Taite Collins says he will always wonder if he could have done something more to stop what unfolded just metres below his home in one of Sydney’s largest public housing estates. He had just gotten out of the shower on Tuesday night when he heard yelling. He stepped on to his balcony and shot a video of his partner, Collin Burling, begging for help while he was restrained by police.
“I can’t breath,” Burling can be heard saying in the video before he appears motionless. He went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead in hospital.
“He didn’t have to die,” Collins tells Guardian Australia on Friday. “He begged not to die.”
The 45-year-old’s death is the subject of a critical incident investigation that will be overseen by the police watchdog. Advocates say the death is symptomatic of the failings in the way police and the mental health system respond to mental distress in the community.
The push for change
According to the New South Wales police assistant commissioner Peter McKenna, four officers were called to the Waterloo public housing block at 2.14am by paramedics after reports a man was possibly suffering from a mental health episode.
Sam Lee, a solicitor at the Redfern Legal Centre, said the incident appeared to show a familiar pattern of police often escalating rather than de-escalating mental health episodes.
“The first priority should be to calm people down as much as possible and make them feel safe,” she says. “The problem is when police are there, people start to panic.”
Lee says under the Mental Health Act, if paramedics call police for assistance, officers are required to take the person to a mental health facility, which can add pressure to the situation.
Before officers restrain Burling, the video purports to show him pleading for them to let him out of the ambulance.
Last year, an internal review conducted by NSW police found that when officers attend mental health incidents, they are often “an escalating factor” and it would be better if experts were deployed instead.
It followed a June parliamentary inquiry into the state’s mental health system, which urged police to improve mandatory mental health training for officers and “explore” becoming the second responders to these types of emergencies.
The number of mental health incidents attended by police increased by 40% between 2018 and 2022.
NSW does have a system whereby a mental health clinician can respond alongside police and paramedics. However, it is still police-led, is not 24/7 and has not been rolled out everywhere across the state.
The government has been under pressure to enact reforms after the deaths of Clare Nowland, Steve Pampalian, Jesse Deacon and Krista Kach in 2023 – who all died after interactions with police.
Deacon was another public housing resident. He was fatally shot by police after reports he was self-harming in July 2023 – almost two years to the day that Burling died.
Since Deacon’s death, his mother, Judy Deacon, has become a leading voice calling for mental health responses to change. A rally planned for the second anniversary of Deacon’s death on Saturday will now also honour Burling.
Judy Deacon has been meeting with ministers and senior officials to push for triple zero calls to triage to a mental health service staffed by skilled responders.
“They tell me when I have these meetings that it’s all happening,” she says about the general push for change.
“But I still don’t know what it is that is happening and, as far as I’m concerned, until it happens, nothing is happening.”
Rose Jackson, the mental health and housing minister, recognises that the current mental health crisis response system is not working. She tells Guardian Australia work on a new model is well under way and remains a priority.
Geoff Turnbull, the spokesperson for community group REDWatch – which advocates for people living in public housing in Redfern and Waterloo – says Burling’s death is symptomatic of a systemic problem that goes beyond the way police respond to mental health incidents.
He says the ailing mental health system is also an issue. Mental health professionals have raised concerns in the past that services are faltering, which leads to the buck being passed to police.
While this is a statewide issue, he says special attention needs to be given to those living in public housing and is calling for more wraparound services.
“It’s where people with mental health and drug and alcohol and trauma and other related things are actually concentrated,” Turnbull says.
“These are the issues that people have to substantiate to get public housing in the first place. But then there is little follow[-up] to help with the issues that got them the tenancy in the first place.”
‘It was love at first sight’
Collins agrees there should be more support. He has been on a five-month waiting list to access a mental health service.
He says he and Burling moved into the Waterloo public housing estate after experiencing homelessness. It was the first stable home that Burling – who moved in more than five years ago – had since he was 12.
The couple met in the foyer one afternoon about four years ago.
“It was love at first sight,” Collins says. “He was the sort of person who loved to give everything a go. He loved the world of skateboarding and surfing.
“He’s a big burly bloke, but he’s a big squishy teddy bear.”
Collins says some days Burling’s mental health was bad.
“It wasn’t worsening. It wasn’t improving. He had a lot of undiagnosed mental health and unmedicated mental health [issues], which he had booked in appointments through his psychiatrist to finally get that assessments done.”
The night Burling died was like any other, Collins says. They had been hanging out with friends in Burling’s apartment before Collins went downstairs to have a shower.
He says he left because he had a headache and was feeling dizzy. They had both been concerned that there was a carbon monoxide leak in the building and Burling said he would ring the fire brigade. Collins is not sure why the ambulance and then the police turned up.
“Collin had done nothing wrong. That day he was ringing for help,” Collins says.
McKenna told reporters on Tuesday that Burling was initially compliant before he resisted officers and paramedics.
Jackson said the department had advised there had been no reports of carbon monoxide leaking in the building.
“However, following this incident, I have directed the department to undertake an investigation to provide peace of mind for all residents in the building,” she said.
Alongside working on changes to mental health incident responses, she said the government had expanded community outreach for people experiencing mental health issues.
She said the government had also prioritised better coordination of services between the housing and health departments.
At the bottom of the public housing block, one of Burling’s friends has laid a bouquet of red roses.
It rests on a skateboard that has been hot-glued to the mottled grey concrete wall – an attempt at an enduring memorial to mark the spot where Burling begged for help before he died.
“For Collin’s sake, I want to see that something changes from this,” Collins says.
