North Bay police often forced to spend hours in hospitals for mental-health patient handovers
North Bay police Chief Daryl Longworth is hoping to meet with the city hospital’s CEO to discuss ways of streamlining the handover of mental-health patients.
At the police services board meeting Tuesday morning, Longworth said police spent more than 260 hours in two months at the North Bay Regional Health Centre waiting to transfer mental-health patients apprehended by police.
“We have a wonderful mental-health response through the police service here where we're partnered with mental health workers and nursing staff that work with and partner with our officers,” Longworth said.
Statistics showed that officers spent 117 hours at the hospital in January and 151 hours in February. That creates staffing problems on the ground, he said.
“The number of officers we have on the street is significantly diminished when we have to have officers tied up at the hospital,” he said.
“It's part of the Mental Health Act, which requires (police) to be there until they're accepted by the hospital.”
He’s hoping to meet with hospital CEO Paul Heinrich to discuss the matter.
“So it's just a conversation to see how we can speed up the process at both ends to get our officers back on the street,” Longworth said.
“My intention is to meet the CEO because I'm new here. There's a number of people in the organization and the community I'd like to meet and the CEO of the hospital is certainly one.”
Longworth added he would like to see a more streamlined process to make better use of both hospital of police resources.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Poilievre kicked out of Commons after calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'wacko'
Testy exchanges between the prime minister and his chief opponent ended with the Opposition leader and one of his MPs being ejected from the House of Commons on Tuesday -- and the rest of Conservative caucus walking out of the chamber in protest.
Baby, grandparents among 4 people killed in wrong-way police chase on Ontario's Hwy. 401
A police chase which started with a liquor store robbery in Bowmanville Monday night ended in tragedy some 20 minutes later when a suspect fleeing police entered Highway 401 in the wrong direction and caused a pileup which killed an infant and the child's grandparents, as well as the suspect, investigators say.
Freeland leaves capital gains tax change out of coming budget implementation bill, here's why
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will be tabling yet another omnibus bill to pass a sweeping range of measures promised in her April 16 federal budget, though left out of the legislation will be the government's proposed capital gains tax change.
CSE says it shared information on Chinese hacking of parliamentarians in 2022
While several MPs and senators say they were only recently made aware of China-backed hackers targeting them, the Communications Security Establishment, one of Canada's intelligence agencies, says it shared information about the incident with parliamentary officials in June of 2022.
Man dies after suffering cardiac arrest while waiting in ER, widow wants investigation
When an ambulance took David Lippert to the hospital in March of 2023, the 68-year-old Kitchener, Ont., executive was hoping to find out why he was feeling weak and unable to walk. Some 24 hours later, he was found unresponsive in the ER.
Sword-wielding man attacks passersby in London, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring 4 others
A man wielding a sword attacked members of the public and police officers in a northeast London suburb Tuesday, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring four other people, British authorities said.
WATCH Arnold Schwarzenegger spotted filming in Elora, Ont.
The name of the project has not been officially released although it’s widely believed to be the Netflix series FUBAR.
Eviction for landlord's use was legitimate, despite owners' partial move, B.C. court rules
A B.C. judge has upheld the eviction of a family from their North Vancouver townhouse, finding that the landlords did not take an unreasonable amount of time to move into the home after the tenants vacated it.
What's causing the catastrophic rainfall in Kenya?
The torrential rains and deadly floods that have hit Kenya since March have been some of the worst in the country in recent years. Here's how factors combined to create the deadly deluge.