The Vancouver Police Board is urging the provincial government to revise the Mental Health Act to reduce the amount of time a police officer has to wait at a hospital while a person they took into custody is being examined.
Waiting times for police officers at Vancouver General Hospital in 2010 averaged 83 minutes and were reduced to an average of 60 minutes last year.
The waiting times are related to a person arrested under the B.C. Mental Health Act, which states police have to wait until a doctor completes a medical certificate of the person before an officer can get back on the road.
The Vancouver Police Department pointed out in a report approved by the police board last month that waiting times could be lessened even more if the Act were amended.
The VPD is proposing officers not wait for completion of the certificate and allow them to leave after the person has been examined by a doctor. The current experience suggests that it is the common current practice of many physicians to complete these certificates many hours after the patient has been admitted to the hospital, the VPD report said. Requiring police to wait until the certificate is completed is a costly and inefficient dedication of valuable police resources.
The report didnt include the cost of a police officer having to wait at hospital but the overall cost of the VPD dealing with cases related to mental health incidents was estimated at $9 million in 2009.
The proposed change by the VPD to have government revise the Act will be presented as a resolution by the police board to the B.C. Association of Police Boards.
If the association passes the resolution, the organization will then request the government amend the Act. Two major reports from the VPD released in 2009 and 2011 concluded that a lack of capacity in the mental health system is failing the citys mentally ill and draining police resources.
Statistics from one of the reports showed that many of the persons committed under the Act at a hospital end up again in police custody.
Between Feb. 1, 2009 and Feb. 1, 2010, the VPD responded to 126 cases of patients committed under the Act at St. Pauls Hospital who walked away from the facility. Police responded to 104 similar cases involving patients at Vancouver General Hospital.
mhowell@vancourier.com
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