Etobicoke councillor Mark Grimes was among the 16 politicians who voted against the 10% defunding of the Toronto Police Service $1.2 billion budget that was to go to community services.

Council on Monday voted 16 to eight against touching the police budget and opted for a series of reforms including the creation of a non-police response team for dealing with mental health calls and for all officers to have body-worn cameras by the start of next year.

The response team can be a life-saver and what has been sought by countless victims: including the family and friends of Ejaz Choudry, who have been protesting his death for almost a week.

Choudry, 62, who suffered from schizophrenia, was shot and killed by Peel Regional Police. The family say they had called police for a health check and did not expect Choudry to be killed  by police.

Mayor John Tory said his proposed changes, introduced last week, will reduce systemic racism within the force. He said cutting the service by an “arbitrary” number was misguided.

“It is not the right way to go about getting real change, effective change, fair change, good change,” the mayor said. “I don’t want us to be focused on a number; I want us to be focused on making change that needs to be made.”

Councillors Josh Matlow and Krystin Wong-Tam had called for a 10 per cent cut of the police budget, arguing the $150 million could be put to better use by investing in community programs.

Council heard that such a cut would mean the loss of about 1,000 officers and could take years to implement because of collective bargaining agreements with the police union.

Police say there are currently eight mobile crisis intervention teams, which include a police officer and a nurse trained in dealing with those have mental health emergencies.

Police Chief Mark Saunders say the teams do not operate 24-hours per day and are not the primary responders. They are dispatched once patrol officers have arrived and evaluated the situation.

Mental health calls make up about 30,000 of the nearly one million calls police respond to every year, or about 82 calls a day.