The answer is yes. It has been successful with the chronic users of police resources who have mental health issues. I think it is quite successful. Other police agencies in B.C. are using assertive community teams, the “ACT teams”, as they call them, in working with the community. I think those have probably had more success than we've had in dealing with that cohort of people using police resources. They've been more organized than we have.
Nevertheless, if we have as many untreated people in our communities as we have, it's going to continue to be a significant drain on policing. I don't think any of these things have addressed this group of people who live in our society and who are failing to get by.
In British Columbia, we have reduced the number of beds for mentally ill people so significantly that we have literally hundreds of people who are not doing well in the community. As a province, that lack of resources being put into handling people who have serious mental health issues has created a reality in which police have become the default mental health workers. Chief Chu and Mayor Roberston in Vancouver have declared it a mental health crisis emergency.