The first response was one of, “What are you talking about? We're here to put bad guys in jail.” You have to overcome that. But I can tell you this, we adjusted our recruit training so that our officers go to those social agencies to see first-hand what they're dealing with as it relates to mental illness and addictions, and that something can be done.
Second, what we've done is sold them on the issue that we all got on the job early on to put bad guys in jail. The reality is that when you're putting some mentally ill person in jail because he's stealing something to support an addiction that's masking a mental illness, you're not putting a bad guy in jail. That person should be in a hospital. So we've been selling it by dealing with it this way, on the early intervention side or by channeling people in the right direction, it's going to give you more time. It will free up lots of space in the jails and we can put the really bad guys in there. That's what they want to do. They don't want to deal with these other issues.
Over four years we've seen this dramatic change, even when our downtown officers go to some of these calls. We're opening up the Safe Communities Opportunity and Resource Centre. It's the hub model, but it's very much focused on adults, where we have 18 agencies in one location. It's the police that led this. It has health, social services...United Way, the homeless foundation, Alpha House. We bring those people in with this wraparound service. Instead of taking them upstairs to jail, we put them in there and they're taken care of by the appropriate agency.
We've been able to sell our officers on the idea that by focusing on the social disorder issues and health issues this way, they're going to have more time to chase the bad guys, of which there are lots to go around still. That's where the greatest satisfaction is. I can tell you that as the officers become more senior, they get this better and better. They realize there are more issues than just that somebody's bad or somebody's good. It's not as simple as that. As they become more senior, they get a better understanding. We have no problem at all staffing our over 100 early intervention, crime prevention positions, which are focused on these strategies.