Federation: Force must back officers acting as ambulances

CHIEF Officers in Essex Police should back their officers in cases where they are having to act as a surrogate ambulance service, the Fed has demanded.

Officers in the force say they are stepping in “on a daily basis” to take people to hospital when ambulances fail to arrive.

But the Federation is not confident the county’s cops will have the force’s backing should something go wrong.

Mark Smith, chairman of the Essex Police Federation, said “Police officers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We are never going to leave someone on the floor, on the street to die. We are going to do the best we possibly can but something is going to go very, very wrong.

“Officers must have the support of their chief officers if something goes wrong. We are only trained in basic life support. When an officer makes a decision to convey a person to a hospital or not – and a person sadly dies – that officer should have full support from chief officers.

“I am not confident we have that.”

In reports last month, the East of England Ambulance Service said it was working to improve its response times. The service said incidents of police taking patients to hospital because of late or unavailable ambulances are not logged – though references were made on call logs if a call-out is cancelled.

A spokesman for the service, which covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and plans to save £50m over five years, said: “We recognise the need for back-up time improvements and have already revealed plans to address this by putting in place a raft of measures including 140 new frontline staff, better rotas and liaising with hospitals to reduce handover times.”

Mr Smith added: “I would ask officers to keep in touch with us over this issue.

“As a Federation we will back those officers. We will give them 100% support. I hope the force will join the Federation in backing those officers for the split second decisions they make.”

This week a spokesman for the force declined to respond to Mr Smith’s comments on chief officer support.

She said: “Ordinarily, police officers should not carry civilian passengers to hospital in a police-owned vehicle.

“However, in exceptional circumstances, in cases of medical emergency police transport could be used as a last resort.

“It should be remembered that an injured person may actually be caused further harm by moving them in a way that does not optimise their care.”