By Georgia Banjo
A burst of acronyms came over the police car radio, galvanising Nick Beasley into action. Beasley, who is in his early 30s and has been a police officer for nine years, keeps the peace in Ealing, a borough in west London. It was 4pm on a bright Friday afternoon in October and I was accompanying him and his colleague Malachi Randell, a lanky trainee detective in his 20s, on the evening shift. Beasley flicked on the sirens and the cars in front curved away, as if pushed aside by a centripetal force. We spun around a few corners, and came to a stop outside a terraced house on a quiet, tree-lined street. Three women, wearing Crocs and headscarves, were standing in a garden full of purple and apricot African daisies. “She’s gone in the living room and smashed up the TV,” said one of them matter-of-factly.
The woman in question had previously been treated in hospital for psychosis. This was the family’s third visit from the police in three days. An ambulance had been called an hour ago but hadn’t turned up. Earlier that day a National Health Service (NHS) mental-health team had come to perform an assessment, but apparently felt threatened and left. Randell phoned the team to ask if they could come back. The mental-health worker he spoke to said they couldn’t – they needed to pick up their kids.
One of a police officer’s main duties has been responding to people suffering from mental-health crises, who are unable to get the right support from the NHS. But the Met is pushing back
The Met, as London’s Metropolitan Police Service is known, has never been busier. In April the force received almost 9,300 emergency calls in a single day – a new record. Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, pointed out that only a minority of them were related to crime. One of a police officer’s main duties has become responding to people suffering from mental-health crises, who are unable to get sufficient support from the NHS. But the Met is pushing back. From November 1st it hopes to reduce the number of such call-outs its officers respond to by around a third. The Met says this will free up time to deal with criminals: a damning report in March found the force currently solves only 8% of reported crimes.
At the house, a figure appeared in an upstairs window, shouting: “Why have you called the police?” The police have emergency powers to detain people for up to 36 hours under section 136 of the Mental Health Act if they judge it necessary for the person’s safety or the safety of other people: some 7,000 people are sectioned by the Met every year. In this instance, Beasley explained, he had no powers to section the woman because she was in her own home and appeared to have mental capacity. With the family’s permission Beasley escorted her out and she walked away from the house calmly. Leaning against the garden wall, he typed up his report on his laptop before we all got back in the car.
We didn’t get very far before a call came in to say that the woman had returned and was threatening her family. This gave the police grounds for arrest. Beasley and Randell returned and handcuffed her on the street outside the house. She lay down on the pavement in a silent protest, her clogs protruding from between the officers’ spread legs. A police van arrived, and two officers jumped out, donning blue latex gloves before they touched the woman. They tried to pull her up by her coat sleeves, but she went limp, passively resisting. It took four of them, one holding each limb, to carry her into the cage in the back of the van. (Strictly speaking, ambulances are meant to transport people suffering from mental-health crises to hospital, but the ambulance service is overstretched and often passes the buck to the police.)
Beasley came back to the car to get his laptop. Between his police cap and bushy auburn beard his face had turned pink. During the arrest, the woman declared she would kill herself as soon as she left the police station, so the police decided to section her. Her family, perhaps exhausted, seemed indifferent to her fate, re-emerging from the house only to sweep broken glass into the bin.
The police’s power to section people is controversial. It criminalises mental illness and black people are almost five times more likely to be sectioned than white people. But the police often believe they have no choice. “If I don’t section someone and something happens to them, then it’s my fault,” said Beasley.
Once someone is sectioned, police officers are obliged to take them to a place of safety, usually the accident and emergency (A&E) department of the nearest hospital, and stay with them until their mental health can be assessed. With the NHS at breaking point, this can take a while – officers spend 14.2 hours on average waiting in A&E with a sectioned patient before care is transferred. Across England, this adds up to just under 1m hours of police time a year. “There’s times at which a hospital looks like a police yard,” said Beasley.
The police are now being called out for general medical emergencies, he said. “We’ve been sent to people having seizures and strokes…we’ve had minimal training.” Recently, he said, he was asked to take a bleeding pregnant lady to hospital. He refused because “it’s the job of the ambulance service. They wouldn’t have passed it to the fire brigade, so why us?” Beasley supports the Met’s decision to reduce the number of mental-health call-outs it responds to. “We’re fighting back now to say, we’re the police,” he said.
We followed the van carrying the sectioned woman through the early-evening drizzle to the hospital, where a man in scrubs was waiting to whisk her off to be monitored. Calmer now, she stepped out of the van voluntarily. A bed had been found for her in just 15 minutes. “This is miraculous,” said Randell, marvelling at the ease of the handover.
[deleted]
The police should **never** have been the first responders to mental health emergencies in the first place.
As an available resource to mental health professionals, yes, but not as the first agency to respond.
They aren’t trained for it, they aren’t equipped for it, but when you sell off even the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, what else is left?
I fully support the met’s approach on this, and their focus on actually getting back to crime prevention, rather than spending, what 50%+ of their time on this.
Londoners can no longer rely on the police
Fixed it for you.
I’ve got mental health problems, I had undiagnosed PTSD which turned out to be CPTSD and I’ve had the police called to my residence by exs when I’ve unfortunately lost control in the past.
Twice they didn’t even show up this was in Liverpool when I lived there and again in Birmingham when they did with a different gf my current partner. They was shit. My mental health was yet to be diagnosed they made me fly completely off of the handles and threw a bad mood swing into a month of hell. Got arrested for resisting their help and soon as I went quiet and asked for a lawyer and I’m pretty sure I’ve not done anything illegal no one got hurt I was let go. So they grabbed a fizzy drink and shook it till it was about to explode and immediately let me go when I questioned their handling of the situation with legal action present. Funny that.
Hopefully we get something in place with responders and above all else get diagnosis time down. I waited 2 years for a bipolar assessment then 3 years for ADHD and finally 5 months for PTSD and only because my doctor pushed after my Mrs diagnosed me with the help of chatGPT. That’s about 10 years of me saying to different doctors somethings wrong and nothing gets done.
Mental health is primarily the responsibility of the individual and thereafter it is the responsibility of the NHS. It never was the responsibility of the police.
The NHS budget in England and Wales is £170 Billion. The police budget is £17 billion. One tenth.
In the last 3 years the NHS budget has increased by more money than the total budget for policing.
Passing the buck has been deliberate derogation of duty by the NHS and it’s right that they’re taken to task over it.
“Londoners can no longer rely on the police to handle emergencies” – fixed it for you.
And they shouldn’t have to. 15 years of tory austerity has stepped essential services to the bone while plunging the country into more debt. Of course the tories themselves are wealthier then ever.
I’ll Never forget a bunch of police officers at a bar going on about how they wish they could just push everyone having a mental health crisis off beachy head
Getting down voted but this 100 percent happened at a bar in Eastbourne. I know its hard to understand and accept but the police is more than a few bad apples. And this is relevant when talking about police responding to mental health crisis. They’re neither equipped or the right sort of people to be doing it.
I mean last time I checked, having police presence only worsens your mental health.
This is good, it will free up the police for other activities such as kidnapping,raping and murdering vulnerable young women, then arresting people at a vigil for said young women.
I’m sure they are thrilled.
Don’t worry the ambulance service who aren’t busy attending 56% of all 999 calls will go instead.
I think this will be better for everyone in the long-term, but it’s going to result in a lot of short-term pain for those who need help.
What we need is a new mental health focused emergency services run by the NHS. Maybe with social workers embedded or available to attend too. With option of police back up if needed.
10+ years ago they shut down a day centre for elderly people. I asked the staff what was happening, they said they want community nursing and police to call out if anything is wrong. Plus get a company in to sort out alarms for people at home.
The day centre which was council ran provided everything under 1 roof. Chiropodist that came in once a week or every two weeks, pad, changing and general care. Bathing once a week for the people with mobility issues. Bingo, other games that kept people socially active, and mentally active
That all shut and they rely on people to fill in the blanks. The same council that spend 50k on some “art” that was literally two pieces of metal shaped in a half circle.
They rely on policing to fill in the blanks when really it should be someone else but with cuts they offload the job load to someone else. which then makes police short staffed on innocents they should be at but can’t because they dealing with stuff related to mental health. Leave them to do actual policing.
Having spent 30 years with mental health problems the last people I call are the police, and I’ve asked my family not to ring them either. I’m very self aware of my condition and if things become bad I disregard all the voices in my head and get to A&E. They have been my first port of call every time but the police, good Lord no. The MH services are stretched and it’ll only get worse, I was once waiting for 6 hours after a mental breakdown, but apparently I just sat there and sang Ed Sheehan songs for the duration… I have no recollection.
I appreciate this may seem like a sweeping statement but it’s firs thand experience I have had; some of the emergency services only attend mental health incidents once the Police are already there and then slow down their progress accordingly. The amount of jobs I’ve been to in my previous role for suicidal missing people who MAY be on a dark park/ bridge/ near a river is too many to count. The pushback we were consistently given is that the paramedics can’t be expected to wander around looking for them and will only attend once police had found them/ they’ve actually jumped from the bridge. Its bonkers to think of so many officers on a single incident diverting and searching when listening to other incidents of crimes in progress; knife attacks, fights, Burglaries, young kids being robbed and being ‘ stuck’ aimlessly searching. I do want to say though that I would, and always will, give that my full attention- it’s why I signed up in the first place- to help people. But it doesn’t fit the remit of what the Police should be doing. It shouldn’t be for the Police to sit with someone threatening to take an overdose for 4+hours whilst mental health triage return a call and decide whether they’re sending a consultant or Police have to transport themselves.
Lack of resources, crews and time shouldn’t mean another service is pushed to the limit. I’ve been first officer to attend numerous incidents of road traffic collisions, people in the water, someone stuck up a tree, cardiac arrests, house fires and whilst I and others do our best, we are the relevant service and I’ll equipped to perform it correctly.
“Londoners can no longer rely on plumbers to fix their car”
18 comments
Non-Paywall Link [https://web.archive.org/web/20231104194555/www.economist.com/1843/2023/11/01/londoners-can-no-longer-rely-on-the-police-to-handle-mental-health-emergencies](https://web.archive.org/web/20231104194555/www.economist.com/1843/2023/11/01/londoners-can-no-longer-rely-on-the-police-to-handle-mental-health-emergencies)
​
By Georgia Banjo
A burst of acronyms came over the police car radio, galvanising Nick Beasley into action. Beasley, who is in his early 30s and has been a police officer for nine years, keeps the peace in Ealing, a borough in west London. It was 4pm on a bright Friday afternoon in October and I was accompanying him and his colleague Malachi Randell, a lanky trainee detective in his 20s, on the evening shift. Beasley flicked on the sirens and the cars in front curved away, as if pushed aside by a centripetal force. We spun around a few corners, and came to a stop outside a terraced house on a quiet, tree-lined street. Three women, wearing Crocs and headscarves, were standing in a garden full of purple and apricot African daisies. “She’s gone in the living room and smashed up the TV,” said one of them matter-of-factly.
The woman in question had previously been treated in hospital for psychosis. This was the family’s third visit from the police in three days. An ambulance had been called an hour ago but hadn’t turned up. Earlier that day a National Health Service (NHS) mental-health team had come to perform an assessment, but apparently felt threatened and left. Randell phoned the team to ask if they could come back. The mental-health worker he spoke to said they couldn’t – they needed to pick up their kids.
One of a police officer’s main duties has been responding to people suffering from mental-health crises, who are unable to get the right support from the NHS. But the Met is pushing back
The Met, as London’s Metropolitan Police Service is known, has never been busier. In April the force received almost 9,300 emergency calls in a single day – a new record. Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, pointed out that only a minority of them were related to crime. One of a police officer’s main duties has become responding to people suffering from mental-health crises, who are unable to get sufficient support from the NHS. But the Met is pushing back. From November 1st it hopes to reduce the number of such call-outs its officers respond to by around a third. The Met says this will free up time to deal with criminals: a damning report in March found the force currently solves only 8% of reported crimes.
At the house, a figure appeared in an upstairs window, shouting: “Why have you called the police?” The police have emergency powers to detain people for up to 36 hours under section 136 of the Mental Health Act if they judge it necessary for the person’s safety or the safety of other people: some 7,000 people are sectioned by the Met every year. In this instance, Beasley explained, he had no powers to section the woman because she was in her own home and appeared to have mental capacity. With the family’s permission Beasley escorted her out and she walked away from the house calmly. Leaning against the garden wall, he typed up his report on his laptop before we all got back in the car.
We didn’t get very far before a call came in to say that the woman had returned and was threatening her family. This gave the police grounds for arrest. Beasley and Randell returned and handcuffed her on the street outside the house. She lay down on the pavement in a silent protest, her clogs protruding from between the officers’ spread legs. A police van arrived, and two officers jumped out, donning blue latex gloves before they touched the woman. They tried to pull her up by her coat sleeves, but she went limp, passively resisting. It took four of them, one holding each limb, to carry her into the cage in the back of the van. (Strictly speaking, ambulances are meant to transport people suffering from mental-health crises to hospital, but the ambulance service is overstretched and often passes the buck to the police.)
Beasley came back to the car to get his laptop. Between his police cap and bushy auburn beard his face had turned pink. During the arrest, the woman declared she would kill herself as soon as she left the police station, so the police decided to section her. Her family, perhaps exhausted, seemed indifferent to her fate, re-emerging from the house only to sweep broken glass into the bin.
The police’s power to section people is controversial. It criminalises mental illness and black people are almost five times more likely to be sectioned than white people. But the police often believe they have no choice. “If I don’t section someone and something happens to them, then it’s my fault,” said Beasley.
Once someone is sectioned, police officers are obliged to take them to a place of safety, usually the accident and emergency (A&E) department of the nearest hospital, and stay with them until their mental health can be assessed. With the NHS at breaking point, this can take a while – officers spend 14.2 hours on average waiting in A&E with a sectioned patient before care is transferred. Across England, this adds up to just under 1m hours of police time a year. “There’s times at which a hospital looks like a police yard,” said Beasley.
The police are now being called out for general medical emergencies, he said. “We’ve been sent to people having seizures and strokes…we’ve had minimal training.” Recently, he said, he was asked to take a bleeding pregnant lady to hospital. He refused because “it’s the job of the ambulance service. They wouldn’t have passed it to the fire brigade, so why us?” Beasley supports the Met’s decision to reduce the number of mental-health call-outs it responds to. “We’re fighting back now to say, we’re the police,” he said.
We followed the van carrying the sectioned woman through the early-evening drizzle to the hospital, where a man in scrubs was waiting to whisk her off to be monitored. Calmer now, she stepped out of the van voluntarily. A bed had been found for her in just 15 minutes. “This is miraculous,” said Randell, marvelling at the ease of the handover.
[deleted]
The police should **never** have been the first responders to mental health emergencies in the first place.
As an available resource to mental health professionals, yes, but not as the first agency to respond.
They aren’t trained for it, they aren’t equipped for it, but when you sell off even the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, what else is left?
I fully support the met’s approach on this, and their focus on actually getting back to crime prevention, rather than spending, what 50%+ of their time on this.
Londoners can no longer rely on the police
Fixed it for you.
I’ve got mental health problems, I had undiagnosed PTSD which turned out to be CPTSD and I’ve had the police called to my residence by exs when I’ve unfortunately lost control in the past.
Twice they didn’t even show up this was in Liverpool when I lived there and again in Birmingham when they did with a different gf my current partner. They was shit. My mental health was yet to be diagnosed they made me fly completely off of the handles and threw a bad mood swing into a month of hell. Got arrested for resisting their help and soon as I went quiet and asked for a lawyer and I’m pretty sure I’ve not done anything illegal no one got hurt I was let go. So they grabbed a fizzy drink and shook it till it was about to explode and immediately let me go when I questioned their handling of the situation with legal action present. Funny that.
Hopefully we get something in place with responders and above all else get diagnosis time down. I waited 2 years for a bipolar assessment then 3 years for ADHD and finally 5 months for PTSD and only because my doctor pushed after my Mrs diagnosed me with the help of chatGPT. That’s about 10 years of me saying to different doctors somethings wrong and nothing gets done.
Mental health is primarily the responsibility of the individual and thereafter it is the responsibility of the NHS. It never was the responsibility of the police.
The NHS budget in England and Wales is £170 Billion. The police budget is £17 billion. One tenth.
In the last 3 years the NHS budget has increased by more money than the total budget for policing.
Passing the buck has been deliberate derogation of duty by the NHS and it’s right that they’re taken to task over it.
“Londoners can no longer rely on the police to handle emergencies” – fixed it for you.
And they shouldn’t have to. 15 years of tory austerity has stepped essential services to the bone while plunging the country into more debt. Of course the tories themselves are wealthier then ever.
I’ll Never forget a bunch of police officers at a bar going on about how they wish they could just push everyone having a mental health crisis off beachy head
Getting down voted but this 100 percent happened at a bar in Eastbourne. I know its hard to understand and accept but the police is more than a few bad apples. And this is relevant when talking about police responding to mental health crisis. They’re neither equipped or the right sort of people to be doing it.
I mean last time I checked, having police presence only worsens your mental health.
This is good, it will free up the police for other activities such as kidnapping,raping and murdering vulnerable young women, then arresting people at a vigil for said young women.
I’m sure they are thrilled.
Don’t worry the ambulance service who aren’t busy attending 56% of all 999 calls will go instead.
I think this will be better for everyone in the long-term, but it’s going to result in a lot of short-term pain for those who need help.
What we need is a new mental health focused emergency services run by the NHS. Maybe with social workers embedded or available to attend too. With option of police back up if needed.
10+ years ago they shut down a day centre for elderly people. I asked the staff what was happening, they said they want community nursing and police to call out if anything is wrong. Plus get a company in to sort out alarms for people at home.
The day centre which was council ran provided everything under 1 roof. Chiropodist that came in once a week or every two weeks, pad, changing and general care. Bathing once a week for the people with mobility issues. Bingo, other games that kept people socially active, and mentally active
That all shut and they rely on people to fill in the blanks. The same council that spend 50k on some “art” that was literally two pieces of metal shaped in a half circle.
They rely on policing to fill in the blanks when really it should be someone else but with cuts they offload the job load to someone else. which then makes police short staffed on innocents they should be at but can’t because they dealing with stuff related to mental health. Leave them to do actual policing.
Having spent 30 years with mental health problems the last people I call are the police, and I’ve asked my family not to ring them either. I’m very self aware of my condition and if things become bad I disregard all the voices in my head and get to A&E. They have been my first port of call every time but the police, good Lord no. The MH services are stretched and it’ll only get worse, I was once waiting for 6 hours after a mental breakdown, but apparently I just sat there and sang Ed Sheehan songs for the duration… I have no recollection.
I appreciate this may seem like a sweeping statement but it’s firs thand experience I have had; some of the emergency services only attend mental health incidents once the Police are already there and then slow down their progress accordingly. The amount of jobs I’ve been to in my previous role for suicidal missing people who MAY be on a dark park/ bridge/ near a river is too many to count. The pushback we were consistently given is that the paramedics can’t be expected to wander around looking for them and will only attend once police had found them/ they’ve actually jumped from the bridge. Its bonkers to think of so many officers on a single incident diverting and searching when listening to other incidents of crimes in progress; knife attacks, fights, Burglaries, young kids being robbed and being ‘ stuck’ aimlessly searching. I do want to say though that I would, and always will, give that my full attention- it’s why I signed up in the first place- to help people. But it doesn’t fit the remit of what the Police should be doing. It shouldn’t be for the Police to sit with someone threatening to take an overdose for 4+hours whilst mental health triage return a call and decide whether they’re sending a consultant or Police have to transport themselves.
Lack of resources, crews and time shouldn’t mean another service is pushed to the limit. I’ve been first officer to attend numerous incidents of road traffic collisions, people in the water, someone stuck up a tree, cardiac arrests, house fires and whilst I and others do our best, we are the relevant service and I’ll equipped to perform it correctly.
“Londoners can no longer rely on plumbers to fix their car”