Police-Encounters-With-People-In-Crisis

are hallucinating or suicidal, and on demonstrating empathy. 15 Mental health
professionals are invited to provide input into this training.
15. The OPC gives new recruits a detailed guide on working with people in crisis, a
resource that has been praised for its ongoing utility for on-duty officers. 16 The guide
was created in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and St.
Joseph’s Health Care Centre in response to recommendations from the inquest into the
death of Lester Donaldson in Toronto in 1994. In addition to providing a listing of
community resources, the guide identifies signs and symptoms of mental illnesses,
strategies for de-escalation, and key provisions of the Mental Health Act. 17
16. Practical role-playing scenarios at the OPC include scenarios simulating:
communicating with people in crisis and determining whether there are grounds for
apprehension pursuant to the Mental Health Act, assessing the threat posed by people
in crisis including where the threat involves a weapon, and determining what kind of
assistance the person requires. 18 These scenarios are based on real-life events that were
examined at coroners’ inquests.
17. Trainers evaluate recruits on their exercise of judgment during practical
scenarios. The evaluation considers the subject’s behaviour, the use-of-force option
selected, whether the trainee recognized a threat and whether the participant positioned
him or herself appropriately to manage threats. The evaluation considers whether the
trainee communicated well with his or her role-playing partner and whether he or she
transitioned between different force options as appropriate. Notably, while the effective
use of the “Police Challenge” is a subject of evaluation, there is no explicit measure of
the recruit's ability or willingness to engage in other forms of communication with a
subject. 19 The Police Challenge is an instruction or warning issued by police in order to
secure the compliance of a subject, discussed in more detail in Chapter 10 (Use of
Force). It is interesting and somewhat concerning that recruits are not evaluated on
forms of communication that are designed to achieve de-escalation without
confrontation.
18. Another notable feature of the evaluation framework is that recruits are graded
on whether they are able to legally justify the use-of-force option selected. That
approach raises a concern about whether new officers are being taught that it is
acceptable to meet minimum legal standards rather than achieve the optimum result. In
15
Id. at 28-29; OPC, Communication, supra note 13 at 23-25;
16
Cotton & Coleman, Police Learning, supra note 1 at 21. To view the guide, see Ontario Police Colleges, Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health & St. Joseph’s Health Care London, Not Just Another Call…Police Response to People with Mental Illnesses in
Ontario (Sudbury, ON: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Queen’s Printer for Ontario and Regional Health Care, London,
2004), online: Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police .
17
Ron Hoffman, “Police Training delivered at the Ontario Police College on responding to persons with mental disorders”
(September 2013).
18
OPC, Communication, supra note 13 at 28.
19
Ontario Police College, “Officer Safety Judgment Evaluation Form” (undated) [OPC, “Safety Form”].
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