‘People in crisis need help not a bullet’: Mental health experts banned from helping police

Mental health experts posted to police stations across the state are forbidden from helping officers during “police operations”, while officers receive no mandatory training to respond to people in a mental health crisis after leaving the academy, new documents reveal.

The revelations come as the family of police shooting victim Todd McKenzie join experts in calling for a royal commission into a “broken” system – one the mental health minister admits “isn’t working well”.

The disclosures follow a fourth fatal interaction between NSW Police and someone experiencing a mental health crisis in five months.

Krista Kach died in hospital on September 14, after police shot her with a beanbag round to bring to a close a nine-hour siege.Credit:

Krista Kach, 47, was fatally shot with a “beanbag round” in her Stockton home by members of the state’s most elite police squad two weeks ago. This followed the death of Jesse Deacon, 43, in July, after he was shot by police in his Glebe home after a Taser failed.

Dementia patient Clare Nowland, 95, died after she was Tasered in her Cooma nursing home by police, while also in May, Steve Pampalian, 41, was shot dead after police responded to reports he had threatened neighbours with a knife. Officers who responded allegedly had their body-worn cameras turned off.

Todd McKenzie was shot dead by police while in the grip of a severe psychotic episode at his Taree home in 2019.

McKenzie, 40, was shot dead by police in 2019 while in the grip of a severe psychotic episode. His stepfather, Neil Wilkins, told the Herald that police and government inaction had resulted in “avoidable loss of life” and a royal commission was “urgently needed”. Officers who first responded to McKenzie had received only one day of mental health training.

“Mental health training [for NSW Police] is now almost negligible, and even the courses they do doesn’t seem to equip [officers] with an understanding of what mentally unwell person behaviour is and how to talk to them,” Wilkins said.

In the last phone call with police, McKenzie’s family were told that officers would “take as long as needed to ensure Todd was safe”, Wilkins said. The next call came from a cousin saying McKenzie had been shot dead.

“The system is broken. They’re the forgotten and ignored. They’re not monsters, they just need help, not a police bullet.”

“They’re the forgotten and ignored. They’re not monsters, they just need help, not a police bullet.”

Neil Wilkins, stepfather of police shooting victim Todd McKenzie

Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson conceded the mental health system was broken but would not call for a royal commission. She said she was satisfied that a current NSW Police review would render answers, alongside an inquiry into outpatient mental health services that began last week. The inquiry does not have the scope to review the mental health system as a whole and is not led by experts, nor are recommendations enforceable.

Jackson said PACER (Police, Ambulance and Clinician Early Response) “probably” needed to be expanded but was funded until 2025 and, as such, was not given funding in last week’s budget.

“I’ve only been the minister for five months, it’s a little bit difficult to hold me accountable for everything that’s happened in the 12 years previously,” Jackson said. “I’m actually out here saying we want to do better. There is a real acknowledgment that the system isn’t working well.”

Transcripts of McKenzie’s inquest held earlier this year – reviewed by the Herald last week – reveal a probe of police mental health training and use of the PACER program.

While PACER clinicians are stationed in 19 police area commands across the state, they are not engaged when a police response is escalated to a “police operation”, where the person in crisis may have a weapon, the transcripts reveal.

NSW Police Acting Commissioner Dave Hudson last week admitted that police needed help from clinicians when responding to mental health callouts, of which there were 64,000 last year, but he failed to acknowledge the expertise sitting in his own police stations.

The transcripts reveal that, aside from the 18 hours of mandatory mental health training police cadets undergo at the academy, there is no further mandatory training after graduation. A one-day online workshop was compulsory for all officers in 2013, but it is no longer mandated.

A four-day intensive course was discontinued in September 2019 because it was oversubscribed, the coroner was told. It was replaced with a pilot two-day course, for which uptake was stymied in part by COVID-19 before it too was axed.

Rob Ramjan, trustee of Psychosis Australia and a 17-year member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal as well as an architect of the intensive police course, said the mental health system was “very broken ... understaffed and underfunded”.

“I think mental health services in NSW are pretty appalling at the moment,” Ramjan said.

“The prisons are taking on the role of the psychiatric hospital more often, and part of that is people’s unwillingness – whether they be the cops, the mental health service – to actually deal with people with a mental illness.”

Ramjan said previous royal commissions and inquiries had “if anything seen a system that just gets worse and worse”, and suggested “starting from scratch”.

“The World Health Organisation has been pretty clear about that – the burden of disease from mental illnesses. It’s 14 per cent, so 14 per cent of the health budget should go to mental health,” he said.

Neil Wilkins (left), stepfather of police shooting victim Todd McKenzie, with Todd’s mother, June Wilkins, and solicitors from the National Justice Project.

National Justice Project chief executive George Newhouse echoed calls for a royal commission “because too many people are dying and being harmed by police and their use of violence”.

In a statement in response to detailed questions, Police Minister Yasmin Catley said only that a three-month NSW Police review would look at mental health training and responses. A report is due in November.

A spokesperson for NSW Police said PACER was “led, funded and managed by NSW Health” and would not comment further. The spokesperson did not expand on questions about mental health training other than to say there was “annual” training for officers.

With Perry Duffin

If you or anyone you know needs support, call 13 9276, Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.

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