Victoria’s police chief is calling on the provincial government to give more power to hospital security guards.

Chief Del Manak made the comments Friday, as he decried growing hospital wait times for mental health patients that can keep police officers off the streets for hours.

Manak said officers who apprehend someone under the Mental Health Act and bring them to a hospital are unable to leave until the patient is seen.

“We expect there is going to be some wait times, there’s no doubt about it, but what we are seeing is it is trending in the wrong direction and it has become concerning,” Manak said.

“I have got police officers that are tied up at the hospital unnecessarily for long periods of time.”

Manak said in the past, officers waited an average of about an hour and 20 minutes, which climbed to about an hour and 47 minutes last fall and has now topped two hours and 20 minutes.

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He said he’s concerned the waits could keep climbing, putting further pressure on police resources.

At the same time, he said the waits were unfair to people apprehended under the Mental Health Act, who are in police custody while in crisis.

“This individual may or may not be in handcuffs, they go up to the hospital, the current system you have no privacy, it is very hard to put people into rooms — I certainly don’t want to have somebody in the back of a police car for hours,” he said.

Manak is calling on the province to grant special constable powers to hospital security, which would allow police to hand patients off to them and return to service.

“That will allow the transfer of individuals that are apprehended immediately,” Manak said.

Marko Peljhan, vice-president of clinical services for Island Health, said the provincial government was in talks about that proposed measure.

“That is currently being assessed at a provincial level and I look forward to conversations with Chief Manak and with the province on how we can optimize our options, and I appreciate and I acknowledge what Chief Manak is advocating for at this time,” he said.

In the meantime, he said Island Health and the Victoria Police Department had formed a working group focused on streamlining the patient handover process in a bid to make it as efficient as possible.

He said Island Health acknowledges there are opportunities to improve, and that hospital protection service officers were also working with police to find ways to speed up the process.

“I fully share Chief Manak’s concerns …. we want to return police officers to the community as quickly as possible,” he said.

Manak, meanwhile, stressed that his concerns were in no way a criticism of hospital staff and mental health workers, who he said were doing an incredible job in an overburdened system.