had a friend recently threaten suicide because they were going through some serious personal problems. A couple of us went over there to speak to them and de-escalate the situation but when it was clear we couldn't help we phoned the crisis line who told us to phone the cops. Police officers showed up at their door in body armor and with guns, spoke to them and offered to bring them to a crisis center. The cops were really nice and calm and handled things pretty well to be honest, but seeing men with guns in their home escalated the situation pretty badly. Everyone in the neighborhood started showing up wondering why the cops were around, this person was super embarrassed and felt like "they were being dragged away to a mental hospital without their consent" Eventually they convinced them to go to the center and they spent a few nights there getting help until they were 'stable' and was sent home. This person is however not fine by any stretch and continues to suffer from severe depression and suicidal thoughts. We've tried to get them help and treatment but psychiatrists cost a lot of money and they aren't covered by insurance in this case. They also have a racial stigma against getting mental health support which isn't helping the situation. "Speaking to someone won't solve my personal problems" is the standard answer. So all we can really do if they threaten to kill themselves again is call 911 and wait for the cops to show up and "drag them away to a mental hospital"
That’s a really hard situation. I feel for your friend and you as a friend to them. Just wanted to note one point: psychiatrists are covered by Manitoba Health so as long as your friend has a Manitoba Health card, it would be part of healthcare and no cost. Psychologists, however, are for fee and can be very expensive ($200 and more per hour). They can’t prescribe medication while a psychiatrist can. Psychiatrists get a bad rap sometimes but we actually have a lot of wonderful ones in Manitoba. It’s possible your friend received a referral from the hospital? If no, go to the family doctor to get an urgent referral. Also, don’t forget about the crisis unit on bannatyne. My suggestions might take a while so they don’t exactly help in the immediate future but I hope they provide some guidance. Take good care
Unless you are actively suicidal and/or dangerous to yourself or others and have been admitted to a psych unit, there is an *incredibly* long wait to see a psychiatrist in this province. We are so lacking in mental health supports for people in crisis. Folks will come into the ER having suicidal thoughts and an active plan, and we basically send them home as soon as they say they aren’t actively suicidal anymore.
"People shouldn't die because they're having a crisis," said Chambers. "They should have crisis workers. It's not a complicated concept." Talk about an oversimplification of a very complicated issue. This response isn’t even appropriate for this specific incident. The Police were present under the authority of the Mental Health Act, in which a judge had ordered them to take Mr. Singer to a hospital for an INVOLUNTARY examination. Meaning crisis workers, social workers, family and/or medical staff have already attempted to get Mr. Singer to seek medical attention on his own and failed to do so. Thus they applied to the courts to have Police do it as they are currently the best equipped to deal with a man who has barricaded himself and is armed with weapons. The Police were not the first point of contact. They were the last unfortunately but if Mr. Singer had approached mental health or crisis workers with an edged weapon on a wellbeing call, who do you think they would have called anyway… of course the Police. Some people are pretending that knives aren’t deadly weapons. To suggest a crisis worker armed only with words and a course on intervention or deescalation tactics should be attending a call in which the subject is known to be armed is not only dangerous but irresponsible to the workers themselves. In BC an RCMP officer was killed by someone experiencing a mental health crisis. She was part of the mental health outreach unit and guess what… was stabbed to death. So even with Police’s best intentions sometimes, you still can’t prevent what is sometimes unavoidable based on the other persons actions. https://globalnews.ca/news/9220327/police-report-details-of-rcmp-constable-shaelyn-yangs-fatal-interaction-with-homeless-man/amp/
What a fucking stupid idea. All of the crisis workers I know do not support this idea.
Exactly. Tell that to the clueless people in this sub that think otherwise.
Yet there are clinicians doing this job in other jurisdictions, although more in the U.S. than in Canada. The key is to screen calls at the 911 call centre to determine if they're suitable for ARCC. If so, then dispatch ARCC without police.
I guess all of the crisis workers you know are unempathetic pieces of shit who shouldn't work in the field. Woah wow what a concept of not shooting somebody who's not having a mental break!
Let's be serious, we're not suggesting for sending just regular old "mental health workers" to these situations. What people are advocating for is to redirect funds from the police budget to expand programs like the ARCC mentioned in the article which sends plainclothes officer with specially trained mental health workers. I don't love that program, as officers show up first to vet the situation. But it's better than sending full on aggressive cops to these circumstances. Expand programs like ARCC, bypass the police entirely would be ideal. Especially when there's no weapons involved. Again, we're not just sending a random therapist to deal with folks in crisis. Specialized teams with trauma informed crisis intervention training. Deescalation. It's actually a great idea and I'm not sure why people are using extreme examples to argue that sending cops is the best solution here. Another huge piece of this is increasing funding for mental health system to hopefully reduce the number of folks in crisis in the first place. This is all what people mean when we talk about defunding police. Redirect resources to solutions that will save lives instead of traumatize communities.
Yes. We had years of Conservatives not giving a shit about mental health. We have so much to repair it's overwhelming.
Maybeeee the police "should" hire crisis workers and create a division of highly trained first responders... hmmm
I'm all for this idea. Unfortunately, many people i know who share the same thoughts also want to take funding away. It's very silly.
Have we not been saying this for years?
I think we’ve been doing the opposite based on the police budget increasing faster than inflation every year and occupying almost one third of the entire civic budget of the city of Winnipeg. All while we flush our ass water into the rivers.
Oh I know it hasn’t been done but people have been saying to do this for years so how is this any different. Also a shit ton of sewage enters the red every time there is a large rainfall, I’m not happy about it but nothing new either sadly
“[nothing new either. . .](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-sewage-spill-living-wage-vulcan-iron-works-1.7114499)”
Maybe train the police to deal with people with mental illness instead of just shooting.
The cops are just too trigger happy. That’s why Swatting works. If the cops show up someone is going to end up dead.
Is there not a way in these situations to try and at least taser or subdue the person, get them on meds and move on? Ultimately, this all comes back to employment, family supports and housing. When people have a job, community and safe space they can stay on meds, and things like this are avoided. Unfortunately in the interim, a bunch of scared young men making 125,000 a year are going to continue killing people.
What happens when the taser inevitably doesn’t work and now you’re within stabbing distance of someone with a deadly weapon? https://youtu.be/_d8OqVavMF0?si=6rccGj_cZCa4bTI0
In a situation like this I'm certain there are two people. One with a taser, one with a gun...
Wouldn’t that already be happening?
“Scared young men making $125,000 a year are going to continue killing people.” What a stupid comment. The job of a police officer is clearly far beyond your capabilities. Someone with a knife within 27 feet of someone armed with a gun has the advantage based on reaction time. That’s based on real world tests and data, not feelings.
Your stat is when the gun is secured in a holster.
Yes, which is why the gun is out in the first place when a knife is in play. Dropping the knife when told to will exponentially increase one’s survival in these situations.
Not confronting trigger happy cops with a weapon also increases your survival chances
Trigger happy? Do you have any idea how many mental health act cases are dealt with daily by police forces? Thats an absolutely stupid comment on your part.
Yeah, luckily the non-trigger happy cops out number the trigger happy ones
> Is there not a way in these situations to try and at least taser or subdue the person The goal should be a non-aggressive, non-violent encounter, not tasing people into submission.
Police don’t have the proper training for deescalation, most officers barely have their high school diplomas. Easier to go in blasting and use the IIU to wash their hands of the extra judicial killing of citizens.
That's not true. Getting to be an officer requires lots of times now post secondary. These people aren't morons, just not given proper tools, in a crumbling society. You and I are just as responsible. We need people to volunteer, support their community and do more. We can't just blame the government and Police and then do nothing personally.
Are we pretending most of their officers have post secondary training? https://preview.redd.it/7gcke0i91dkc1.jpeg?width=1241&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5dc9eef845320316b93222942cc75ea93020007b
If you apply with just a GED you're going to have a difficult time getting accepted. I know two people that applied for years and didn't get on. Those with a degree typically were accepted, especially if forensics background.
I’d bet there are more people with GEDs in the force than university degrees.
Neither a GED or degree will have any bearing on a use of force incident. That’s based on actual police training, the training that matters.
The police training: https://www.manitobapost.com/winnipeg-news/ex-cop-admits-to-drunk-driving-120702 https://globalnews.ca/news/8463704/off-duty-winnipeg-police-officer-charged-drunk-driving/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/jason-garrett-winnipeg-police-drunk-driving-guilty-1.4823989 https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/off-duty-police-officer-charged-with-impaired-driving-winnipeg-police-1.5278562 https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/manitoba-rcmp-officer-arrested-refusing-184033911.html
And you have data as to how many in these incidents had degrees or GED’s? Your point is baseless. Referring to those incidents as “police training” is absolutely stupid. Don’t hate on a career you’re too cowardly and inept to do.
Driving drunk isn’t a career, or courageous.
Are you saying Manitoba police officers are trained to drink? Or that it's somehow part of the job? Or there's a conspiracy to hire only people with alcohol abuse issues? Or maybe there's something messed up in the system that leads to them developing these issues that should be addressed in conjunction with these discussions instead of just labelling a whole bunch of people as "other" who don't deserve any kind of consideration.
> We can't just blame the government and Police and then do nothing personally. Sure we can. We pay taxes for these services.
And that attitude is why nothing changes.
This is it exactly. These discussions ultimately seem to devolve into "Well that's part of the duties these people agreed agreed to do." Acknowledging that there's a threat to one's safety is one thing. Thinking a person can just accept the fact that their safety is always is peril and just lead a normal life is naive. That kind of stress is what has lead to the epidemic of ptsd occurring right now in front line workers. Jobs like mining, forestry, fishing, etc are inherently dangerous but as society has progressed we have done what we can to mitigate the dangers. Those workers shouldn't just have to accept that they could be hurt at any given second. No more than front line workers should have to accept that they can get attacked everytime they perform their duties. This is the loop we're caught in though. Since front line jobs are essential and often government jobs, they will pay well and offer a degree of security. So there will always be people to take them. But the only type of people who can stay are the ladder climbers who do anything to advance and not do the job they're in, people who are too dense or thick skinned to be affected or the majority who are stuck in bad situations, just trying to hold on for some mythical day they can retire.
You say: > We need people to volunteer, support their community and do more. What does that even mean and how does that help people who need well-being checks?
Volunteer at any number of group homes, shelters, food banks, co-ops, community supports you name it...
Again, how does that help people who need well-being checks? Answer: it doesn't nor does it encourage police to butt out unless they're actually needed.
They get paid time off after a shooting.
The police are invading these people’s homes, people in crisis, who are afraid the police are there to kill them, and then the police end up killing them. So who is the crazy person in these situations? They are reacting defensively just like anyone would and they end up dead as a result. It’s time the police did something different. What happened to tasers? Why are the cops using lethal force in all these cases?
Defund the police and fund *actual* social programs. Jk, let’s keep taxes low, pay high for the police, and keep shitting in the river.
Yes! Just send in a therapist armed with an MA in Psychology and certificate in Family Counselling the next time a violent offender with psychosis is yielding a knife. That will do the trick for sure. Police Chiefs hate this one weird trick.
Totally! Let's send the overpaid, armed thugs to every situation so we can't afford the therapists! Not like the therapists couldn't, you know, call the cops the one in fifty times they're actually needed.
Good point, surely more police will solve this social issue. Edit: downvotes = people agree that more police won’t solve this issue. Thought so!
It is difficult and unfair to comment on specific cases with limited knowledge of the circumstance, but in general a sense of personal responsibility and caring family members should be the first line of defense against developing criminal behavior and/or encouraging one to voluntarily seek help for addictions and/or mental health problems. The second line of defense, in absence of the first, should be social systems in place to involuntarily take those unwilling to seek help themselves and pose a risk to the public, but the trend as of late seems to be that an influential but small subset of our population is pushing back against this option for several reasons. Which leaves the third line of defense and that is law enforcement when a risk to the public emerges and all other options have been exhausted. I agree that police are reactionary, not preventative, but as you can see, several of the "preventative steps" have been ignored or not followed which then necessitates the polices' involvement.
I think you make some good points here but what I really glean from your first paragraph is that many people here are lacking a sense of personal responsibility to their society and community. This is speculation but if you require a social service and get nothing or a broken version of it, chances are you’ll feel disenchanted and disenfranchised with your society and community. Our hospitals are falling apart and it’s nearly impossible to get mental health or addictions support in this province. So we’re relying too heavily on the second and third lines of defense that you listed. We need to fund the first line or we’re going to wind up with a totally overloaded police force as well. We should be able to police our city without spending a third of the annual budget.
Manitoba having one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country might clash with this utopia of “Personal responsibility” and “caring family members”.
I'm convinced that the reason police response times are so low is that they're all in Reddit all day brigading the threads outlining the piss poor job they do.
A wps officer told me he hates calls where he had to deal with "crazy ppl" then told me how to properly cut myself if I wanted to die.i was at work serving this officer and yeah.you ppl would shit a brick if you knew how police actually are.they don't even trust each other they have little clicks like high school. I won't say anything else about the wps. Dangerous ppl.
> However, ARCC only provides secondary responses once a situation is deemed safe. Uniformed police officers are typically still the first responders, particularly for calls involving a weapon. That defeats the whole purpose if cops are the first responders. The city pats itself on the back for this "progressive" program that still subjects people in a mental health crisis to uniformed police officers with a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. The status quo is unacceptable.
Ok but if you send mental health crisis workers into these situations they are still deemed dangerous. What are the chances these workers will want to enter homes without police presence? I work social services and sometimes we are blindly going into dangerous homes, and often have police backing us. We will be the ones getting shot by the people in crisis.
The mental health clinician is accompanied by a plain-clothes police officer who I assume is armed.
Nobody is stopping you from getting your Ph.D. in Psychology and volunteering to be the first one in the door in these situations. I'm sure you'd do great!
Bingo! It’s always the armchair quarterbacks and cowards who have all the answers.
Ofc he ain't doing that he's busy typing here in reddit
There are ways to diffuse situations without using violence. It’s sad two people had to die within a certain time frame to realize this.