Only one witness was heard Friday at the hearings of the commission of inquiry into the death of officer Maureen Breau, at the courthouse in Trois-Rivières. A captain from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) explained that police officers now have to deal with a skyrocketing number of cases of mental problems.
The head of advisory services and operations support for the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), Daniel Boulianne, said the increase amounts to approximately 2,000 additional calls per year.
In the past five years, police officers contacted about 73,000 people. SQ, that is, 40 people per day, exclusively for cases of mentally disturbed persons. Cases can vary from elderly people suffering from dementia who have wandered off to cases of people who find themselves in a state of psychosis.
Captain Boulianne emphasizes that the portrait of police reality has changed significantly due to mentally ill cases, but also with the appearance of homelessness in recent years, whether visible or not.
Contribution of social workers: a Homer
In this spirit, Daniel Boulianne emphasized the great importance of social workers who are increasingly being engaged in police units to help police officers who are generalists in this regard. On this topic he talks about the real Homer
and points out that even police officers who were initially skeptical are now confused.
Faced with this new reality, Captain Boulianne wonders if a police officer, for example, is really the person designated to find help in a hospital in case a person becomes disorganized, a situation that police officers are currently experiencing. Instead, he suggests that the police should be the last line of defense.
With the contribution of social workers, he notices better cooperation, better supervision and better knowledge of different resources, even better credibility with the medical staff when the police show up at the emergency room with a disorganized person, and psycho-social supervision is carried out in advance by social workers.
The inquest into the death of Officer Maureen Breau will be suspended for the next two weeks. Hearings will continue the week of March 11, particularly with the testimony of officers from the Louiseville station who were with the sergeant during the tragic intervention on March 27.
With data from Marie-ÈveTrudel