The body that oversees the Toronto Police Service will consider recommendations to immediately bolster mental health services and gather community input on the police budget at a meeting this week in an effort to combat anti-Black racism within the force.<\/p>\n
The eight suggestions were developed amid a renewed focus on the relationship between police and racialized communities in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man who died while a white cop pressed a knee to his neck for more than eight minutes.<\/p>\n “The Board must be a catalyst, along with others, for the examination of reforms and changes that are in the city’s best interests \u2014 particularly in the areas of community safety and policing,” reads the document signed by board chair Jim Hart.<\/p>\n The report, which the board will review at a meeting on Friday, suggests expanding the Mobile Crisis Intervention Team (MCIT) Program “on an urgent basis,” with funding from the current budget.<\/p>\n It notes that the MCIT Program is not currently able to meet the demand for crisis intervention in the city and says the program connects people in crisis with community resources rather than the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n It also says that if an “alternative mobile crisis intervention model is identified” and everybody agrees, the board can reallocate funding from the MCIT Program to that new model.<\/p>\n