Almost half of Winnipeg's 911 calls 'non-urgent,' says report recommending significant changes

The City of Winnipeg maymake dramatic changes to how emergency response is co-ordinated if it follows some of the recommendations detailed in a report from theBloomberg HarvardCity Leadership Initiative.

In 2019, the city was chosen to take part in the initiative, sponsored bythe Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Ultimately, a team from the city and the leadership initiative identifiedthe challenge:"Winnipeg's existing 911 emergency response agencies are being dispatched to non-urgent calls that they are not best suited to manage."

According to statistics provided by the Winnipeg Police Service, almosthalf of the calls to the emergency 911 line "did not represent an imminent threat to life, limb, property, or personal security."

Based on the recommendations of the report, the city is trying to improve co-ordination of the 911 communication centre with other agencies, includingHealthLinks, Winnipeg's 311 information line and the recently created 211 line (set up by the United Way to help residentsconnect to health and social services).

The Winnipeg Police Servicehas begun anassessment tocreatea police and crisis team (PACT). Itwould bring crisis workers andpolice officers togetherto provide a different level of response to calls for assistance.

The report highlightsa number of significant challenges to reforming the response system:

• The current 911 response system reflects an incredibly low risk threshold.The impact of dispatching the wrong resource in response to a 911 call could contribute to increased harm to callers.
• There is no other agency available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to dispatch. Without a "fourth option" available, dispatch options remain limited to police, fire or ambulance agencies.
• There is a lack ofpublic awareness of,and familiarity with, existing health and social service agencies within the community that contributesto 911 callsthat are non-urgent.
• There is a lack of integration and co-ordination.
• Legislative and regulatory barriers exist.
• There are also data sharing and measurement challenges.

Establishing afourth "dispatchable" option would require the Winnipeg police and the fire paramedic service to "recast and reimagine the integration and operation of existing services within the Winnipeg Police Service and the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service."

This would involve co-ordination of the vulnerable persons unitand the emergency paramedic in the community (EPIC) program.

The city's executive policy committee will vote next week on instructingthe chief administrative officer, and the fire-paramedic and police chiefs, to continue the work recommended by the Bloomberg Harvard study.