There is a letter that has been signed by a number of mental health workers and others who work in healthcare in Ontario that has been sent to the regulatory bodies and professional colleges. This letter describes police as being a "public health crisis".

The letter is visible to the public. It demands that these institutions immediately call for an end to police response to the mental health calls, essentially because police are racist, stupid, and violent - their words, not mine.

The letter fails to recognize the thousands upon thousands of mental health calls that go well and that are helpful to those involved. It only addresses those few cases we hear about from the media in which situations ended badly.

The letter demands that the institutions officially declare policing to be a public health crisis and to respond by organizing "community-led" mobile crisis teams. Essentially, they want to send ordinary citizens to respond to mental health emergencies.

These health care workers think it makes more sense to send regular folks to help people in crisis, rather than a unit like the Toronto Police's Mobile Crisis Intervention Team which sends a mental health nurse paired with an officer trained in responding to mental health calls.

Those who signed the letter have not offered to organize this community-led response, nor have they offered to personally respond to those calls themselves. They also have not commented on how this would be funded, regulated, staffed, etc.

They also fail to acknowledge that the police are historically the only group that has been consistently stepping up to answer these very challenging calls. They completely disregard the fact that when these situations get violent, police are the first to be called.

Expecting neighbours and volunteers to take over for police is extremely unreasonable and irresponsible. It would be more sensible to suggest that there could be more collaboration between Police and organizations such as The Gerstein Centre on these types of calls.

But by calling policing a public health crisis, these health care providers are equating police with a viral disease. This is very harmful as it is supporting a false narrative that police are the bad guys and that the answer to all of our social problems is to abolish police.

At this point, any professional who throws police under the bus should not be trusted. They are clearly prioritizing jumping on a bandwagon and virtue-signalling as a means of avoiding cancellation by a frenzied mob of very unreasonable people bent on extremism.

It is incorrect to say that all police are bad and that all police interactions are unhelpful. It is unfair to blame police for all of the problems in our communities. Any professional who implies that police are not needed is clearly out of touch with reality.

Instead of tearing down existing systems that have proven to work well in the majority of circumstances, we should be building upon them and enhancing them. We should be making them better instead of scrapping them entirely.

These so-called professionals seem to wholeheartedly believe that police presence is NEVER needed in the event of a crisis call. This suggests that these pros have never been involved in these kinds of situations, and have only read about them.

They are also conveniently ignoring the plain and simple fact that when a situation escalates to the point where someone recognizes that police assistance is needed and they dial 911, the situation is already out of control.

At that point, the family has failed to help the individual as has the psychiatrist and social worker and even the distress helpline. If those sources of support had succeeded in their efforts to help the individual, there would be no need to call police.

And yet, the Toronto Police respond to 85 mental health calls per day - every day. If policing truly is a public health crisis, wouldn't we be hearing about instances of police brutality on a daily basis in the context of these mental health calls?

As an aside - many don't realize that if a person is in crisis and in urgent need of psychiatric care, having a police escort to the CAMH ER actually expedites the process of being seen by doctors. Many aren't aware of this because many haven't experienced this first-hand.

And yet, institutions like CAMH have also jumped on the anti-police bandwagon. Except when one of their patients goes missing, which is increasingly happening as, CAMH are quick to call the police for help.

In their official statement criticizing police response to mental health calls, CAMH derides police for their use of force. Conveniently, CAMH fails to mention that they too employ use of force on violent patients within their units.

There have been some recent cases in Canada that received a lot of media attention of individuals who died or were harmed during wellness checks. These deaths happened within the context of the global pandemic.

A major side effect of the pandemic has been a documented increase in domestic violence and mental illness. This makes sense considering many lost their jobs, were out of school, and unable to attend religious and social activities.

For a few months, everything was closed including libraries, community centres, gyms...all art and music and sports were cancelled. We must always comprehensively examine the wider context and its consequences on the individual if we are to fairly investigate such cases.

The media's fear-mongering around the virus has been seen to have negatively impacted the mental health of many. At no point in the letter is the pandemic's influences on these cases considered.

The letter seems to argue that people of colour are more likely to die during wellness checks than white people. It also implies that all police are racist and are prone to mistreating civilians of colour.

The letter doesn't cite any clinical research studies or any kind of peer-reviewed evidence or credible statistics in order to back up what seem to be emotional arguments.

The signatories demand that the regulatory bodies tell their members that in every case involving a POC client, they never have the ethical obligation to involve police.

Their reasoning is that by involving the police, a person of colour has a high likelihood of being killed. This doesn't add up and raises many more ethical issues.

They are challenging the entire premise of the healthcare provider's legal duty to report. This muddies the waters and makes it much harder for clinician's to determine when they are obligated to contact authorities. I feel they are politicizing the "duty to report" issue.

This has the potential to endanger the lives of many people, as clinicians will hesitate to contact police based on the unverified, unproven claim that people of colour are being targeted en masse by supposedly inherently racist law enforcement officers.

The signatories are pressuring the professional colleges to demand that the government act to defund the police budget and redirect those funds towards these "community-led" initiatives.

I say that more research needs to be done into these initiatives and an actual plan of actions needs to be fully fleshed out before we start slashing cuts to our public safety.

The most radical of the signatories would argue that police don't keep the public safe, which on the whole is obviously not true. Of course the police make mistakes and they must be accountable for said mistakes, but this also holds true for all people in all professions.

This rabid craze to demonize police has become hip and popular and unfortunately, those who are shouting the loudest fail to see how a lack of police presence in vulnerable communities will inevitably hurt those they are rallying to protect.

They insist that a community-led response to mental health calls will work better. Realistically speaking, the community at large ignores those who are in acute states of mental and emotional crisis, largely out of fear and stigma.

They fail to acknowledge that in so many cases, a neighbour is more likely to call police than to approach a person who is screaming in the street. Let's just be real for a minute in that regard.

I am sure there are many clinicians and peer support workers who would be willing to volunteer their time to staffing this proposed community-led team. But how do we ensure that they are available 24/7 if we are only drawing from a limited pool of willing community members?

If the community-led crisis response team is paid for their work, what would that look like exactly? They are putting the horse before the cart by demanding that the police budget be promptly cut - without first presenting a potential staffing and financial plan for this idea.

Many of us recognize that suicide hotlines are much needed support systems and yet they generally don't receive much funding and are typically staffed entirely by volunteers. Often callers are left on hold for hours because there isn't anyone available to answer the call.

I fear that these community-led teams will end up looking a lot like how the suicide and distress hotlines currently do...

They'd be formed upon good intentions and by well-meaning individuals, but due to ineffective organizing, insufficient fundraising, and inconsistent manpower, they'd often fall short of their goals.

We can't afford to fail people who are in distress in that way. We must recognize here in Toronto that the Toronto Police's Mobile Crisis Intervention Team, which pairs a mental health nurse with an officer specially trained in responding to mental health emergencies...

...is a good model that works most of the time for most of the people across the board. We must recognize the instances in which that model has failed and learn from them and use what we've learned to better the existing model.

Mental health professionals must seek to collaborate with police to improve the current response team and police must be willing to continuously work with concerned clinicians and the professional colleges to ensure the team remains well-trained and properly staffed.

It is counterproductive to attack police when they have developed a team to respond to these crises. What is needed is more consultation with mental health professionals in order to ensure this team is following best practices.

In this thread, I have expressed my frustration towards those who signed this letter because as a citizen, I feel it is irresponsible for healthcare professionals, who hold so much power, to voice their support as an official collective for the police abolition movement.

That being said, I believe that those who have signed this petition should not be attacked either. In my heart, I know they have good intentions but this effort to defund, dismantle, disband, and fundamentally transform, etc...is not the right answer in this specific situation.