Windsor's Acting Police Chief is speaking out about the challenges officers face dealing with the severely mentally ill in the community.
Jason Bellaire said he is proud of the work his officers do downtown. The officers have had the training to deal with mental health calls, and they do a good job, but he said there has to be a better way to get people the help they need.
His comments come after a second call involving a person suffering from mental illness wielding a weapon in the downtown core.
The first call ended tragically. Officers shot a 70-year-old man who was allegedly threatening passersby with a machete just over a week ago. Officers attempted to de-escalate the situation and tasered the suspect before resorting to lethal action.
Ontario's Special Investigations Unit is still investigating that incident.
The second call was on Monday morning, just blocks from the shooting. In that incident, the suspect surrendered peacefully after waving around a knife.
"I've hit my point where I'm just very frustrated," Bellaire confessed. "It's not going to stop us from doing our job, but I think that it's worthy of dialogue and certainly worthy of more action."
"We need a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week place where we can drop them off that is not the emergency room," he continued.
Emergency rooms across Ontario are on the brink. While Windsor Regional Hospital has not contemplated closing the ERs at the Ouellette or Met Campuses, others across the province have limited their hours and even temporarily closed doors.
CEO David Musyj told WindsorNewsToday.ca earlier this month week they are stressed and reviewing options.
Bellaire said the Windsor Police Service doesn't have the funding to take the lead on mental health calls, but all too often, officers are.
"We shouldn't be taking that for granted," he said. "Maybe other agencies should be doing it. It is hard because it is seven days a week, 365 days a year."
The continued stress on resources means Windsor Police are discussing at the highest level about reviewing their partnerships in the community.
"Given that we have finite resources, there's a lot of discussion about do we need to disconnect from certain partnerships in order to reinvest our people in partnerships that have traction and are dealing with the issues as expected by our community."
