Brandon Police Service is defending its decision to create a crisis response unit made up of police officers and mental health professionals after two academics criticized the initiative.

Christopher Schneider and Ania Theuer, a professor and assistant professor in Brandon University’s Department of Sociology, expressed their views on the forthcoming unit in an op-ed published in the Winnipeg Free Press earlier this month.

While they acknowledged that creating a crisis response unit by pairing officers with psychiatric nurses may seem like a step in the right direction, they said there is no concrete evidence showing the effectiveness of such units.

They further stated that having the unit embedded in a “police-led framework” could carry on the stigma that people who experience mental i

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