Greater Sudbury Police took to social media Dec. 27 to detail just how busy officers had been over the holidays.
The post states that members “remained busy over the holiday as we received 915 calls over the past week.”
Those calls “include but are not limited to” 60 mental health-related calls, 51 intimate partner-violence incidents, six sexual assaults, 26 thefts, 22 family disputes, 19 missing persons, 16 break and enters and 9 weapons complaints. Officers also conducted 68 “focused patrols” during the same time period.
Additionally, there were 42 “ambulance assists” the police recorded. A commenter on the post asked for an explanation of the term ambulance assist.
A GSPS spokesperson wrote, “paramedics will call on police for a variety of reasons including violence, the potential of violence based on past interactions, possibility/presence of weapons, if the circumstances surrounding the request for medics are unknown, etc.”
The spokesperson also delves into the changes to GSPS’s “Nickel” service delivery model.
“Our previous ‘Nickel’ service-delivery model was victim or survivor-centred, which intuitively means that individuals need to be victims or survivors before receiving support services or that a crime needs to be committed before police intervention,” the post reads.
“Our new strategic direction and "Nickel" model takes a harm-focused, human-centred approach that emphasizes identifying individuals with an elevated risk of harm, whether it be to themselves or to others. Our goal is to identify individuals and address these risks upstream through wrap-around support services and collaboration with community partners.”
The Nickel Model states police “cannot reduce levels of crime and victimization through traditional responses alone, nor should they be solely responsible for community safety,” and that through new connections and partnerships, “services are now reporting that they are able to connect with vulnerable client populations that have been difficult to reach, making more appropriate referrals through streamlined pathways to services.”
