John MacDonald: Don't panic about the police mental health call-out changes - Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

From today, the police don’t intend to respond to every mental health callout. But I don’t think we’re going to see any major difference. I’ll tell you why shortly,. And it’s based on an experience I had on Friday night.

So if you’re worried about the police saying “not our department” if you call up, as of today, about someone having a mental health issue - don’t panic.

But you know the background to this and what’s led to today’s change with the threshold for transporting mental health patients increasing; there’ll be fewer visits to mental health clinics; and police handovers to mental health staff will be shorter than what they have been.

So 11 percent. That’s a key stat. Before today, 11 percent of police work involved mental health call-outs. And, as Chris Cahill from the Police Association was saying on Newstalk ZB today, whenever the cops are called-out to one of these jobs - it can keep them away from doing other police work for hours.

He says, on average, a mental health callout keeps police tied-up for three hours - sometimes as long as five or six hours.

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