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Senior Member
The warm arm of the law
Author Pat Capponi rides along with a team answering the call to help, rather than shoot, the troubled
PAT CAPPONI
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 27, 2007
Constable Ken Batemen presses the buzzer again. Still no answer. There has been a 911 call: female, possible overdose, chest pains. He hits all the buzzers until someone in the building lets us in.
"Pat, hang back a few feet behind Yvon till I signal, okay?"
I nod, watch him walk down the stairs, through a narrow corridor to the apartment we're looking for. He knocks, calls out, "MCIT here. Can you open the door?"
Constable Bateman of 14 Division works for Toronto's Mobile Crisis Intervention Team, a partnership between police and hospitals established in 2002 to respond to calls from emotionally disturbed persons, or "EDPs." He listens, mutters that there's someone there, knocks again, ear against the door. It's open.
It's Constable Bateman's job to ensure that everything is safe for the civilians trailing him: his partner Yvon Morency, who is a nurse, and me. That takes a moment, then he calls that it's clear. Yvon heads in and so do I.
There's a small kitchen bordering a living room. Everything's tidy, except for the blood in the sink and the X-
acto knife blades spilled beside it. On the counter is a basket of medication bottles, a jar hand-labelled "holy water" two-thirds full of pink liquid, an odd-looking dwarf hypodermic and an empty bottle of anti-anxiety drugs. Scattered on the kitchen table are small brown envelopes with "time to take" instructions; the psychiatric hospital gives you these when you're released.
A middle-aged woman, still in her nightdress, is seated in a collapsible chair. Her feet are bare and there's blood soaking through the fabric of her nightgown at her abdomen. She's cradling her left arm and moaning softly. Mr. Morency kneels beside her, taking her pulse, checking her breathing. In response to a question from Constable Bateman, he says, "No cut on the belly. The blood's from the arm."
From where I'm standing, I can see into the back of the apartment. One tidy corner holds a powered-up computer, utterly normal, as is the double bed, carefully made.
The 911 call came from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. An ambulance has been dispatched, and Constable Bateman radios it to hurry. The woman tells Mr. Morency that she had called the ward at CAMH, the one she had been a patient on, and told them what she had done so she wouldn't have to die alone.
"Can you tell me if you hear voices?" Mr. Morency is trying to keep her engaged, alert.
Her voice strengthens in annoyance. "I'm not schizoid."
"No, of course not. Do you know what your diagnosis is?"
"PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Depression."
He keeps her talking, though it's hard to understand her now as she mumbles, head lolling.
She has grown children. "I left them notes on the table. It's only for them, just for them."
She used to work as a nurse. A form announcing that she has been approved for disability lies on the coffee table. She had mixed the medication and the "holy water" and cut her arm so that she would have an easier time injecting the concoction into her veins.
The ambulance must be stuck in traffic.
"I'm so happy, so happy I'm going to die, so happy."
Not today. The Emergency Medical Service team is here.
Once at St. Joseph's Health Centre, we're through the swinging doors, trailing the EMS guys into the hub, and within six minutes a doctor has assessed the woman and ordered four-point restraints. Constable Bateman and Mr. Morency are doing their paperwork at the nurse's counter. Everyone knows everyone else; it's a collegial, kibitzing atmosphere.
Constable Bateman turns to me and asks, "So what do you think?"
What do I think?
I'm not your typical freelance journalist. In the past, I had been the one sitting bleeding in the chair, the one lying on a gurney, the one tied at the wrist and ankles with padded cuffs.
As a psychiatric-survivor activist, I sit on a committee with the unfortunate acronym SLIG, the Saving Lives Implementation Group, co-chaired by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair and lawyer Julian Falconer. We are charged with seeing through the recommendations of a report completed several years ago, Alternatives to the Use of Lethal Force, which was put on hold during the years when Julian Fantino was police chief. Too many people, mostly men, mostly members of visible minorities - most diagnosed with serious mental illness - were winding up shot, winding up dead, after confrontations with Toronto police.
Our committee has endorsed the crisis-intervention teams, which were first established in Toronto's 51 and 52 Divisions in late 2002 and have since expanded to other divisions. But words and proposals on paper are often different from real life. I had asked for the ride-along: It says a lot that the powers that be had enough confidence in the program to allow me this kind of access.
Back at the 14 Division substation, located on the grounds of Exhibition Place, we wait to meet up with another MCIT team, this one out of 5 Division, where a police officer is paired with a nurse from St. Michael's Hospital.
There's a potentially threatening individual "known to police," as they say, and they're strategizing how to handle him. Constable Bateman gives us a little background: The man is huge, muscular, very, very edgy, and has been in the army. He was fired from his job and since then keeps going back to his workplace and raising hell. Having dealt with him before, the team understands how volatile he can be.
"If we go out this afternoon on this, it's a police matter," Constable Bateman says. "So, Pat, you'll stay in the car, and Yvon, so will you. I don't want either of you getting injured."
The team from 5 Division arrives - two women - and the police retire with a sergeant to plan their moves, leaving Mr. Morency and me with Krysia Sayshi, the St. Mike's RN. I ask them both about the program.
"It's very collaborative," Ms. Sayshi says. "Initially, any team has to feel each other out, but it's great to learn the police perspective. And they're very respectful of our skills and respectful of the boundaries. Eighty per cent of the time, we can leave the patient in the home rather than take them into hospital."
Mr. Morency agrees. "We had an EDP call. A woman we knew who's staying in a shelter was saying she was thinking of cutting herself, according to the staff there, so we went to see her, and she said that the night before she'd found a razor blade on her bed. It started her thinking bad thoughts, right?
"I asked her how she was now, and she said she was very tired, she just wanted to sleep.
"My strategy was to say, 'If someone put a razor on your bed, that's very mean, and we'll take care of it. We'll check that your room is safe, so you can sleep, if that's what you want to do.'
"The staff were a bit upset: 'Why don't you take her in?'
"All of us have moods and moments, and these people are no different. This crisis seemed to have passed. It may come back, but you can't lock everyone up who has a fleeting impulse."
The police have decided that they will act tomorrow on the big guy with the attitude problem, which means we can get back on the road. Constable Bateman told me earlier that his training has taught him to go slow - the more chaotic and threatening an incident is, the more slowly and quietly he moves.
"You make fewer mistakes that way."
Pat Capponi is the author of five works of non-fiction and two mystery novels.
Author Pat Capponi rides along with a team answering the call to help, rather than shoot, the troubled
PAT CAPPONI
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 27, 2007
Constable Ken Batemen presses the buzzer again. Still no answer. There has been a 911 call: female, possible overdose, chest pains. He hits all the buzzers until someone in the building lets us in.
"Pat, hang back a few feet behind Yvon till I signal, okay?"
I nod, watch him walk down the stairs, through a narrow corridor to the apartment we're looking for. He knocks, calls out, "MCIT here. Can you open the door?"
Constable Bateman of 14 Division works for Toronto's Mobile Crisis Intervention Team, a partnership between police and hospitals established in 2002 to respond to calls from emotionally disturbed persons, or "EDPs." He listens, mutters that there's someone there, knocks again, ear against the door. It's open.
It's Constable Bateman's job to ensure that everything is safe for the civilians trailing him: his partner Yvon Morency, who is a nurse, and me. That takes a moment, then he calls that it's clear. Yvon heads in and so do I.
There's a small kitchen bordering a living room. Everything's tidy, except for the blood in the sink and the X-
acto knife blades spilled beside it. On the counter is a basket of medication bottles, a jar hand-labelled "holy water" two-thirds full of pink liquid, an odd-looking dwarf hypodermic and an empty bottle of anti-anxiety drugs. Scattered on the kitchen table are small brown envelopes with "time to take" instructions; the psychiatric hospital gives you these when you're released.
A middle-aged woman, still in her nightdress, is seated in a collapsible chair. Her feet are bare and there's blood soaking through the fabric of her nightgown at her abdomen. She's cradling her left arm and moaning softly. Mr. Morency kneels beside her, taking her pulse, checking her breathing. In response to a question from Constable Bateman, he says, "No cut on the belly. The blood's from the arm."
From where I'm standing, I can see into the back of the apartment. One tidy corner holds a powered-up computer, utterly normal, as is the double bed, carefully made.
The 911 call came from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. An ambulance has been dispatched, and Constable Bateman radios it to hurry. The woman tells Mr. Morency that she had called the ward at CAMH, the one she had been a patient on, and told them what she had done so she wouldn't have to die alone.
"Can you tell me if you hear voices?" Mr. Morency is trying to keep her engaged, alert.
Her voice strengthens in annoyance. "I'm not schizoid."
"No, of course not. Do you know what your diagnosis is?"
"PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Depression."
He keeps her talking, though it's hard to understand her now as she mumbles, head lolling.
She has grown children. "I left them notes on the table. It's only for them, just for them."
She used to work as a nurse. A form announcing that she has been approved for disability lies on the coffee table. She had mixed the medication and the "holy water" and cut her arm so that she would have an easier time injecting the concoction into her veins.
The ambulance must be stuck in traffic.
"I'm so happy, so happy I'm going to die, so happy."
Not today. The Emergency Medical Service team is here.
Once at St. Joseph's Health Centre, we're through the swinging doors, trailing the EMS guys into the hub, and within six minutes a doctor has assessed the woman and ordered four-point restraints. Constable Bateman and Mr. Morency are doing their paperwork at the nurse's counter. Everyone knows everyone else; it's a collegial, kibitzing atmosphere.
Constable Bateman turns to me and asks, "So what do you think?"
What do I think?
I'm not your typical freelance journalist. In the past, I had been the one sitting bleeding in the chair, the one lying on a gurney, the one tied at the wrist and ankles with padded cuffs.
As a psychiatric-survivor activist, I sit on a committee with the unfortunate acronym SLIG, the Saving Lives Implementation Group, co-chaired by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair and lawyer Julian Falconer. We are charged with seeing through the recommendations of a report completed several years ago, Alternatives to the Use of Lethal Force, which was put on hold during the years when Julian Fantino was police chief. Too many people, mostly men, mostly members of visible minorities - most diagnosed with serious mental illness - were winding up shot, winding up dead, after confrontations with Toronto police.
Our committee has endorsed the crisis-intervention teams, which were first established in Toronto's 51 and 52 Divisions in late 2002 and have since expanded to other divisions. But words and proposals on paper are often different from real life. I had asked for the ride-along: It says a lot that the powers that be had enough confidence in the program to allow me this kind of access.
Back at the 14 Division substation, located on the grounds of Exhibition Place, we wait to meet up with another MCIT team, this one out of 5 Division, where a police officer is paired with a nurse from St. Michael's Hospital.
There's a potentially threatening individual "known to police," as they say, and they're strategizing how to handle him. Constable Bateman gives us a little background: The man is huge, muscular, very, very edgy, and has been in the army. He was fired from his job and since then keeps going back to his workplace and raising hell. Having dealt with him before, the team understands how volatile he can be.
"If we go out this afternoon on this, it's a police matter," Constable Bateman says. "So, Pat, you'll stay in the car, and Yvon, so will you. I don't want either of you getting injured."
The team from 5 Division arrives - two women - and the police retire with a sergeant to plan their moves, leaving Mr. Morency and me with Krysia Sayshi, the St. Mike's RN. I ask them both about the program.
"It's very collaborative," Ms. Sayshi says. "Initially, any team has to feel each other out, but it's great to learn the police perspective. And they're very respectful of our skills and respectful of the boundaries. Eighty per cent of the time, we can leave the patient in the home rather than take them into hospital."
Mr. Morency agrees. "We had an EDP call. A woman we knew who's staying in a shelter was saying she was thinking of cutting herself, according to the staff there, so we went to see her, and she said that the night before she'd found a razor blade on her bed. It started her thinking bad thoughts, right?
"I asked her how she was now, and she said she was very tired, she just wanted to sleep.
"My strategy was to say, 'If someone put a razor on your bed, that's very mean, and we'll take care of it. We'll check that your room is safe, so you can sleep, if that's what you want to do.'
"The staff were a bit upset: 'Why don't you take her in?'
"All of us have moods and moments, and these people are no different. This crisis seemed to have passed. It may come back, but you can't lock everyone up who has a fleeting impulse."
The police have decided that they will act tomorrow on the big guy with the attitude problem, which means we can get back on the road. Constable Bateman told me earlier that his training has taught him to go slow - the more chaotic and threatening an incident is, the more slowly and quietly he moves.
"You make fewer mistakes that way."
Pat Capponi is the author of five works of non-fiction and two mystery novels.