The recent police shooting of a Somali refugee with mental health issues in Naarm/Melbourne highlights an urgent need for the Victorian Government to implement mental health reform recommendations, say experts.
They’re calling for health-led, paramedic-first crisis responses, rather than police callouts, and report on new research about peoples’ experiences of police responses as part of mental health callouts across Australia.
Panos Karanikolas, Hamilton Kennedy and Chris Maylea writes:
Abdifatah Ahmed was a 35‑year‑old Somali refugee. Experiencing mental health issues and sleeping rough, Ahmed was well known on the streets of Footscray.
Ahmed was shot and killed at about 9pm on 17 April 2025, near the corner of Paisley and Albert streets. Police officers arrived in Footscray after receiving a triple zero call reporting a man armed with a knife.
Maribyrnong City Council has also supported community calls for an independent investigation of the shooting, in the wake of a local vigil and protest. The local community is currently raising funds to support Ahmed’s family with legal and other financial costs.
The shooting has renewed calls for action on stalled reforms, promised four years ago as part of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, which could change how triple zero calls for mental health crises are responded to.
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recognised that police involvement in mental health crises is traumatising and that the role of police as ‘first responders’ has grown over several decades.
The Royal Commission into Victoria Mental System’s final report recommended that paramedics should act as first responders in mental health crises wherever possible, instead of police.
Currently, police attend almost half of all mental health-related cases that Ambulance Victoria responds to each year. Victorian law provides police powers to use ‘reasonable force’ to transport people who appear to have a mental illness to hospital to prevent ‘imminent and serious harm’.
Despite the Victorian Government providing $7.5 million to implement the recommendations around first responders, they have been shelved until 2027, four years later than originally promised by the Daniel Andrews Labor Government.
In the last four years, demands for support services have only continued to rise in the context of a deepening housing and homelessness crisis, with increased reports of mental distress and worsening inequalities.
Victoria Police now respond to triple zero calls regarding mental health crises in the community every ten minutes.
Other approaches
Calls for a paramedic-first, health-led response continues to grow.
A 2023 parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales also recommended exploring reduced police involvement as part of mental health callouts, after a major spike in fatal police shootings of people experiencing mental health issues across the state.
The issue is also faced in other states and territories across Australia and internationally. A review of unique studies from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia found that about one in ten individuals encounter police on their pathway to accessing mental health services.
Alternative ways of responding to mental health crises in the community have been trialed and developed internationally.
The Gerstein Crisis Centre in Toronto, Canada, provides a drop-in service alternative to emergency departments and the Crisis Assistance Helping out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) program in Eugene, Oregon, deploys crisis workers and medics to respond to calls involving people in behavioral health crisis.
Some police departments have begun exploring models that aim to reduce unnecessary police involvement in mental health crises and in some cases, have expressed their support for moving towards paramedic-first responses.
Since Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the world, including those in Australia spotlighting Indigenous deaths in custody, there has been increased to attention to the harms of policing for people with disability and mental health issues, influencing calls for alternative approaches and solutions beyond police.
Melbourne’s Sudanese community has also previously raised concerns about racial profiling and the over-policing of Melbourne’s western suburbs. Victoria Police have also previously faced legal complaints regarding the stopping, searching and questioning African Australian men on the basis of race in the Flemington Kensington area.
Police involvement is known to cause legal issues, and is linked to the criminalisation of people with mental health issues and disabilities. Police training in Australia is increasing militarised, and poorly suited for de-escalating suicidal and mental distress.
And tragically, people who use mental health services are over-represented in fatal police shootings. In 2023, almost half of all the people involved in critical incidents with NSW police in the previous five years were experiencing mental health issues.
Research findings
Our research explored first-hand experiences of police responses as part of mental health callouts across Australia. This research was the first project of its kind in Australia, led by people with lived experience and La Trobe University and RMIT researchers.
We spoke with 20 people who had experienced police callouts during a mental health crisis across Australia. We found that police call outs often involved excessive use of force, such as tasering, pepper spraying, handcuffing, use of police dogs or being locked in police vans.
We also heard that the impacts can be wide-ranging and long-term, such leading to loss of employment, property damage, physical injuries and worsened mental health or suicidality.
People also described their experiences in connection with experiencing involuntary mental health treatment, seclusion and restraint in mental health services.
We also heard about calls to police being used by perpetrators of family violence as part of a coercive control dynamic and the ‘misidentification’ of victim/survivors in distress as perpetrators.
When asked about what people would have preferred to have happened, almost all preferred paramedic support over police and many expressed that they would have liked better access to mental health peer support.
While the Victorian Government’s progress towards implementing many of the Royal Commission’s on recommended reforms has been slow and inadequate, the findings of our research emphasise the urgency of implementing these recommendations, and developing health-led, paramedic-first crisis responses.
You can find out more about the Department of Health’s consultations on the proposed redesign of Victoria’s mental health crisis response services as part of the implementation of Recommendations 8-10 of the Royal Commission here.
Author details
Dr Panos Karanikolas is a Research Officer at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Social Equity Institute (MSEI). Panos is socio-legal researcher, whose research critically examines law, medicine and carcerality.
Hamilton Kennedy is doing their PhD investigating ‘delusions’. Hamilton teaches at University of Melbourne and RMIT. Hamilton does research at University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. Hamilton has practice experience in the mental health system as well as working in consultant positions.
Dr Chris Maylea is a social worker, lawyer and Professor of Law at La Trobe University. He has practice experience in mental health services as a social worker and manager, provides advice to government and policy reform bodies. He is the author of over 80 peer-reviewed publications and commissioned reports and is the author of ‘Social work and the Law: A Guide for Ethical Practice’.
The research was funded by the National Disability Research Partnership, in a partnership with the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC). Panos Karanikolas and Hamilton Kennedy are members of VMIAC, and Professor Christopher Maylea has previously served as the Chair and Deputy Chair of VMIAC.
Also see: Lessons from a stalled mental health reform process in Victoria, by Simon Katterl
