The Georgia Straight featured a study co-authored by Thomas Kerr, a UBC professor in the Department of Medicine, about the Vancouver Police Department’s application of the Mental Health Act.
The 2015 paper found that the VPD contribute to widening social control, not to the betterment of the lives of people living with mental illness.
“We are over-relying on the police and the mental-health system to deal with, in many cases, what are addicted individuals,” Kerr said. “That’s not really where they belong.”
