Caught in the Currents: Evaluating the Evidence for Common Downstream Police Response Interventions in Calls Involving

The origins of this report, and of the Royal Society of Canada’s Mental Health and Policing Working Group, can be traced to the unique situation Canadians have faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. [...] Caught in the Currents: Evaluating the Evidence for Common Downstream Police Response Interventions 7 Caught in the Currents: Evaluating the Evidence for Common Downstream Police Response Interventions in Calls Involving Persons with Mental Illness Mental Health Screening Tools In the rush to improve police effectiveness and efficiency in responding to calls for service involving PMIs, as well as. [...] Developing a plan on the way to a call (related to how the officer intends to handle the situation) may increase an officer’s ability to remain calm and reduce the likelihood of force being required to resolve the incident. [...] However, in the majority of cases where non- escalation or de-escalation is the goal, officers should be ready to use force if necessary, but approach the situation in a calm, non-confrontational manner, which indicates to the subject that the officer sincerely wants to help and does not wish to use force (Richmond et al. [...] Representatives of the Memphis police force, academia, and mental health professionals developed CIT training to achieve the goal of diverting PMIs away from the criminal justice system and into appropriate mental health supports whenever possible (Hassell 2020), build better collaborations between the police and mental health services and systems to provide more accessible services to persons in.