Concerns on response times for other communities following assault on paramedic in Victoria

Following the assault on a paramedic earlier this week, there are growing concerns about how other communities will be affected now that Victoria Police have said they will respond to calls on Pandora Avenue before firefighters and paramedics can assist.

A paramedic was assaulted and taken to hospital earlier this week after responding to a medical incident in the 900-block of Pandora Avenue. The paramedic was kicked in the face and experienced non-life-threatening injuries.

A region-wide response, with officers from multiple jurisdictions, attended the scene to assist. The following day, VicPD Chief Del Manak said that moving forward, paramedics and firefighters will not respond to calls on that block until arrive first.

READ MORE: Firefighters, paramedics to wait for police backup before responding to 900 block of Pandora

“They’re not trained in de-escalation, they don’t have the tools to be able to defend themselves and to be able to create space and to be able to make arrests, they don’t carry handcuffs,” Manak said on Friday.

Manak says details on the new “strategy” will be worked on, however, a former police chief and former public safety minister is concerned over what that could look like.

“We gotta make sure we don’t take an approach that’s way over the top,” said Kash Heed.

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Heed says a similar practice was adopted by Vancouver Police early on during the toxic drug crisis.

“It was more or less a discretionary policy. So if the fire service or emergency health services were responding and they thought it was in their best interest to wait for police to respond to support them, that was in place,” said Heed.

CHEK News asked VPD if this practice remains, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Heed is concerned on how the new strategy will affect response times in other communities, but also if too much power may be given to officers.

“Having etched-in-stone a policy where in fact, the officers cannot exercise their discretion — or the firefighters or paramedics — on whether they’re safe in a particular environment. We gotta leave that with them to determine,” said Heed.

The Township of Esquimalt is holding a committee of the whole meeting on Monday with VicPD and plans to ask pressing questions on how this would affect first responders attending to calls in the township.

“The police chief hasn’t been clear what it means, other than it will affect Esquimalt,” said Darlene Rotchford, acting mayor.

SEE ALSO: Paramedics union weighs in on assault on Pandora Avenue

Esquimalt is slowly moving towards opening its own police force, ending the amalgamation contract it has with VicPD.

“This is really an issue that comes back to the lack of social services as well as our health-care crisis,” said Rotchford.

“There is no perfect solution to this but we will make sure people in Esquimalt voices’ are heard,” she said.

CHEK News asked VicPD for clarification on how this strategy would affect residents in Esquimalt but did not hear a response back.

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