A forum hosted by Save our Streets (SOS) has come up with some ideas for the senior governments to look at when it comes to things like mental health and addictions and the court system.
Jess Ketchum, one of the co-founders of S.O.S. who is from Quesnel, says one suggestion on mental health and addictions was something he called “compassionate involuntary care.”
“If somebody has an addiction and they are assessed, properly assessed from a health perspective, and the professionals will then decide is this person capable of making their own decisions or not, and if not then they will be, I would assume and this has to be left to the professionals, but they would put into a facility for detox. That could be in a hospital and then you graduate from there into a hospital and further into recovery.”
Ketchum says those in attendance called for more treatment and recovery services.
“Here in BC I don’t think you’ll find a politician that disagrees with that, that we need to have additional recovery services, but where are they ? We haven’t seen them. I think that the Premier has said that he believes in having more services on a regional basis. That’s great and I certainly agree with that, but as we told him we want to celebrate results, not announcements. We don’t even know how many of those regional facilities will be in the future, or where they’ll be. And I think that sort of plan needs to be articulated to British Columbians, because some are fed up with having announcements, and not getting the results that we think are required.”
As for the courts, Ketchum says it was pretty clear that people wanted to see changes.
“The province and the feds, they point fingers at each other on issues around the revolving door of the judicial system for multiple offenders, and we believe, and I think that the forum laid out that there are several things that the province can do to help speed up that system. And one of the things that they can do is further instructions to their prosecutors about prosecuting more cases on a regular basis, so certainly there was discussion on that point.”
Ketchum says harsher sentences for all repeat offenders was another suggestion.
“Not only did it come up but there was discussion around the difference between violent offenders and whether they should be treated differently than just people who are offending over and over and over again. And the consensus was no, if you break the law over and over and over again there needs to be a message of keeping you in incarceration.”
He says the general consensus on policing was that more resources were needed.
“They are always in need of more resources because they have vacancies in their staff compliments that are pretty serious and concerning. The RCMP alone in BC have a vacancy of about 700 members, and that has to impact their ability to do the job. The other thing that they were very definite about was the connection between policing and the healthcare system. Right now, police are expected to do so much more than they did 20 years ago, so much more in the area of first responders like firemen or doctors, and that has been a real added burden to them.”
Ketchum says police are almost like social workers these days.
The final topic at the forum was on housing.
Ketchum says they focused on housing for marginalized communities, and not why millennials can’t afford a house in West Vancouver.
He says it was pointed out that what we’re doing today is largely warehousing these people, and that there is no segregation if you will, between the people who are suffering from these illnesses and the people who are preying upon them.
“For example, the downtown east side there are numerous SRO’s (Single-room occupancy) that certainly are providing a roof over the heads for people that are addicted and suffering from mental illnesses, but they are also an open market for drug dealers who are there every day perpetuating people’s suffering.”
Ketchum says it was suggested that accommodations be provided that were smaller in size.
“That is decentralized if you will from the downtown east side, that is small, respectful of local communities needs and concerns, and where you limit the number of people who are addicted in these facilities, in these housing developments, because the problem is as I understand it is if you’re addicted and living near a bunch of other people who are addicted, you’re chances of getting clean are hampered significantly.”
Ketchum says they are in the process of putting together a white paper on the forum that will go to the senior governments.
He says they had a lot of great guests at the forum including the NDP Minister of State for Community Safety and Integrated Services Terry Yung, Conservative leader John Rustad, and former BC Attorney-General Cash Heed to name just a few.
Ketchum says he thinks the forum was a resounding success.
“No question it was a success in that for the first time we brought together this coordinated effort to talk about solutions rather than the problems. We had many, many, many people from the community wanting to come to speak to the extent of the problems, how bad it was, where it was really bad, what is really bad. And we just felt that we’ve heard so much about the extent of the problem that we really needed to focus on solutions. This was an opportunity to do that, and I think we succeeded in that.”
Ketchum says they will likely hold another forum down the road.
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