Toronto Police Report

715 Words3 Pages

The Chief of Police William Blair of the Toronto Police Service, gave Lacobucci the authority to undertake the report. The report reviews the use of lethal force by the Toronto Police Services (TPS), with focus on encounters between police and people in crisis.The mandate was given by Chief Blair to conduct a review on the policies, practices, procedures and the services provided by the TPS. With encounters with people who are or may be emotionally, mentally disturbed or cognitively impaired. When Lacobucci refers to a person in crisis he is talking about a member of the public whose behaviour has brought them into contact with police. They are experiencing a mental or emotional crisis involving behaviour that is threatening or dangerous to …show more content…

The public system for mental health treatment functions more as a crisis management system that aims to solve problems over the long term. For example, a man in crisis is brought back to a hospital by the Mobile Crisis Intervention Team (MCIT), only days after he had been discharged from two weeks of hospital treatment. The Mental Health Act policy prohibits psychiatric facilities from holding people against their will unless a strict set of requirements are met. Having this in the Mental Health Act, hospitals become a revolving door for mental health treatment: they respond and help, but often do not effectively treat patients for long-term improvement. In 1963 the More of the Mind policy deinstitutionalization process began in Canada, which came from the Canadian Mental Health Association’s. This enabled the people to live in the community and exercise their freedoms. In the 1950s and 60s, close to 80 percent of all the beds in Ontario 's’ psychiatric hospitals were closed. A report in 1988 saying that the Provincial Community Mental Health Committee of Ontario, incited an important shift towards a community-based approach to mental health services. However, it is clear that Ontario’s community-based approach to mental health treatment is far from complete or acceptable. In less then 20 years from closing the beds, numerous people have began to recognize that without the necessary community services in place, deinstitutionalization has been a