Critics blasted a proposed $26-million budget boost for Ottawa police as community advocates and anti-racism activists said the money would be better spent on alternative responses to mental health calls and to those involving Black and Indigenous people. Read MoreCommunity advocates and anti-racism activists said the money would be better spent on alternative responses to mental health crises.
Community advocates and anti-racism activists said the money would be better spent on alternative responses to mental health crises.
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Critics blasted a proposed $26-million budget boost for Ottawa police as community advocates and anti-racism activists said the money would be better spent on alternative responses to mental health calls and to those involving Black and Indigenous people.
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Sam Hersh of the Horizon Ottawa community advocacy group spoke to the Ottawa Police Services Board on Friday and pointed to the success of the Alternate Neighbourhood Crisis Response (ANCHOR) program in handling mental health crisis calls that would have otherwise been directed to police.
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Launched in August 2024, ANCHOR handled 4,464 calls in its first year of operations, with the majority (about 93 per cent) of those calls placed directly to its 2-1-1 crisis line.
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The Evening Citizen
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The remaining seven per cent (262 calls) were transferred to ANCHOR from Ottawa police emergency lines, according to a one-year update to council that will be tabled at the Nov. 25 community services committee.
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Hersh said the program, “though limited and still with too much police involvement, (has) shown what is possible when we focus on a non-police response to mental health calls, but its mandate must be expanded.”
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ANCHOR operated solely in Centretown during its first year, with its boundaries set to expand westward to Island Park Drive and south to Carling Avenue, extending into the catchment area for the Somerset West Community Health Centre.
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The ANCHOR program is set to receive $700,000 next year, according to the city’s draft budget, which critics have contrasted with the $26 million that the Ottawa Police Service will receive with its largest budget increase in a decade.
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“This is why the $26-million increase shouldn’t be approved, and why some funding from that increase should be redirected toward real alternatives,” Hersh told the OPSB on Friday. “The police budget frames mental health calls as a major driver of workload and therefore uses them to justify increased spending.”
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The police budget frames mental health calls as a major driver of workload and therefore uses them to justify increased spending
Sam Hersh Horizon Ottawa
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Since mental health calls make up a significant portion of police responses, Hersh said, the solution is not to increase spending on police, but rather to reduce police involvement through community-led, non-policing interventions.
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“Proper funding for ANCHOR would allow it to operate citywide, remove the restrictive violent and non-violent triage model that still informs police in many calls … and ensure that calls involving Black, Indigenous, disabled and unhoused residents are met with care rather than enforcement.”