UBC professor Kerry Jang has told the Straight that a new Vancouver Police Department report suggests that officers on the beat are “truly in crisis mode”.

Jang, an expert in psychiatry and statistical analysis, claimed that a lack of mental health facilities in Vancouver has led to a shift in how the VPD functions.

“What their report did is really paint us a picture of what a police officer faces on a daily basis,” Jang said in a telephone interview. “And I think that that is significant because it shows that the police have moved from people of law enforcement to mental health workers.”

Titled “Lost in Transition: How a lack of capacity in the mental health system is failing Vancouver’s mentally ill and diminishing police resources,” the report states that 31 percent of police calls in Vancouver involve the mentally ill. In the Downtown Eastside, 49 percent of police calls involve at least one mentally ill individual.

Its top recommendations include the implementation of a mental healthcare facility, the establishment of an “urgent response center” where individuals can be assessed according to their needs, and that services for people who are diagnosed as chronically and mentally ill be increased.

Under the Mental Health Act, a police officer is required to arrest and escort to a hospital any person they find suffering from a mental disorder who poses a risk to themselves or others or who refuses treatment. According to Chief constable Jim Chu’s cover letter for the report, the number of such arrests has increased from 360 in 1999 to 1743 in 2007.

“I think the police are fed up and I don’t blame them,” Jang said. “I think what the police are saying is that they are not mental health workers.”

He maintained that the best thing that the City can do is focus on prevention through the development of mental health facilities.

B.C. Health Minister George Abbott told the Globe and Mail that the province would take steps toward reinstitutionalizing the mentally ill.

Jang described Abbott’s announcement as a “knee-jerk reaction”, and noted that the VPD’s report is not the first to make such a recommendation.