Police-Encounters-With-People-In-Crisis

Chapter 3. Context
A. Introduction
1. The purpose of this chapter is to describe some key features of the context within
which the issues addressed in this Review arise. The chapter has five sections.
2. The first section deals with the issue of perspective, by which I mean the
importance of viewing the issues addressed in this Review from the perspective of those
who experience those issues first hand. Two of those perspectives are those of the front
line police officer and of the person in crisis. One cannot meaningfully seek to improve
encounters between police and people in crisis without understanding what it is like for
them to be in such an encounter. I also address a third perspective, the importance of
which is profound—the perspective of those who live on after a death, and are forever
affected by it.
3. The second section describes some pertinent background facts relating to the
Toronto Police Service, including its size, structure, and composition, as well as its
recent history of efforts to improve the manner in which police interact with people in
crisis.
4. The third section provides some statistical information regarding the extent of
interaction between the TPS and people in crisis, including the number of incidents per
year in which people identified by the TPS as having mental health issues are killed by a
member of the Service.
5. The last two sections describe at a high level some relevant aspects of the social
context and the legal context for policing and mental health in Toronto.
B. The importance of perspective
6. There is a danger, in a review of this type, of being unrealistic.
7. Encounters in which police use lethal force against a person in crisis often take
place in the space of seconds, in a rush of emotion, adrenaline, and fear. Those who
review such encounters after the fact, on the other hand, have the benefit of time,
information, detachment, and hindsight.
8. It is critically important not to ignore this fundamental difference in perspective.
I have therefore sought, as best as I can, to understand what it is like to be the police
officer, or to be the person in crisis, in the highly charged moment of a potentially
violent encounter. Without that perspective, one cannot fully appreciate what causes
fatal encounters, or be well situated to try to prevent them.
9. Deaths of people in crisis in encounters with police usually (although not always)
involve front line police officers who act as primary responders to incidents and calls for
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