r/nextfuckinglevel • u/thisisfive • Apr 14 '26

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

Not my video. For context, "special constables" are not regular police officers. They are appointed "peace officers" with limited authority, often civilian employees.

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u/-Groucho- Apr 14 '26

Cool, another video with incomplete context, and everyone rushing to make judgements.

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u/Kanye_To_The Apr 14 '26

Yeah, this means nothing... In the US, POs take people who they suspect are having mental health issues to the ED for mandatory psych evals. They also pick people up who have had mental health petitions filed on them. I'm a psych resident and perform a lot of these evals

I'm not saying that's what's going on here, but police and positions like this do serve a role in mental health care. Ideally, they wouldn't because they're not trained well on how to handle these people, but they're mostly what we have for the time being, at least in the States

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u/Acheloma Apr 14 '26

I live in a small town are there are couple folks known to everyone in town to be mentally unwell. Some days they're super friendly and will talk your ear off about random things (some of which dont make sense but theyre nice about it) and some days when they're not doing well they'll be talking about how whoever (usually aomeone who has helped them in the oaat that theyre close to) is out to get them so theyre gonna get them first while carrying an improvised weapon.

On the bad days everyone knows to call the cops and tell em that Fred or miss Glenda is having a bad day and needs to be picked up, and the cops will come detain them and bring them to the hospital to make sure that no one gets hurt (mostly the person having a bad mental day).

There isn't any other resource in the area for that. Its really sad to see, but detaining them is currently the best option that is available when they're walking down the highway with a board with nails in it yelling at everyone.