Article content continued

“It would be horrific if they started taking people to the remand centre for mental health treatment,” Shand said. “I understand police logic in not wanting to spend huge amounts of time in emergency rooms … but they need to look at alternatives.”

“We’re afraid of the police. I’m afraid of the police and I don’t want to be put in jail. This is very visceral,” added Austin Mardon, an Order of Canada recipient who also lives with schizophrenia. “(The remand centre) is not a treatment facility. It’s a prison. There’s a clear delineation between being sick and doing a crime.”

A remand centre is a facility where prisoners are temporarily detained while awaiting trial or sentencing.

Alberta Health Services has nursing staff as well as a doctor and psychiatrists available at the new northwest remand centre. But the provincial definition of “designated facilities” would have to change before police could legally bring a mental health patient there.

A police spokeswoman wasn’t aware of the proposal and suggested police were referring to the old remand centre instead. Although that empty building is sometimes used as an overflow shelter, it has no treatment options. Police were unable to make anyone familiar with the proposal available for comment.

The budget brief came out Monday with written responses to councillor questions on the proposed operating budget. Council starts debating the budget this Friday.

Pressured by an increase in emergency calls, police are asking for 27 more full-time positions to man the new northwest division station, plus 130 new front-line officers, 32 more investigators and more behind-the-scenes support over the next three years.