WATCH ABOVE: Edmonton’s police chief says officers are spending thousands of hours a year waiting in hospitals with mental health patients. Kent Morrison explains.
EDMONTON – Edmonton’s police chief Rod Knecht says Emergency Room wait times are taking a toll on the police force. He says officers spend thousands of hours sitting and waiting in hospital Emergency Rooms — there with mental health patients trying to see a doctor.
“We just have to sit and wait essentially,” says Knecht.
“Over the course of the year, it’s thousands of hours.”
Police officers end up spending so much time in waiting rooms because of something called a Form 10 warrant.
Under the Mental Health Act, a Form 10 warrant allows officers to apprehend a person they deem to be a threat to themselves or others. Two officers take that individual to one of five Edmonton hospitals for a mental health assessment by a doctor.
However, most of the time, when the police and the patient arrive at the hospital, they have to wait in line like everybody else.
“It is a problem,” says Mark Snaterse, executive director of Alberta Health Services’ Addiction and Mental Health. “We would love for nothing more than to have those police officers be able to hand off their patient to us and for us to accept them safely and for those police officers to get to be back on the street where they belong.”
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It has been well-documented that wait times at Edmonton hospitals are long. At hospitals like the Royal Alexandra and the University of Alberta, waits can often be between four and eight hours to see a doctor. That wait keeps police officers in the hospital rather than back on the street.
“On any given Saturday night in the city, we can have three police cars, six police officers tied up just waiting to get through the Form 10 process to get these people properly diagnosed,” says Knecht. He says it means officers can’t respond to other calls — that are not high priority calls — as quickly.
“The demands for service in our emergency departments is a big driver,” adds Snaterse.
“Currently we are experiencing huge demands for services in almost all of our emergency departments. The nature of the patient might actually be a factor as well.”
The wait time can be even longer for police if the individual they’re with is also facing criminal charges. If that’s the case, officers have to stay with that person for the duration of their time in the hospital — for the amount of time it takes to get an assessment, which could take 24 hours or more.
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“When I was the mayor of Edmonton that was a big concern,” says health minister Stephen Mandel. “As health minister, same thing. Whether it’s Edmonton, Calgary or Red Deer, we have to make sure our officers aren’t waiting, that they’re back on the street.
“We came up some ideas for the chief. We’re going to look into them and see if we can help implement some changes that will expedite the process.”
Alberta Health Services says solutions could include improving general ER flow, training more AHS peace officers to accept patients from police at hospitals, as well as increasing police access to Police and Crisis Teams (PACT).
“It pairs up police constables with mental health therapists,” explains Snaterse. “They are a huge resource to local police who might come across someone in the community.”
However, there are currently only three PACTs in Edmonton.
“I think everything is on the table and we’re exploring every option that we can pursue to get those officers back on the street,” says Snaterse.
The police chief recently met with Mandel about this problem. Knecht says the meeting went very well.
“I think we’ve come up with a solution,” he says, adding it may take a few weeks to begin implementing.
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