Saskatoon police are reporting another record year for its police and crisis team (PACT) program.
Saskatoon Police Service’s four police and crisis teams pair an officer with a mental health professional to respond to crisis calls pertaining to mental health.
In 2024, the service responded to 3295 calls, a 25 per cent increase in calls from 2023 and more than triple the number of calls from 2019. according to a report presented at the board of police commissioners meeting Thursday.
“The number of calls having to do with mental health and addiction have increased exponentially,” Jodi Earl, a sergeant with the vulnerable persons unit and author of the report said to commissioners.
Created as a way of diverting more people experiencing mental health crises away from hospitals and jail cells, Chief Cam McBride says the increase in calls is working with 462 diversions from emergency rooms reported last year.
“We’re having good success. I mean, even though the numbers are on the rise, we see the individuals [and] see the outcomes far better,” McBride said.
The report shows the PACT program also diverted 47 people from detention cells and saved the province $380,950, or $437,597 when adjusted for inflation.
However, the challenges are stacking up.
Going hand in hand with homelessness and addictions, officers are running into problems with overcrowded emergency departments.
Earl said if PACT is waiting with a person in the emergency room, they are unable to actively respond to calls in progress. PACT is looking at working with community mental health nurses for ways that medications can be given in the community or client’s homes instead of transporting to a hospital.
“We have noticed that times have gone up and it’s not a police issue, it’s more of a health issue,” she said.
Another challenge facing the program is the lack of transitional or supportive housing.
Wait lists for affordable housing are very long and many private rental properties are not an option for our referrals due to cost and past rental history, the report read.
PACT also runs into issues where people been evicted due to rental arrears. Those details are often uploaded to public data system called CanLii once the matter has been resolved at the Office of Residential Tendencies.
“The majority of the landlords in Saskatoon will consider this when processing a person’s application, and in many cases immediately decline their application particularly if the eviction was concerning rental arrears,” the report said.
“We’re having to again think out of the box. And lots of times we’re leaving people in shelters or leaving them in hotels. So that’s a concern for us,” Earl said
Police say not a day went by last year without an incident related to homeless people occupying or loitering in an apartment or condominium, either. Police received 2,682 calls related to those concerns last year with building management staff having to ask people to leave, or having to clean up debris and repair vandalism in addition to managing concerns from paying tenants.
“Sometimes it never feels like it’s enough, but hopefully we’re getting them out of their elevated risk and kind of moving it so that they can propel themselves on,” Earl said.
