MONTREAL - Five million dollars worth of new measures were unveiled Friday to help Montreal police deal with the prickly issue of policing the homeless and mentally ill.
The measures include the creation of a special unit to add a social worker into the mix during conflicts with the homeless.
Beds with be added to mental health facilities and an emergency room study will be undertaken to assess the impact of the mentally ill on the system.
Also two teams will be created to monitor at-risk mental health patients.
"This team that is put in place will accompany the police men and women if there is a crisis," said Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay at the Friday press conference.
The measures were considered necessary following police shootings of Mario Hamel last summer and Farshad Mohammadi last January, both of which raised serious questions about the police department's ability to deal with homeless people suffering from mental illness.
One who deals with the homeless on a daily basis cautiously applauded the initiative.
"It should be regarded as a first step, not a final step. There are other measures that need to be put in place," said Matthew Pearce of the Old Brewery Mission.
The province is hoping that sending people in to deal with the homeless and oversee their medications could ease smoe burden on the health system."If we take care of them at home, like the nurses can go at home two or three times a day to give the medication, it decreases the amount of admission in hospitals by 40 percent," said Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc.
The new intervention units will be on the streets starting in June from 4 p.m. until midnight and it is hope that it will eventually get extended to 24 hours a day.
"It's an excellent start but obviously eventually we are maybe going to have to expand for different hours during the day," said Montreal police spokesperson Fady Dagher, .
The province will pay $4.25 million for the project while the city will pay $750,000 a year.
