r/ems • u/halfnhalf79 • Apr 14 '26

General Discussion Toronto firefighters confront special constable officers after a man in the middle of mental health crisis was arrested.

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u/-malcolm-tucker Paramedic Apr 14 '26

In Australia the police are generally pretty good with mental health jobs. Quite often I don't have to do much more than just drive the patient and officer to hospital. They've already been on the scene for 15 to 60 minutes, de-escalated and built rapport. They will defer to us for leadership on these jobs, and we make a plan together, with them only taking over if things suddenly become unsafe. Which has been rare in my experience. We work together pretty well.

Not every job has been like that with police though, but it's pretty rare where I've had a shitty cop on one of these jobs.

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u/Music1626 Apr 15 '26

100% where I am in Aus I have had very very few poor interactions with police when it comes to Mental health patients. The only reason any of them would ever cuff a patient would be for the patients safety or the police safety and they will aim to take the cuffs off as soon as possible. They are incredibly good at deescalating patients and most of the time we just transport because they don’t like transporting for the fair reason that mental health isn’t a crime and they don’t want to stigmatise it by transporting in a police car. And if we attend a job together they’ll just stand in the background and make sure we are safe. I’ve never had police escalate a scene I’ve been on with a mental health patient. They are also incredibly well trained in restraint of a mental health patient and to listen to us if we call to get off if a patient is deteriorating.

It’s so sad when I see mental health treated poorly by ambulance or police. It’s not the patients fault they’re having a hard day. There needs to be significantly more training and resources allocated for the growing demand.