Mental health committee to be established by Durham police following inquest

By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express

Durham Region Police Service will establish a standing committee on mental health in response to recommendations from a coroner’s inquest into the fatal shooting of an Ajax man by a police officer in 2013.

The findings of the coroner’s inquest were presented to members of the Durham Regional Police Services Board earlier this month, and included 25 recommendations with a specific direction to “establish a standing committee on mental health to advise the Durham Regional Police Services Board on policy, training, and practice.”

The inquest calls for the committee to include “stakeholders such as representatives of hospitals, community mental health workers and people with lived experience who belong to peer-based organizations that can effectively represent a collective voice.”

Forty-seven-year-old Michael MacIsaac was fatally shot by Durham Regional Police Const. Brian Taylor in December 2013. Police said MacIsaac was approaching the officer with a table leg in hand when he was shot.

In 2014, Taylor was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the province’s Special Investigations Unit.

Uday Jaswal, Durham’s deputy Police Chief, has been assigned to oversee the establishment of the committee. He says details are scant for now.

“It’s in the early stages. We do have a meeting planned for spring that will bring together the core mental health agencies in the region and really determine what the mandate needs to be,” Jaswal told The Oshawa Express.

He named Durham Mental Health, Lakeridge Health, and the Ontario Shores Centre as a few potential “significant contributors” to the committee.

However, he feels the committee “isn’t really meant to be a police-led initiative.”

“I believe it really needs to be community-based and collaborative,” he adds. “We know as a police service we have an important part to contribute in terms of response to mental health, but this is largely a mental health system issue and looking at how we position resources in the region better so we are proactive and meeting individuals’ needs when we are dealing with crisis.”

The deputy chief says the majority of police services in the province are taking on a “more collaborative model” but is unsure if other forces are taking actions similar to the DRPS.

“Surely we will look to other jurisdictions to see what some of the current best practices are and base our efforts on that,” Jaswal says.

Speaking on the targeted timeline for the committee, Jaswal says he would like things to get rolling sooner than later.

“As a police service and community agency that is accountable to the public we serve, we are taking the recommendation from the inquest very seriously and I hope to have a lot of progress to update the Police Services Board and our community on as we move forward in 2018.”

 

Other recommendations include further training for officers to deal with situations similar to the one that occurred in 2013.

The police service is also called on to “examine the allocation of funding to current training, and the contents of that training and techniques, to assess if the funding is being used effectively to prevent deaths in similar circumstances, and eliminate courses that are not effective.”

In response to the inquest, police officials wrote in a report that the local service is already collaborating with a number of mental health partners.

Partnering agencies include UOIT, Laurier University, Queens University, Brock University, members of the Mental Health Commission and Ontario Shores.

“The initiative brings mental health professionals and advocacy associations, as well as people living with mental illness together with police personnel and university researchers to investigate frameworks for and outcomes of education and training methods designed to enhance interactions between police and people living with mental illness,” the report states.

Recommendations in the coroner’s inquest are not legally binding and neither the police service or the board itself is required to respond to them.

Recommendations in the inquest were also directed to the Ontario Police College, Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police.