A police officer stands near an evidence tent outside the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, on Sept. 4, 2024.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The man accused of killing one man and severing the hand of another in a knife attack last week had his recent mental-health recovery plans placed in the hands of probation officers by judges, audio recordings of court proceedings show.
Over the past two years, Brendan McBride, a 34-year-old who grew up in North Vancouver and had worked as a forklift driver, bounced between overstretched hospitals and police custody as he grappled with a cocaine and alcohol addiction, as well as anxiety and depression, the recordings obtained by the Globe and Mail demonstrate.
In separate proceedings in July, 2022, and April, 2024, Mr. McBride in both cases pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to probation with orders he seek psychiatric treatment that would be overseen by his probation officer, including throughout this summer.
The day before last Wednesday morning’s knife attacks, Mr. McBride allegedly violated the terms of this probation by failing to check in with his probation officer in nearby Surrey, B.C., court documents filed after his arrest show.
Amanda Butler, a Simon Fraser University criminologist who co-wrote British Columbia’s 2022 report into repeat offenders and stranger attacks, said it’s problematic if probation officers are the main overseers of an offender’s mental-health treatments because these professionals have expressed their past frustration at being unable to secure this care for these types of clients.
Probation officers interviewed for that landmark report told her and her co-author that they don’t have enough resources to go out into the community and check in with their clients. Nor do they have open lines of communication with the regional psychiatric clinics mandated to help mentally ill people convicted of crimes but released into the community on probation, she said in an interview.
“Many of them were very clear about the fact that they don’t have what they need,” said Dr. Butler, whose 2022 report recommended BC Corrections increase the number of probation officers dedicated to supervising repeat offenders. “They don’t feel necessarily that they can keep themselves or others safe.”
Dr. Butler said one crucial reform highlighted by Mr. McBride’s case is that mentally ill offenders be offered a place where they can report to their probation officer, as ordered by a judge, and then walk down the hall to receive psychiatric care.
“This is it that integration piece that doesn’t necessarily require a change in law, but it does require leadership from government to rethink the way that we provide these services.”
B.C.’s Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, which oversees BC Corrections, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Mr. McBride’s criminal history says about the gaps in the way authorities treat people battling addiction and complex mental illness.
Five months before last week’s gruesome attack, Mr. McBride’s lawyer acknowledged in court that his client had been apprehended under the Mental Health Act before. He did not say how long these detentions lasted.
Last September, Mr. McBride phoned his dad in crisis, stating he was upset and wanted to leave the home he was sharing with others while on disability assistance, the Surrey Provincial Court heard at his sentencing hearing this April. His lawyer told the court he had fallen into a deep depression and had drank six beers at White Rock’s popular tourist beach, bloodying his face somehow and vomiting before calling his father, a retired accountant with whom he used to live.
His father promptly phoned the police who apprehended Mr. McBride under the Mental Health Act and took him to Peace Arch Hospital, where he was take to a private room and subsequently assaulted a female nurse who came to give him medication by pushing her. When officers reappeared to arrest him for this assault, he was initially able to escape their restraints and was later charged for obstructing or resisting a police officer.
At a July, 2022, sentencing in North Vancouver Provincial Court, his lawyer told the court how he had spent the year and a half after the assault charge recovering from his substance-use problems, attending a monthlong recovery program at Vancouver’s Union Gospel Mission as well as another longer stint at a Back on Track recovery house.
He was eight months sober at that hearing, his lawyer said, but he was still battling complex mental-health problems and had been unable to secure an appointment with a public psychiatrist for months. In order to improve his mental health, he consented to participating in a forensic outpatient program to get treatment sooner, though it is unclear what type of care he received under this system.
Dr. Butler and other experts say the inability to access mental-health support in the public system is another major gap. Having a family doctor is a crucial link for those feeling mentally ill to get referred to a psychiatrist for a publicly-paid-for appointment. But, even if people are lucky enough to have a general practitioner, very few psychiatrists in the Lower Mainland are accepting new adult patients.
Addictions psychiatrists are even harder to find in the community, with 10 of the 20 in the province currently employed at Red Fish, administrators said during a tour of the facility last spring.