Mental health, police and death: it's always about the money

Every needless death provides lessons for society, but what happened between Toronto police officer James Forcillo and teenager Sammy Yatim should get a section in a textbook somewhere.

Make that several textbooks: for police, social agencies, health care officers, municipalities and even for provincial governments.

Because like it or not, Sammy Yatim's shooting death on a Toronto transit bus had to do with money, taxes and the policies of agencies who never talk to each other, except about money and taxes.

In those textbooks, there ought to be a chapter regarding the practices and polices of police in Red Deer.

Whatever was driving the thoughts of Sammy Yatim, as he stood in the empty bus with a knife in his hand, he would have been a lot safer in Red Deer, Alberta, than Toronto, Ontario.

He'd probably be alive today, and his story might scarcely have warranted one short news story — which would never have gotten the attention of the experts in Toronto. Sad, that.

Red Deer has what known as the PACT program, the Police And Crisis Team. Right now, it's only a team of two, though soon it will become a team of four: two RCMP officer and two psych nurses.

Through the pilot, PACT received about 100 calls a month, responding to about 30 per cent of them on the scene. They dealt with about 400 clients (not suspects, clients), 85 per cent of whom have had a previous diagnosis of mental illness or related issues, like domestic violence, addictions, causing disturbances or other things.

They can de-escalate bad situations without having to shoot an unarmed teenager nine times, and then tasing him. They can pre-screen mental health cases on the way to the emergency room, saving time and money.

They can keep people out of the court system, by getting them connected with agencies that can actually help them, instead of making them worse in jail.

The 15-month pilot project that launched PACT ended this year, and cost $237,000 in tax dollars. Operating for that 15 months has been estimated to save expenses in the justice and health care systems of just over $86 million.

People in public offices like to talk about the human good when they announce spending projects, but the bottom line is always the bottom line.

Alberta Health Services was hoped to see the benefit of Red Deer's PACT program, and fund it permanently. But that didn't happen, and it's easy to see why.

A program as successful as PACT would have to be replicated all over the province, and even with a $3.66 return on every dollar spent, there just aren't the dollars to do it.

So the Red Deer RCMP and the Red Deer Primary Care Network (both funded by tax dollars), scraped through their budgets and found the money to double the program on their own. I sincerely hope they see some of the returns for the money they saved taxpayers, in their own budget envelopes.

Because in the end, if it's a public service, it's always about the money.

This week, the Ontario government announced it would allow all the province's police forces to decide on their own if officers would be allowed to carry a Taser. Officer Forcillo was not allowed to have one. Only sergeants and special forces were, and he called for such an officer, who only arrived to zap a kid who was already probably dead.

Too bad he couldn't have called a PACT team. Forcillo wouldn't be facing a murder charge, if he could have.

Shuffling responsibility for non-lethal weapons like Tasers to local forces is a real cop-out (puns always intended). Tasers cost $1,500 each, and there are 2,800 police officers in Toronto alone.

I have no idea what a PACT program in Toronto would cost, but it will probably never be tried, because nobody will take budgetary responsibility for it.

Is PACT a health program, a police program or a legal program? Budget co-operation on that scale just won't happen between these departments, because they don't talk to each other in the first place. City councils don't have the money for these things, because PACT only benefits provincially-funded departments.

Can we only do good and smart things in cities the size of Red Deer?

None of us will see one cent of the $86 million that PACT saved our region last year. It's a savings that just melts into a stack of different budget envelopes, spent on other things.

And that's why Toronto police will shoot people standing in obvious distress, rather than helping them. That's why our jails are filled — at huge expense — with people who for a period just couldn't cope. There's no money to do anything else.

Red Deer is so much safer with PACT. But don't expect to see the program grow very quickly.