The majority of homicides within Kelowna over the last two years have been tied to mental health issues, RCMP Supt. Kara Triance told city council Monday.
That was also the case Saturday, where a security officer was killed at UBC Okanagan’s campus and a suspect was arrested under the Mental Health Act.
Kelowna RCMP has publicly said the detachment could use more resources from the provincial government to help with some of the mental health-related files officers have been dealing with.
“Significant mental health components (are) involved in three (homicide cases) that we are working on,” Supt. Kara Triance said at Monday’s city council meeting.
“Police officers continue to attend calls for service without a clinician, and so only 33 per cent of calls we attended, the 3,100 mental health related calls in 2021, had a clinician with them.
“We still have police officers attending calls for service that have a mental health component without a clinician with them.”
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Two city councillors offered their thoughts on Kelowna RCMP’s presentation from Monday’s meeting.
“I have absolute sympathy and my heart is broken for the family and friends of the security guard we lost at UBCO this week. And this is another example of the failed mental health and substance abuse policy that has been neglected for decades,” said Kelowna City Coun. Loyal Wooldridge.
“It’s really frustrating because it lands on the laps of municipal government when it is policy and funding, which lies on the federal and provincial level.”
Kelowna city Coun. Mohini Singh also laid blame on the provincial government.
“This lands directly in the lap of the provincial government. Our front-line workers are being impacted, they don’t have the skillset, the time, the effort to deal with people with mental health cases and now look at what we see, we are seeing homicides directly related to mental health issues,” said Singh.
“They need medical professionals to be with them, nurses to be with them.”
Kelowna RCMP said it’s working closely with Interior Health, developing new projects hoping to address these community concerns.
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