and fires. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, public safety services are provided to urban Indigenous populations by the all-volunteer Bear Clan Patrol, as well as other organizations, such as the Mama Bear Clan. The Patrol conducts regular patrols of Indigenous neighbourhoods, liaises with Winnipeg Police to search for missing people, and delivers food to unhoused residents. Tiered policing Tiered policing is a model of police service delivery that involves hiring non-police employees — or empowering separate organizations — to specialize in areas of a police service's mandate or assume lower-risk duties. Although tiered policing has been practiced in Canada since the 1960s, when police forces first began hiring non-sworn personnel to handle administrative duties or conduct forensic investigations, it became increasingly popular in the late 1990s as police services and governments sought to reduce costs, simplify hiring and training processes, and deliver higher quality services. The Winnipeg Police Service and Vancouver Police Department both employ special constables to guard crime scenes, respond to some non-violent calls for service, and direct traffic at emergencies. Police services in Ontario have practiced tiered policing since the 1980s, when special constables first began to assume court protection and prisoner transport duties, but several police forces including the Brantford Police Service, Cobourg Police Service, and Toronto Police Service now deploy special constables and volunteer auxiliary constables in frontline policing roles. In all three territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Urban agglomeration of Montreal, Newfoundland and Labrador, and parts of southern Ontario, tiered police service delivery includes separate special constabularies, which provide police services to municipalities served by regional or contracted police forces and to specific organizations, such as universities or transit systems. Since 2021, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has employed Civilian Criminal Investigators, unarmed peace officers recruited from non-police fields, to assist with technical computer science or financial crimes. In some communities, the adoption of tiered policing has been hampered by "outdated" perceptions that special constables and other non-police specialists are untrained, ill-equipped, or assuming less important duties compared to police. Some police services have also struggled with social rankings that result in the exclusion of non-police staff from events and workplace conversations. Non-police mental health crisis response In 2000, the Toronto Police Service partnered with local hospitals to create the Mobile Crisis Intervention Team, which pairs nurses with frontline police officers to respond to mental health crises. The program is only active in some parts of the