The not–guilty verdict in the trial of Ottawa Police Constable Daniel Montsion for the death of Abdirahman Abdi serves as a painful reminder that there is a need for systemic change in how we respond to mental health crises in Ottawa, Ontario, and Canada as a whole, especially in cases with racialized individuals, as more recently illustrated by the deaths of D’Andre Campbell, Caleb Njoko, Regis Korchinski-Paquet and Ejaz Choudry, who each died during a police interaction in Ontario while experiencing a mental health crisis, like Abdirahman Abdi.
At CMHA Ottawa, it is our long-held and often-expressed belief that all communities in Ontario should have the resources to staff enough mobile crisis response teams to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to act as the first response to 911 calls related to mental health crises. Mobile crisis response teams typically include a mental health professional, such as nurse or social worker, who rides alongside a specially-trained police officer. If we use this approach to answer calls like the one police received on the morning of July 24, 2016, we’ll be more likely to see a positive outcome, so our communities may experience fewer tragedies like that of the preventable death of Abdirahman Abdi.
