'Police should not be attending wellness checks': non-profit group

Police should not be responding to mental health wellness checks, according to a B.C. non-profit human rights organization.

Among their advocacy work, the Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society has highlighted deaths during police wellness checks in recent years, especially among people of colour. They were speaking following the guilty plea in court this week by a Kelowna RCMP officer accused of assaulting Mona Wang at the UBCO campus, in January 2020.

Constable Lacy Browning assaulted Wang, a nursing student, during the wellness check.

Shocking CCTV video footage from the campus that evening, made national and international headlines. It shows Const. Browning placing her boot on Wang’s head and pulling her up by her hair, having dragged her along the apartment corridor to the building entrance.

“It makes no sense that we continue to treat mental health as a criminal issue,” Meenakshi Mannoe, criminalization and policing campaigner with the society, told Kelowna10. “We criminalize people for the symptoms they experience, and what we actually do is traumatize them each time an armed uniformed police officer is involved in the call.”

Mannoe said investments need to be made in community-based, proactive response, “… not an armed officer who attends when you’re at your worst, but an array of resources and supports that are available preemptively.”

In recent years, police departments across B.C. have started to deploy so-called PACTs (Police and Crisis Teams).

In Kelowna, that involves a specially-trained ununiformed officer joining a psychiatric nurse in an unmarked vehicle to deal with crises.

However, in the case of the Wang response over two years ago, that didn’t happen.

At the time, then-mayor Colin Basran said the city didn’t have the resources to run a PACT team 24/7. It was not operational on the evening Wang was assaulted by the police officer.

Mannoe said there are questions left unanswered, including why the RCMP officer violently undertook a wellness check, and why the officer was alone? She’s said it was “chilling” to learn the guilty officer is still employed by the RCMP, on administrative duty.

Because of Const. Browning’s guilty plea, the scheduled trial featuring testimony and evidence did not proceed. She will be sentenced next year.

In an email, B.C. RCMP told Kelowna10 they would reserve comment on the court outcome at this time “… respecting that sentencing has not yet taken place and we do not wish to impact the ongoing procedures."

RCMP confirmed that while they have monitored the criminal matter, their internal Code of Conduct investigation remains ongoing and is nearing completion.

A civil lawsuit was settled last year between Browning and Wang.

Wang’s statement of claim alleged Browning’s conduct was “abusive” after the officer found the student lying in a state of semi-consciousness in her apartment.

Statements of defence filed by Browning, the Attorney General of Canada and B.C.’s minister of public safety and solicitor general denied any wrongdoing, saying the officer used no more force than was reasonable and necessary in the situation.

For Mannoe, PACTs are not the solution to dealing with mental health calls and she’s not hopeful senior government leadership will change that approach.

“They [PACTs] still involve a level of police personnel. I think, the leadership you’ll see - as we’re seeing with the contaminated drug supply - will come from the ground up,” she said.

Last month a Burnaby RCMP officer, 31-year-old Const. Shaelyn Yang, was fatally stabbed while helping a parks employee check in on a homeless man who was living in a tent.

-- With files from The Canadian Press