Mike Johnson: Police Assistant Commissioner on the next phase of the Mental Health Response Change Programme

Police say their new approach to mental health callouts is working.  

They're now in phase three out of four of the programme, meaning there's a higher threshold for officers to attend calls from mental health workers.  

Officers will also assess the appropriateness before responding to missing persons reports for those with mental health concerns.  

Police Assistant Commissioner Mike Johnson told Mike Hosking there's been a 75% reduction in mental health patients in their cells.  

He says there have also been 900 fewer calls-for-service in the past month, compared to the same time last year. 

Johnson says the previous system was not a good use of resources, as sitting in EDs with patients wasn’t advancing community safety. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we're up to phase three of the Police and

(00:02):
Health New Zealand's move on their mental health response program.
So phase three is the shift to health led handling,
that's police only attending true emergencies. Now. Mike Johnson is
the Assistant Police Commissioner on this one and he's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Morning to you morning, Mike, how would you assess phase
one and two?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Look, I think those phases have worked well. What we've
seen is seventy five percent reduction and mental health patients
in our selves for assessment firstly, and our calls for
service we've seen we are at about five and a
half thousand calls for service in the last month compared
to a year ago which was about six four hundred,

(00:42):
which just gives you an idea of the volumes that
we're working with here.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, exactly, it was time being wasted or have other
people in the ensuing period stepped in to do what
you were doing.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Look, time hasn't been wasted from a police perspective, absolutely,
because we've got our staff, our police officers out there
doing the work that the public expects that only we
can do with the tools.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
No, that's what I meant by the question was when
you were sitting in an ed ward for six hours
and nothing was actually happening, and you were just waiting
for something to you know, and now you're out in
the field. Were you wasting your time sitting in the
ed war doing nothing going nowhere?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, it wasn't advancing the safety of our communities. It
wasn't from a police perspective, doing what I believe and
police believe we need our officers to do. I think
the community expects that others have stepped in mic and Look,
change is always hard, and mental health is a very
difficult topic. Having worked with this or my career, but

(01:43):
also what have focused on this more recently.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Obviously, Yeah, what's a true emergency quote unquote.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, well this is an interesting one. We're seeing that
the rhetoric around this. Look, we will I just want
to be really clear on this because it's really important.
Police will always respond when there's an offense or an
immediate risk to life or safety. That does not change
and in that case, whether it's mental health professionals or
members of the public, one one one is the way

(02:12):
to get into our system and prioritize absolutely a priority
for us, and we will deal with that. Phase three
that launched on Monday this week is about that non
emergency requests, requests for services for police, assistance from mental
health services and missing person reports from mental health inpatient

(02:34):
unit and EDS. And we've just streamlined that assessment and
the non emergency component in this phase.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Money, how long before this thing shakes down? Do you
you gave us those numbers before? Is this evolving? And
in a year's time we can all get together and
see where it's at or is this it?

Speaker 2 (02:55):
No, this is a four phased approach. The last phase
for Fase four, strangely is in the new year, and
we're looking to have this completed by the middle of
next year.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
All Right, we'll stay in touch. Appreciated very much, Mike Johnson,
who's the police Assistant commissioner on that particular matter. For
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