The role of police in conducting wellness checks: Insight from a study of police data

ABSTRACT

The role of police in conducting wellness checks has received considerable public attention in Canada in recent years. Drawing upon data from both the computer-aided dispatch and records management systems of a mid-size police agency in Western Canada, we identify and then descriptively assess all wellness checks conducted in 2020 (N = 1,114 events). As part of our exploration, we explore the nature of these events, the characteristics of those involved, and the responses of the police. Our results reveal a series of patterns regarding the characteristics and outcomes of these events, including by ‘official’ versus ‘unofficial’ status. Our results also shed insight into the challenges of using police data for these kinds of research questions. By providing researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with an empirical analysis of wellness checks, we hope to contribute to evidence-based decision-making about these events moving forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Check well-being
• computer-aided dispatch
• mental health
• police data
• policing
• records management system
• wellness check

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing for providing us with the opportunity to conduct this research as a practitioner-researcher collaboration via the Virtual Scholar Program.

Disclosure statement

The lead author is intimately connected with the data analysed as part of this research. With that being said, all procedures performed by the lead author were conducted with oversight from the collaborator who otherwise has no connection with these data. Neither author has any financial interest in this research.

Notes

1. In both instances, police were called by third parties to check the well-being of these recipients. In both instances, police also utilised force during their interactions with such recipients, including lethal force in the case of Chantel Moore, who was brandishing a knife. Although a commission later determined that police engaged in no criminal wrongdoing in the case of Chantel Moore, the officer who attended Mona Wang’s residence is now facing criminal charges for assault.

2. The main textual remarks field is used by call-takers to describe the initial call. It is typically quite short in length and does not include additional remarks added after the file is first generated.

3. For example, in one event, a male called the police to report that people were breaking into his home. Upon arrival, officers determined that the break-and-enter report was false and that the caller was experiencing what they believed to be a drug-induced psychosis. In this case, the caller became the recipient of a wellness check.

4. We also attempted to generate a dichotomous on-view variable by utilising the desk identification information provided in the raw calls for service data (e.g. an event created by a call-taker desk would indicate it was public-initiated, whereas an event created by a radio-operator desk or an officer’s in-car computer would indicate it was police-initiated). With that being said, this inaccurately classified requests from other agencies as being on-view, which was not theoretically correct, and therefore we retained the lead author’s manual coding for the purposes of this distinction.

5. The list of terms was derived via a combination of intuition and operational experience.

6. This group comprises the largest visible minority population in the jurisdiction under study.

7. We recognise that the police also implicitly confirm the well-being of people at many other types of events and in many other kinds of circumstances, where the primary justification for their presence involves other elements, like crime.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any financial support.

Notes on contributors

Rylan Simpson

Jeremy Pearce is a police officer in British Columbia, Canada. Throughout his career, he has worked in multiple different units, including patrol and community policing. Prior to his career in policing, he worked in various capacities within social services, including in addictions and mental health. He completed his M.P.S. at Wilfrid Laurier University and his B.A. at Simon Fraser University. He conducted this research project as part of his participation in the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing’s Virtual Scholar Program.

Rylan Simpson, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. His research interests include policing, perceptions of police, police organisations, theories of crime, and social psychology. He approaches his research using a variety of different methodologies, including experimental and quantitative analyses. He has recently published his work in Criminology & Public Policy, PLoS ONE, Journal of Experimental Criminology, Policing & Society, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, and Women & Criminal Justice.