Policing in trying situations

The caller to police was concerned about a family member who suffered from a severe mental-health illness, and who was somewhere in the neighbourhood, behaving in a manner they feared put people at risk.

With around 17 years of police service by then, most in patrol, I already had considerable experience with mental-health-related calls for service.

From experience, I knew that, regardless of what you knew about the situation going in and any plans of approach you made in advance based on that information, once you encountered the person involved all bets were usually off.

Because situations suddenly and unpredictably change.

Invariably, an absolute guarantee of someone’s behaviour by another person means nothing when the subject individual’s behaviour, without warning, unexpectedly changes and hurts someone else.

“They’ve never done that before,” is small consolation.

So you have to react accordingly to what you encounter, to the unexpected and unpredictable.

Several years earlier, I was at another such call, concerning someone’s family member suffering from mental-health issues.

Except there were no fears he was putting people at risk.

We were at his apartment with an ambulance, when he suddenly and unexpectedly pulled out and brandished a machete he’d had hidden beside him.

There had been nothing to remotely suggest anything like that would happen, and all you can do is react.

Whether he intended to hurt himself, or others, there was no luxury of guessing.

The circumstances were such that we were in close, in order to assess him, because the nature of our roles as first responders can inevitably take you in close, even into harm’s way, in order to be effective.

Had the circumstances been slightly different, where we were far enough way to draw our handguns, our training would’ve kicked in, we would have drawn, and challenged him. Had he attacked us, there would be no options, especially in closed confines, because you can’t guess or assume.

Given our proximity, which was dictated by those specific circumstances, and with only milliseconds to react, experience kicked in, and he was physically disarmed.

Which is not taught in training, because it’s not a realistic way to address an armed threat.

There was no time to draw our handguns, anyway.

You place yourself relative to each individual situation, as the situation evolves.

But, back to the case I started with. Our subject for that call was on foot and it was nighttime, so we were driving around searching when suddenly our headlights illuminated him, and what was unexpected was his size.

He was huge.

Although we thought he was going to trash our patrol car, there was a brief pause, where we somehow got him handcuffed and into the car without much ado.

Once he realized what happened, he exploded and began reacting violently in the back seat, and didn’t stop.

We had concerns about the vehicle, and concerns the handcuffs might not hold, while the yelling, the swearing and his threats to us were indelibly unique.

It was (excuse me) almost inhuman.

We also wondered what would happen at the hospital, given how busy they are; but upon arrival, staff was waiting, and he was immediately sedated, concluding our involvement.

Days later we were at the psychiatric ward for another matter, and he was there.

He was completely, absolutely different, and was now a very large and docile bear of a man, who surprisingly remembered our earlier encounter with him. And who offered a heartfelt apology for how he’d been that night.

But apologies can only go so far in other circumstances, and understandably there are questions when any end tragically.

The initial encounter with him could have been tragic, had the situation been even slightly different.

The police aren’t the only part of the equation, and a decision elsewhere could have set the trajectory for the circumstances the police are left to face.

I’ve seen fatal consequences pursuant to the actions of health-care professionals.

And we’ve come to the rescue of crisis-intervention-trained professionals out in the field, who were suddenly caught up in a maelstrom involving a patient.

Where potential dangers are posed and seconds count, options can unfortunately become limited.

Kevin Birkett retired from the Winnipeg Police Service in 2020.