Ontario now offers an 18-hour course that teaches police recruits how to deal with people suffering from a mental health crisis, marking the first time such training has been offered to the province’s law enforcement cadets.

The three-day training session was introduced last week by the Ontario Police College in Aylmer, provincial officials told CBC News.

The new course underscores the dual role of Ontario officers, who function as both law enforcement officials and social worker, in a province grappling with ways to minimize deadly police shootings and beatings in emergency calls involving people experiencing mental health issues .

The course was designed as a direct response to the 2018 Iacobucci Report, drafted in the wake of the 2013 police shooting death of Sammy Yatim, a teenager who was killed aboard a Toronto streetcar while in a mental health crisis.

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CBC News
July 7, 2023