Tommy Tainant
Diamond Member
Metropolitan Police to stop attending 999 calls linked to mental health incidents
The force says patients and Londoners are being failed by the current system and that thousands of hours of police time are being lost each month.
news.sky.com
This is an interesting move by the Met. Not least because of the amount of time that they spend looking after these people. Forces across the UK spend 1 million hours a year on it. There are no mental health facilities to deal with them.
It goes like this. The cops are called to an incident. They show up and arrest the mental health patient and then take them to the hospital to sit and wait until someone can help. Sometimes a policeman can spend their whole shift babysitting.Sick people have to be arrested because it is the only option the police have.
If the patient is violent then it can sometimes mean several officers sat in a hospital waiting room all day, or night.
It means that crime doesnt get solved and is very frustrating for the police and public. The Met are under immense pressure at the moment. There are several scandals swirling around and their new boss has faced growing political pressure.
I think that this is a political move to move the dial away from police corruption and on to the political masters.
Thatcher gutted mental health provision and various politicos have used the police to fill the gap ever since.
The worry is that there just isnt anything there if the police dont step in. The local community will be expected to deal with it. The police are playing a very clever game here. They arent allowed to strike and their budgets are squeezed all the time by the govt..
Rather than waste time begging for more cash they have just reduced the workload to suit the budget. Its now up to the govt to pick up a mess of its own making. More likely they will just ignore the problem and hope that it goes away. Thats what they have done with every other public service dispute.
Nb - The govt has not responded to this news as its a public holiday here and they are all on their country estates.
