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Police forces struggling to provide support for people in crisis

Published

2 years ago

May 8, 2022

CALGARY — Pat and Irene Heffernan have relived their son’s death many times.

Anthony Heffernan, a 27-year-old recovering from drug addiction, was shot by police four times — including three shots to the head and neck — after officers were called to a Calgary motel on March 16, 2015.

Officers said Heffernan was behaving strangely as he stood near beds with a lighter and a syringe, and didn’t obey commands to drop them.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, which reviews serious actions by police, investigated but no charges were laid.

The Heffernans wonder what would have happened if a mental-health professional had been there.

“You had five heavily armed officers. It’s just a nightmare story. You can’t make it up,” said Heffernan’s mother, Irene, from her home in Prince Albert, Sask.

Pat Heffernan said his son was in crisis and officers bursting into the hotel room was a mistake.

“It seems that they’re trying to escalate the situation rather than de-escalate. If they would have gone in calmly and talked to him, it might have been a totally different story,” he said.

“What we wanted out of this whole thing is for it not to be happening to other people. We were naive thinking this was something that rarely happened.”

A 2021 study in the Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being found 75 per cent of police-involved civilian fatalities in Canada involved a person experiencing a mental-health crisis or who was under the influence of a substance.

It said police officers deployed use of force about two per cent of the time.

Psychologist Patrick Baillie, who consults for the Calgary Police Service, supports more officer training. He said mental-health professionals are teamed with officers, but are only sent as a secondary response after a safety assessment.

“The initial, most cost-effective … (approach) is the training of officers, better access to mental-health professionals, more officers to do consultations 24 hours a day who could call somebody,” Baillie said.

“If there was a larger core of clinical social workers, maybe a psychiatrist or two, that would help as well.”

Baillie said police in Memphis have dispatchers trained to recognize mental-health calls and about 20 percent of officers have been taught to deal with people in crisis.

Baillie acknowledges that obtaining mental-health resources can be difficult.

“We end up dealing up with an increasing number of mental-health calls, because of the people who have fallen, not through the cracks, but through the cavernous holes that we have in our system.”

Police in Lethbridge, Alta., recorded a 19 per cent drop in use of force encounters last year compared to 2020. Some 28 per cent of subjects were in a state of crisis at the time.

Acting Staff Sgt. Rick Semenuik said the service has added a second mental-health professional to pair with officers.

“It’s been very useful. I can speak from personal experience,” he said.

“They had a relationship with the person and they talked to them and there was never any force used. It was done peacefully every time.”

Semenuik said Lethbridge officers receive mental-health training annually and focus on communicating with those who are going through a crisis.

Police in Vancouver began a program in 1978 called Car 87, which teams a constable with a registered nurse or psychiatric nurse to provide on-site assessments and intervention — when there’s no safety risk — for people living with mental illness.

Sgt. Steve Addison said officers on the front line deal with more serious cases.

“There’s a huge mental-health crisis here in Vancouver. Our officers are encountering people who are living … in psychosis, struggling on a very frequent basis,” he said.

“They’re frequently coming in contact with police officers … because they’re falling through the cracks. They’re not getting the support they need further up the line.”

Vancouver police have been vocal about the need to provide social supports for people with mental-health issues, addictions, poverty and homelessness, Addison said.

“We’re first responders, but we’re also the last resort for people in crisis, so at 3 o’clock in the morning when someone’s in psychosis and waving around a sword or feeling suicidal or hanging off the side of a bridge, who gets called?”

Specialized officers expert in crisis negotiation are deployed several times a day when someone is suicidal, experiencing an extreme mental-health episode or is posing a public safety risk, Addison said.

“We’ll be the first to call for more support for people who are living with these very, very complex needs, so they don’t have to come in contact with the police for what often is a mental-health issue.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2022.

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

News

Langford, Heim lead Rangers to wild 13-8 win over Blue Jays

Published

3 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Rookie Wyatt Langford homered, doubled twice and became the first Texas player this season to reach base five times, struggling Jonah Heim delivered a two-run single to break a sixth-inning tie and the Rangers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 13-8 on Tuesday night.

Leody Taveras also had a homer among his three hits for the Rangers.

Langford, who also walked twice, has 12 homers and 25 doubles this season. He is hitting .345 in September.

“I think it’s really important to finish on a strong note,” Langford said. “I’m just going to keep trying to do that.”

Heim was 1-for-34 in September before he lined a single to right field off Tommy Nance (0-2) to score Adolis García and Nathaniel Lowe, giving Texas a 9-7 lead. Heim went to the plate hitting .212 with 53 RBIs after being voted an All-Star starter last season with a career-best 95 RBIs. He added a double in the eighth ahead of Taveras’ homer during a three-run inning.

Texas had 13 hits and left 13 men on. It was the Rangers’ highest-scoring game since a 15-8 win at Oakland on May 7.

Matt Festa (5-1) pitched 1 1/3 scoreless innings to earn the win, giving him a 5-0 record in 13 appearances with the Rangers after being granted free agency by the New York Mets on July 7.

Nathan Eovaldi, a star of Texas’ 2023 run to the franchise’s first World Series championship, had his worst start of the year in what could have been his final home start with the Rangers. Eovaldi, who will be a free agent next season, allowed 11 hits (the most of his two seasons with Texas) and seven runs (tied for the most).

“I felt like early in the game they just had a few hits that found the holes, a few first-pitch base hits,” said Eovaldi, who is vested for a $20 million player option with Texas for 2025. “I think at the end of the day I just need to do a better job of executing my pitches.”

Eovaldi took a 7-3 lead into the fifth inning after the Rangers scored five unearned runs in the fourth. The Jays then scored four runs to knock out Eovaldi after 4 2/3 innings.

Six of the seven runs scored against Toronto starter Chris Bassitt in 3 2/3 innings were unearned. Bassitt had a throwing error during Texas’ two-run third inning.

“We didn’t help ourselves defensively, taking care of the ball to secure some outs,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said.

The Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a double and two singles, his most hits in a game since having four on Sept. 3. Guerrero is hitting .384 since the All-Star break.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Blue Jays: SS Bo Bichette (calf) was activated and played for the first time since July 19, going 2 for 5 with an RBI. … OF Daulton Varsho (shoulder) was placed on the 10-day injured list and will have rotator cuff surgery … INF Will Wagner (knee inflammation) was placed on the 60-day list.

UP NEXT

Rangers: LHP Chad Bradford (5-3, 3.97 ERA) will pitch Wednesday night’s game on extended five days’ rest after allowing career highs in hits (nine), runs (eight) and home runs (three) in 3 2/3 innings losing at Arizona on Sept. 14.

Blue Jays: RHP Bowden Francis (8-4, 3.50) has had two no-hitters get away in the ninth inning this season, including in his previous start against the New York Mets on Sept. 11. Francis is the first major-leaguer to have that happen since Rangers Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan in 1989.

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Billie Jean King set to earn another honor with the Congressional Gold Medal

Published

4 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

WASHINGTON (AP) — Billie Jean King will become the first individual female athlete to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey announced Tuesday that their bipartisan legislation had passed the House of Representatives and would be sent to President Joe Biden for his signature.

The bill to honor King, the tennis Hall of Famer and activist, had already passed unanimously in the Senate.

Sherrill, a Democrat, said in a statement that King’s “lifetime of advocacy and hard work changed the landscape for women and girls on the court, in the classroom, and the workplace.”

The bill was introduced last September on the 50th anniversary of King’s victory over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes,” still the most-watched tennis match of all-time. The medal, awarded by Congress for distinguished achievements and contributions to society, has previously been given to athletes including baseball players Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente, and golfers Jack Nicklaus, Byron Nelson and Arnold Palmer.

King had already been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Fitzpatrick, a Republican, says she has “broken barriers, led uncharted paths, and inspired countless people to stand proudly with courage and conviction in the fight for what is right.”

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Account tweaks for young Instagram users ‘minimum’ expected by B.C., David Eby says

Published

4 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

SURREY, B.C. – Premier David Eby says new account control measures for young Instagram users introduced Tuesday by social media giant Meta are the “minimum” expected of tech companies to keep kids safe online.

The parent company of Instagram says users in Canada and elsewhere under 18 will have their accounts set to private by default starting Tuesday, restricting who can send messages, among other parental controls and settings.

Speaking at an unrelated event Tuesday, Eby says the province began talks with social media companies after threatening legislation that would put big tech companies on the hook for “significant potential damages” if they were found negligent in failing to keep kids safe from online predators.

Eby says the case of Carson Cleland, a 12-year-old from Prince George, B.C., who took his own life last year after being targeted by a predator on Snapchat, was “horrific and totally preventable.”

He says social media apps are “nothing special,” and should be held to the same child safety standards as anyone who operates a place that invites young people, whether it’s an amusement park, a playground or an online platform.

In a progress report released Tuesday about the province’s engagement with big tech companies including Google, Meta, TikTok, Spapchat and X, formerly known as Twitter, the provincial government says the companies are implementing changes, including a “trusted flagger” option to quickly remove intimate images.

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024

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