VANCOUVER - Police officers who joked with a 911 dispatcher after a man threatened suicide and eventually died will be investigated, but Chief Jamie Graham says black humour isn't the main problem in the case.

Instead, Graham says he's concerned the man's calls for help were given a low priority and for 20 minutes, no officer was dispatched to the man's apartment.

Graham told a news conference Wednesday he wants an investigation to reassure people that their calls will be taken seriously, no matter what their background.

"Black humour, stupid things said on the telephone back and forth, I can deal with that. That does not happen very often and it may be explained in this case, I don't know. That's what we're going to find out but that's a secondary issue of individual personalities," Graham said.

"We go to try to help people. In this case, a man is dead. We owe it to his family, to you to find out if we could have done something better here."

Graham called the news conference a day after a coroner concluded Michael Sproule died 20 minutes after calling 911 for help and over an hour after his aunt called to say her nephew had threatened to kill himself.

The coroner found Sproule's aunt called just before 2 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2006, but her call was given a low priority and police units in the area were otherwise occupied.

Sproule called just before 3 p.m. the same day, saying he'd cut his wrists and that he was dying.

His call was transferred to the B.C. Ambulance Service but because he was also yelling and making confusing statements, the ambulance service contacted the police dispatcher to ask for officers to attend.

Though Sproule's call was bumped up in priority, it still wasn't ranked at the top and police weren't sent to his apartment until 20 minutes later, the coroner found.

Sproule was known to have had a history of mental illness and schizophrenia and depression.

Graham said Sproule had called 911 in the past threatening suicide and on the day Sproule died, police had received about a dozen such calls from other people.

When police finally arrived at Sproule's apartment, they couldn't get into his suite because he had barricaded the door with furniture. Officers had to climb over the balcony.

Once inside, they found Sproule on the floor in a pool of blood.

Coroner Mark Coleman concluded emergency dispatchers should have given Sproule's aunt's call top priority and that urgency should have been maintained when Sproule himself called.

The dispatcher responsible has been fired.

Coleman reviewed an internal investigation into how police are dispatched to 911 calls and did not find a systemic problem.

Bev Gutray, executive director of the B.C. division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, said that in general, police training to respond to the mentally ill has improved over the last few years.

"So I think they're on the right track," Gutray said, adding she couldn't comment on Sproule's case until the Vancouver police department completes its investigation.

She said police have a difficult job when it comes to dealing with people who are in crisis -- whether it's domestic violence or mental health issues.

"There's over 500 people a year who take their life in B.C.," Gutray said, adding several coroners' inquests have identified police training as a critical issue.

"We have a mental health system for the most part, in this province, not unlike in every province in the country, that is stretched to its limit, that doesn't have enough resources and the police end up being the default mental health system."

Gutray's division has completed a pilot project with police departments across the province to train officers to respond when someone is in crisis.

Since the 1970s, Vancouver has had two emergency psychiatric response teams that include a nurse and a police officer to assess mental health crises.

But while the model is extremely effective, Gutray said there are only two such teams for the whole city -- one for the day shift and the other for night.

"The most important thing, whether it's police or whether it's an ambulance driver or whether it's you or I, when somebody calls for help that means they need help. And we need to take cries for help seriously because otherwise they end up in tragic situations."

Graham said Sproule's case is an "isolated" one.

He wouldn't say what the joking remarks between the officers and dispatcher were, saying he wouldn't make them public until after an internal inquiry into the officers' conduct is finished, likely next month.

But Graham said the officers involved have been co-operating with the investigation.

Black humour "gets us through the day sometimes. But there are certain times when it's inappropriate and if that's one of these cases, we're going to find out and we're going to make sure the officers know the right way to conduct themselves.

"But these are experienced people. We'll get the facts very soon."