The recently retired director of B.C.’s independent police watchdog says people with substance-use disorders and other health problems would be safer if they were put in a new kind of secure health care facility instead of a jail after they were arrested.
Ronald MacDonald, the Independent Investigation Office’s former director, made this proposal in a report published last week on his final day on the job, in reference to a woman who died in the White Rock RCMP detachment after being locked up the entire 2016 Easter long weekend. He stated that Patricia Wilson’s death occurred largely because of “a significant degree of bureaucratic inadequacy,” including ineffective training, monitoring and quality control” among civilian guards and their Mountie supervisors.
Before issuing six recommendations on how to improve the RCMP oversight of its many jails, Mr. MacDonald noted the detachment’s response to the 56-year-old’s prolonged health crisis was “undoubtedly further complicated by the stigma associated with drug addiction and the underappreciation of the risks associated with detoxification.”
He suggested that in many cases, society would be better served sending an addicted person accused of a crime to some type of secure health care facility, which is a key reform recommended by British Columbia’s 2022 report into repeat offenders and stranger violence.
Mr. MacDonald told The Globe and Mail this week the RCMP has appropriate policies on how to treat prisoners, but needs to improve how it ensures its officers and the guards they oversee are following these rules. His report noted there had been 15 B.C. Coroners Service inquests for prisoners in RCMP cells in the decade prior to Ms. Wilson’s death.
“I have seen really quite egregious failures to recognize the risk that that jail cell is,” Mr. MacDonald said during a phone interview.
B.C.’s Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions would not say this week whether it will create a new type of facility for those accused of crimes while battling severe addictions and mental-health problems, just that it is analyzing and evaluating different models of care as it works to improve the criminal justice system.
Ms. Wilson was arrested with her boyfriend late in the afternoon on Good Friday, 2016, after someone in downtown White Rock complained the pair were loitering, according to the watchdog report. The couple fled but both were arrested for outstanding warrants – Ms. Wilson had been charged for stealing a bike, the report stated. Ms. Wilson told the officer she had last used heroin the day before and felt like she was coming down with the flu, the police watchdog found.
She did not disclose her substance-use disorder when she was booked into the jail and, after a telephone bail hearing, was ordered to stay in her cell over the Easter long weekend until another hearing the following Tuesday, according to the watchdog report. On the second day, Ms. Wilson had become restless and called for a nurse, declined dinner and in the middle of her second night yelled for a nurse before vomiting and dry heaving on the Sunday, the report stated.
By Monday afternoon, she had gone more than a day without eating and had become incoherent, using “doctor” to refer to her guards, one of whom told the watchdog he was aware she was experiencing withdrawal and thought her behaviour was natural despite receiving no training on the subject.
After she spent another restless night vomiting and complaining of stomach pain, the ranking Mountie called an ambulance. Two paramedics arrived, checked her out for three minutes before determining Ms. Wilson was constipated but hydrating with water and, thus, just needed a laxative to feel better, the report stated. The ranking Mountie offered her a coffee instead, which she declined.
Within three hours, a guard found her unresponsive then returned with a Mountie who declared her “clearly deceased,” according to the report.
Elysia Wilson, one of Ms. Wilson’s four adult children, said her family wants an apology from the RCMP for letting their mother die alone, afraid and asking for help as well as an acknowledgment that their standards need to improve. The Wilsons also want a trained nurse or doctor to provide health care to any prisoners in any of B.C.’s dozens of detachments if they need it because they are intoxicated or going through withdrawal.
They also want mandatory bias training for Mounties and the civilian jail guards they train and supervise so that they treat drug users humanely.
“She was just this really caring, outgoing charismatic person and it is really easy to say, ‘you know, she was a drug user, of course the police were annoyed with her, of course police were bothered by her,’ but she was a human being; she had all these other pieces to her and she truly did not deserve the treatment she got or to die the way she did,” Elysia Wilson said this week.
Staff Sergeant Kris Clark, spokesperson for the Mounties in B.C., characterized Ms. Wilson’s death, which still may be the subject of a coroner’s inquest, as tragic. He said, in a statement, that the RCMP’s federal and provincial policy on guarding prisoners already addresses most of the concerns outlined in the watchdog report and noted that it is still reviewing whether any further changes need to be made to keep people safe while they are imprisoned.
David Haslam, spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor-General, sent a ministry statement saying the province has brought all civilian jail guards under the regulation of the Director of Police Services, who will soon be crafting standards for how prisoners in police lockup should be treated.
Mike Hager