Mental health commissioner says while mental illness is yet to be confirmed as a factor in latest police shootings, plan would be a big advance in how police deal with such confrontations
Queensland police officers who answer calls to disturbances would have instant access to records of mental illness under a plan to address an unusual spike in police shootings.
Under the proposal by the commissioner, Ian Stewart, police could check names or addresses on their tablet computers to see if mental health histories are flagged.
The idea has the support of mental health commissioner, Lesley van Schoubroeck, who has met Stewart twice since raising concerns on Monday about the number of police shootings this year.
Van Schoubroeck told Guardian Australia that while mental illness was yet to be confirmed as a factor in any of the shootings, Stewart’s plan would be a big advance in how police dealt with such confrontations.
“With new technology [police] should be able to type the name in and know immediately – not just whether they’re dealing with someone who has a history of acting out, but also who can talk to this person and help de-escalate the issue,” she said.
“If someone has a history, there’s usually someone that can de-escalate them and know how to talk to that person but you can’t expect police to know that.
“So as police drive to the house, if they’ve got the address or the name of the person, someone can be ringing Mum, Dad, neighbour, psychiatrist, psychologist. They don’t have to be there but they can be on the phone.
“I think that’s one of the biggest things we can actually do and it’s not rocket science, it’s just a matter of getting through red tape.”
Van Schoubroeck said it was Stewart’s view was that such a system was “one of the things that needs to happen” under a police review of violent confrontations.
“His training can be the best in the world [but] he doesn’t employ mental health professionals and it’s them and families that can usually contribute to the de-escalation,” she said.
Van Schoubroeck plans to involve families of people with mental illness – including those with children shot dead by police – in consultation about the proposal as well as with police on training.
She was in contact with “people who do have youngsters who can be quite psychotic [and] dangerous sometimes, who have actually learned to de-escalate and have brought police into their houses”.
“I think they have reflections on how things can be de-escalated and how we can better get families involved,” Van Schoubroeck said. “They give police an idea of what might happen. If someone is in fact ‘lunging with a knife’, maybe he does that often and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“If Mum’s not frightened of somebody, then two police probably would feel they don’t need to be either.”
Forty-two per cent of police shooting victims in Australia over the past two decades had mental health issues, an Australian Institute of Criminology report last year found.
There have been 15 police shootings in Queensland in the past three years, including six this year – three of them resulting in deaths in the last week. There were no shootings at all in the three years to 2011, according to the institute.
Van Schoubroeck said she understood the current sharing of mental health records with police was “done patchily”. “Police can’t wait a day for someone to sort through their records. It’s now,” she said.
Ensuring limited access to health records would address privacy concerns, Van Schoubroeck said. “Obviously we don’t want all our health records given to police,” she said.
“But it’s about how much you share because technology is at a place where you don’t actually have to share your entire health record, you just have to share what is pertinent.”