Toronto has approved a pilot project for community safety and crisis support services that will test a non-police led approach to non-emergency and non-violent calls including those involving wellness checks. (iStock/MarcBruxelle)

Toronto to pilot non-police led safety and crisis support service

Toronto has approved a pilot project for community safety and crisis support services that will test a non-policel led approach to non-emergency and non-violent calls including those involving wellness checks.

The pilot project, approved by city council on Tuesday, will be implemented in three areas of the city: the northwest, the northeast and the downtown east neighborhoods.

A fourth will serve Indigenous communities in the city. The press release said that this pilot will be Indigenous-led and co-developed with Indigenous communities.

“These pilots are being done in the right way with the best advice from our professional staff and they will help Toronto residents experiencing a non-violent crisis,” Toronto Mayor John Tory said in a statement.

“These are the first important steps along the road to having many of these calls for people in distress answered by professionals other than the police.”

Tory said that Toronto police respond to about 30,000 mental health calls a year.

The pilot project comes in response to the city’s council direction to its staff in June 2020 for changes to policing and to create a non-police led alternative safety response model for calls that involve residents in crisis.

Over the summer, there was a call for change after the deaths of Ejaz Ahmed Choudry and Regis Korchinski-Paquet during police interactions.

“This change will not only see mental health professionals applying their skills and training to incidents where that will be a better answer, but it will also allow police to focus on core policing priorities such as violent crime,” Tory said.

This year, the pilots will begin training, hiring and developing resources, which includes determining how those in need will reach the service.

The goal is to have them fully up and running from 2022 to 2025.

The press release added that the pilots will be reviewed every year to assess funding requirements and future budgets as well as see if there are opportunities to scale the pilot to its full capacity before 2025.

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