The Windsor Police Service is hoping to partner with frontline mental health responders on mental health related crisis calls.
Deputy chief Jason Bellaire says the service is working on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with community partners.
He says specific details of the agreement will be presented to the board in the coming months but says the service is excited about the potential partnerships.
"We are particularly excited to have the subject matter experts with us at these calls and hopes to divert people from long waits at the ER or to route them to where they ought to go to get the best they can and slowly and surely and hopefully take some of these interactions out of the hands of the police," he says.
Bellaire says the goal is to have everything in place prior to when the MOU begins.
"There's a good chance I'm going to try and ensure that through everybody else we have working that, that team is ready to go before the MOU starts," says Bellaire. "That's how we want to operate, we want them to be able to be working and we want the delay to be the signing not operations so that is the path we want to take with that."
He says the MOU has not be signed and would not share which agencies the police service is working with.
Currently, the service has its Community Outreach and Support Team to assist with mental health calls.
Earlier this year, Toronto city council approved a similar initiative for mental health calls.