The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) just unveiled a new progressive policy for dealing with people who have a mental illness.

The focus is on mental illness training and de-escalation strategies so that police officers can better recognize behaviour and make appropriate decisions. And I don’t have to tell you that the appropriate decisions of police officers continue to dominate North American headlines and are the subject of a growing number of protests.

Currently, the Mental Health Act and other laws still state that police officers may take a more aggressive route.

With the new policy, VPD members “are expected to recognize behaviours that are indicative of a person affected by mental illness or in a crisis,” the policy states. “When a member determines that police engagement in the first instance will result in undue safety concerns for the individual, the public and/or the members involved, it may be acceptable to not engage with the individual at all.”

The new Mental Health Strategy is based on months of consultations with health authorities, University of British Columbia psychiatrists, and mental health advocates, including CMHA B.C.’s Senior Director of Policy, Research, and Planning, Jonny Morris.

Police officers are now able to take a person directly to a physician for examination depending on the situation.

Crisis negotiation team members are now required to complete a 40-hour refresher course once every five years. They must also participate in six mandatory negotiation training days throughout the year.

The policy also calls for the vigorous involvement of supervisory officers in calls that may involve a mental health element, including monitoring calls and attending the scene if need be.

The change comes in the wake of repeated warnings in recent years from both the police and the city that Vancouver is facing a mental health crisis. Many police officers felt they had become more like health workers than law enforcers.

VPD crime statistics reveal a steadily increasing number of apprehensions (3,045 last year, up from 2,278 in 2010) under the mental health act in recent years.

More than a few have ended fatally at the hands of law officials.

Of course, the whole point of the initiative is to reduce the killings and arrests of people in psychiatric distress. In some situations, police intervention actually escalates the issue in the first place. In the absence of imminent harm to the public, it makes more sense for mental health professionals to intervene to de-escalate the person than for law officials.

Such a policy could have saved the life of Andrew Loku, who was fatally shot last summer in Toronto in his apartment complex for people with mental illness.

The hope is that, as the mental health dialogue continues to grow – inspiring everything from powerful social media campaigns to progressive startups – more cities will follow Vancouver’s lead. Toronto, I’m looking at you.

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