There has been a growing trend in mental health call-outs for RCMP across the country, and the province has an approach that the local detachment hopes will help.
Drayton Valley RCMP detachment Sergeant Dan Ferri says mental health calls in 2025 took up more resources than any other type of call.
“We can definitely say that mental health calls are our number one call for service that takes the time of the local officers,” says Ferri.
Transporting a patient to a mental health facility in Ponoka or Red Deer takes up a lot of an officer’s time. At the time of the interview, one officer had to transport a patient to a facility in Ponoka and was out of the community for three hours dealing with that one call.
Because transportation takes up so much of the officer’s time, the Town of Drayton Valley and Brazeau County sent a letter out to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services requesting an additional Community Peace Officer to assist in the transport of patients.
Their request was denied in a letter from the Minister, citing that CPOs play a pivotal role in the community and should remain focused on those areas.
Instead, they plan to bring in the Compassionate Intervention Act, and the Public Safety and Emergency Services department is working with the Mental Health and Addiction department to form a Compassionate Intervention Police Group.
“Current discussions are focused on key operational considerations, including apprehension authorities, conveyance procedures, transfer of care protocols, resource requirements, and operational impacts on police and peace officer agencies. As engagement and policy development continue, the final service delivery and operational model has not yet been determined,” says Public Safety and Emergency Services deputy minister Curtis Zablocki in his letter to the Town.
“From a detachment point of view, we would obviously welcome any assistance from the provincial government in terms of agencies that can transport or crisis teams that can be that first point of contact for mental health patients on an ongoing basis,” says Ferri. “We’ve just spent so much time even just dealing with [the calls], so it would be nice to have a crisis intervention team that could be mobile or [Alberta Health Services] peace officers who are allowed to transport between facilities would be super helpful.”
Ferri says at this point, they don’t know a lot about what the province is planning with the Compassionate Intervention Act, and how it might help support the police forces in Alberta.
In the meantime, the RCMP still have to respond to mental health calls and have to respond appropriately to the situation. If that means transportation, then that officer leaves the community for a period of time to do that.
“There’s nobody else to do it, so it falls on us,” says Ferri. “But it’s also kind of frustrating because it’s not in any way a police or criminal offence thing.”
From January to June in 2026, there has been an 88 percent increase in calls for mental health from the same time in 2025. Ferri says they have received 139 mental health files this year as opposed to 74 for the whole year in 2025.
“It’s been trending up since 2022,” says Ferri. “From 2022 to 2026, there is a 196 percent increase in mental health calls.”
Ferri says proactive mental health teams that can offer support to people in need would be beneficial. When they bring a patient into a facility, sometimes that patient is back in the community in only a couple of days and is stuck in the same situation. If there were a follow-up team in place, it might help those individuals stick to their health plans to prevent another visit to the facility.
While there are no definitive numbers in place, Ferri says it costs the department a lot of money to transport the patients. He says there are always two officers on duty, but if one of them has to transport a patient, they have to call someone in for overtime to cover the transport officer’s shift.
“Then there’s also the things that we don’t really necessarily calculate on the day-to-day with those calls like fuel costs, and vehicle maintenance costs for these large trips,” says Ferri.
Many of those costs end up being taken care of with funds from the Town and County.
By Amanda Jeffery, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Aug 20, 2026 at 09:08
Recent Comments