TORONTO – A Toronto police board member says the community needs better options than calling officers for those in mental health crises.
Uppala Chandrasekera, who’s also co-chair of the city’s mental-health advisory committee, says people need community-based options that include social workers, peer workers and mental health and addictions workers.
Chandrasekera says she lives two blocks from where Regis Korchinski-Paquet lived. Korchinski-Paquet died in late May after falling from her high-rise balcony while police were in her home.
Her family says they wanted her to go to a mental health hospital, and they question the role of police in her death.
The province’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, is investigating Korchinski-Paquet’s death.