Policing Interactions With Persons With Mental Illness in RCMP Jurisdictions in British Columbia

Persons with mental illness are at increased likelihood of coming into contact with the police
(Hartford et al., 2005; Livingstone, 2016). Between 5% and 20% of all police calls for service may
involve mental health crises (Abramson, 2021; Balfour et al., 2022; Cotton & Coleman, 2010;
Ghelani et al., 2023; Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019; Koziarski et al., 2022; Langton et al., 2021;
Langton et al., 2022; Ratcliffe, 2021). Yet, mental health training for police officers in Canada has
historically been quite limited and lacking in practical relevance (Coleman & Cotton, 2010; Huey et
al., 2021; Sanders & Lavoie, 2021). Consequently, police responses to mental health-related calls for
service may involve the person in crisis being arrested (Watson & Wood, 2017) or apprehended
and taken to hospital (Klein, 2010; Shore & Lavoie, 2018; Watson & Wood, 2017) where they may
be promptly released back into the community by the examining physician (e.g., Shore & Lavoie,
2018). Many calls for service involving persons with a suspected mental illness involve noncriminal
matters (e.g., Koziarski et al., 2022; Vaughan et al., 2015). These findings support that police officers are not best positioned as the primary response to mental health-related issues in the community. Increasingly, police agencies are implementing collaborative models, such as coresponse teams that involve a police officer partnered with a mental health expert (Blais et al., 2020; Cohen et al., 2025; Huey et al., 2021; Koziarski et al., 2021; Park et al., 2019; Teti et al., 2025). Other approaches to improve police response to mental health-related calls for service have focused on training, for example, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training. Overall, while the research is still lacking in rigorous evaluation studies, preliminary data seems to demonstrate that the co-response team model is achieving the most success in improving the police response to mental health-related calls for service (Seo et al., 2021), though positive effects have also been demonstrated for the intensive in-person training provided by CIT (Bonfine et al., 2014; Borum et al., 1998; Bratina et al., 2020; Canada et al., 2012; Compton et al., 2011; Hanafi et al., 2008; Ritter et al., 2010; Tartaro et al., 2021; Willis et al., 2023).

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