Met officer live-tweets battle to find mental health bed for man who is 'danger to himself'

www.standard.co.uk... l

police.community... -is-danger-to-himself/

In the extraordinary sequence of messages, the unidentified officer said they were "ringing every mental health unit in Greater London" but were struggling to get the man admitted as “no-one seems interested in helping”.

It was not until 9.45pm, apparently more than six hours later, that officers and London Ambulance Service staff were able to leave after the man was admitted.

The sergeant said it was "totally unacceptable" that the man had to wait six hours, before eventually posting: "Finally the subject has been admitted and all officers and @Ldn_Ambulance staff are leaving."

"Countering terrorists; managing sex offenders in the community; preventing child sexual exploitation; looking for missing persons; dealing with people with mental health problems; policing football matches; policing pubs and clubs; house to house inquiries and taking statements are just some of the key areas of police work not covered in crime statistics." www.polfed.org...


If you call the police in an emergency and they take six hours to arrive, blame the cuts, not the police.

And when they do arrive, remember they may have just spent six hours protecting someone you might cross the street to avoid.

a reply to: Kester

Kester,

We recently had a speight of armed robberies at bookies across a ten mile area comprising part of the borough in which I live, and part of a neighbouring borough. In one notable instance, firearms officers and regulars arrived ONE HOUR after the perpetrators had already left the area, leaving behind them several traumatised staff, and one person who had been pistol whipped and required treatment at hospital. It could, of course, have been much worse, and there have been much worse incidents in the history of our little corner of the planet.

However, the idea that an armed robbery can take place, and the best the police can do is to rock up an hour later and pick up whatever trail is left by the forensics only, is frankly ridiculous. How about, instead of cuts to policing and other frontline services, we just refuse to pay the top brass of the civil service for ten years? That way, they can earn by hardship, the money they fail to deserve by way of their godawful performance over the last little while?

I am not talking about your programmers, clerks and genuine grafters, I am talking about those goons who have their own personal office, a PA, secretary, and a personal masseuse. Let's take their bonuses and their pay packets, and hand them out to some folks who genuinely need to be out doing their jobs, and getting paid properly to do them? We want a police service that works for the people, one that supports our interests by protecting us in our homes and businesses, not one that takes an hour to rally to a callout involving armed response.

The same could be said of our psychiatric care staff and infrastructure. We can have cuts to frontline this, that and the other, but we cannot look after the mentally ill appropriately, we cannot police our streets, cannot control our borders, cannot fill our hospitals and doctors offices with individuals educated in this country....

It's gotten beyond a joke, but I am really getting ready to deliver some punchlines!

a reply to: TrueBrit

What a ridiculous suggestion, the money saved would be a drop in the ocean even if you cut the pay of all Grade 6 Civil Servants and above, it would make a negligible difference to police numbers or mental health service workers, ridiculous.
I know you are an anti establishment man but at least do the maths before presenting your solely emotionally based arguments lol.

a reply to: TrueBrit

A bicycle response in the 1960's may have been quicker.

a reply to: Kester

I'll rock the boat and say I like living in a police area which has historically been one of the most underfunded and understaffed in England for many years now. They leave us alone and we sort things out ourselves as a community with sealed lips.
I pity folk who rely on the police, sounds like a # existence.

a reply to: grainofsand

It would be better than starting with the front lines, and getting higher up and softer with the cuts after that. The rot is not at the bottom, and starting with those who actually do a service for their nation on the streets, where it actually matters, is not the right way to go about making cuts.

There are several things we could get onto which would save every government department a shed load, and most of those things would require a forced renegotiation of contracts between private companies and the government. Private organisations have been ripping off the taxpayer for years, not just by banking overseas, but by overcharging the government for goods and services, and then taking that inflated profit and stashing it out of sight of the taxman.

These companies are basically committing a kind of treason, against the people of this isle, and all of this has to do with the fact that contracts were written years ago, under totally different circumstances, and by people who probably got paid an awful lot of backhanders, to assist these companies in stiffing our country. Even Her Majesties Revenue and Customs is getting screwed. Markups on the items in the catalogue from which they have to order everything they use, are in the order of four and five hundred percent greater than those offered by high street retailers, and this applies whether we are talking about copier paper, or a photocopier itself, whether we are talking about air conditioning servicing, or simply getting a computer routed into the other end of a set of desks.

The NHS is another organisation that gets ripped off routinely, and yet another are our armed forces. The way we spend our money as a country is broken, because those who arrange deals on our behalf are doing it in a way which benefits THEM, and NOT us. We start with the top, and we work our way down. We force all companies dealing with government to be competitive, not to be highwaymen about it, and to treat their service to us as if they respect the taxpayers who pay their bills for them at the moment. We ensure that only necessary individuals are employed by government on any level other than front line, and we plough every resource we save into reinstating a decent level of policing where it is needed, into getting our universities opened up to the poor again, so that we can start getting more nurses, and doctors with the training we want, through our universities and into our hospitals, and our communities.

If we did not waste so much money on badly written contracts with suppliers to government, and were not so fond of allowing civil servants to make deals to line their own pockets and those of certain political figures too no doubt, then we would not be in this mess, and the mess starts at the top, not the bottom. Clear the top, save the bottom, and let's grow a better, cleaner top than we had!

originally posted by: Kester

the unidentified officer said the "subject"

always bugs me when i see/hear them call us "subjects" we left the kings land so as to not be called subjects any longer. (among other reasons.)

a reply to: NobodiesNormal

subject
noun
ˈsʌbdʒɛkt,ˈsʌbdʒɪkt/
1.
a person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.

Police here are often very precise with their language using accepted dictionary definitions to avoid possible ambiguity.

a reply to: NobodiesNormal

Hahaha!

Who did? The Americans? Yes, but you see, this is a story about the policing situation in a nation which has existed for much longer than two hundred and something years, so when the officer calls people subjects, he is correct twice.

My younger sister works in mental health with the NHS. Many are the times when she and colleagues have had to drive people being sectioned across counties into the early hours because there are no places available. In at least one case late last year, they tried finding a place and there was nothing in the entire country available!
She and her colleagues work long shifts, 12-13 hours, sometimes longer if they have a case come in towards the end of their shift or need to transport someone to the next county, or further, yet the pay scales are dismal. We are talking about healthcare professionals here with degree level qualifications and experience.
The six figure salaried bean counters on the other hand work nothing like the hours my sister does and are running the service into the ground. One might even get the impression that is by design, leading up to privatization of the services. In other words, putting it into the hands of corporate "healthcare", receiving public money by the £Billions whilst making tidy profits!

a reply to: Kester
Well the USA have a simple solution. ......shoot them.


Seriously though I feel sorry for the police.

They have the same problem here in medway. My cousin has a mixture of mental health problems and has violent spells. Police have to be called and I cant praise them enough, they always safely subdue him (even though one has been hurt in the past) but when they take him down the station they cant get him into a mental health facility so all they can do is keep him in a cell until he calms down and the cycle continues.

The police are doing there there best to keep him out the criminal justice system but they have said if he hurts a innocent civilian there is not alot they can do if they press charges.

originally posted by: grainofsand
a reply to: TrueBrit

What a ridiculous suggestion, the money saved would be a drop in the ocean even if you cut the pay of all Grade 6 Civil Servants and above, it would make a negligible difference to police numbers or mental health service workers, ridiculous.
I know you are an anti establishment man but at least do the maths before presenting your solely emotionally based arguments lol.

No but its a start.

Civil servants that are just administrators that earn ridiculous salarys and have even more ridiculous perks need to be excised like a cancer.

Yes we need to look at cuts at all levels but we also need to start at the top as that is were corruption and beurocracy starts.

a reply to: Britguy

I spent Boxing Day cleaning a mentally ill woman's bathroom. She would have been kicked out, homeless, and probably sectioned again if a representative of the landlord had seen it. Help for her is practically zero.

a reply to: crazyewok

I've probably linked mentalhealthcop a thousand times but I'll do it again for anyone reading this who hasn't heard of him.
mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com...

a reply to: crazyewok

I'm feeling humbled. I was just about to describe the well-off NHS bean counter I know. I checked on his recent status and found he's just resigned. He said, "I went to a planning meeting on how to reduce spending yet again. I decided my salary might as well be one of the savings. I've had enough."

originally posted by: Britguy
My younger sister works in mental health with the NHS. Many are the times when she and colleagues have had to drive people being sectioned across counties into the early hours because there are no places available. In at least one case late last year, they tried finding a place and there was nothing in the entire country available!
She and her colleagues work long shifts, 12-13 hours, sometimes longer if they have a case come in towards the end of their shift or need to transport someone to the next county, or further, yet the pay scales are dismal. We are talking about healthcare professionals here with degree level qualifications and experience.
The six figure salaried bean counters on the other hand work nothing like the hours my sister does and are running the service into the ground. One might even get the impression that is by design, leading up to privatization of the services. In other words, putting it into the hands of corporate "healthcare", receiving public money by the £Billions whilst making tidy profits!

^This.

My girlfriend is a senior sister in an A&E department. the unsociable hours, amount of work and lack of support from the administrators is shocking. The idea that the services are being deliberately run into the ground to justify privatisation is something I hear all the time from her and her colleagues, I don't doubt it at all. Add to that the GPs working out of hours that get paid to stay in bed and send ambulances for retarded reasons because they can't be arsed to see a patient, the drunks that turn up by the dozens every weekend and the nursing homes that turf out dying residents under do not resuscitate orders because they don't want to be investigated... it's pretty obvious it's all going to sh!+ fast.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: NobodiesNormal

Hahaha!

Who did? The Americans? Yes, but you see, this is a story about the policing situation in a nation which has existed for much longer than two hundred and something years, so when the officer calls people subjects, he is correct twice.

But when a politician allegedly calls a group of policemen plebs are you saying he is incorrect? Technically he is actually correct, it's just the word has taken on a meaning not related to the original latin. Sorry, had to slip that in.

a reply to: uncommitted

Technically a politician calling a British subject a plebeian, whether they happen to be in the police force or not, is incorrect, since the term specifically applies to the commoners of Ancient Rome. Round these parts we are citizens and taxpayers, not plebeians, and terminology which points out class differences between the richest and poorest, and the most powerful and the least powerful, is supposed to be used only in the historical context, rather than being applied in every day parlance from one individual to another.

The class war is supposed to be over, or so I heard, what with the Tories insisting that everyone who wants an education can get the one they want, regardless of how little they earn, or how much it costs. It's all bunkum of course, but the fellow to whom you are referring was factually wrong in any event.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: uncommitted

Technically a politician calling a British subject a plebeian, whether they happen to be in the police force or not, is incorrect, since the term specifically applies to the commoners of Ancient Rome. Round these parts we are citizens and taxpayers, not plebeians, and terminology which points out class differences between the richest and poorest, and the most powerful and the least powerful, is supposed to be used only in the historical context, rather than being applied in every day parlance from one individual to another.

The class war is supposed to be over, or so I heard, what with the Tories insisting that everyone who wants an education can get the one they want, regardless of how little they earn, or how much it costs. It's all bunkum of course, but the fellow to whom you are referring was factually wrong in any event.

Plebeian meant common but it's only in modern definition did it mean anything more than what it literally means, you do seem to make up your own definition and apply it as fact though. The term originally wasn't one to be an insult, but a fact and and based on that factually he was right, but have it your own way, you seem to like that.