A team of mental health and addictions experts is having a very positive impact with the Belleville Police Service.
In the first quarter of this year Belleville police officers dealt with 443 calls involving people with mental health and/or addictions issues and that number has been steadily increasing along with the city’s population.
These complex calls can take up a lot of an officer’s time but the average wait time for hospital treatment has dropped to just 90 minutes, and four women – mental health/addictions specialists, can be credited for improving police response and service.
Team IMPACT, available 10 hours a day, often accompanies police to mental health calls, calming the situation and connecting the people involved with medical services and counselling. They also follow up, by personal visit or by phone, and provide expertise to medical staff at hospitals if people need to be treated there.
IMPACT staff have been involved in 124 live calls since its inception last December.
Police Chief Mike Callaghan says IMPACT has proven to be one of the best new initiatives that he’s seen in his over 30-year career in policing, adding that at the beginning, some officers were reluctant to ask the team about mental health/addictions calls but now there are calls of assigning a specialist to each platoon in the service.
Police Board members Heather Smith and Murray Angus commended team members for their outstanding work and dedication to a difficult job.
Members of the IMPACT team are employed by Addictions and Mental Health-Hastings Prince Edward.
