“Police officers are not mental health professionals”

POLICE officers are still spending more than an hour a day dealing with mental health incidents.

Theresa May promised to “finally sort out the enormous amount of police time spent on dealing with mental health patients” in May 2012.

But Sgt Andrew Ward, joint custody lead for the Police Federation, said “very little has been done” and that officers were dealing with mentally ill people on a daily basis.

“Police officers will do their best, but ultimately they are not mental health professionals,” he said. “What a patient needs is someone who is trained to deal with their condition.”

Ch Supt Irene Curtis, President of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales, agreed that there was “no feeling that it is getting any better”.

According to ACPO, research suggests at least 15 per cent of police time is spent dealing with people who have mental health problems.

Over an eight-hour shift, this equates to an hour and 20 minutes of an officer’s time that could have been spent fighting crime that is instead spent dealing with missing people call-outs, those detained under the Mental Health Act or police-led suicide interventions.

Simon Cole, Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police and ACPO’s lead on mental health, has acknowledged that many officers and members of police staff deal with people experiencing mental health problems on a daily basis.

“Forces around the country are making great strides in dealing with section 136 of the Mental Health Act, with some forces reporting 80 per cent plus of mental health detainees going straight to places of safety. Nationally, regionally and locally the police service is engaging with the health service to further improve this percentage,” he said.

The Home Office said it has put together an “action plan” with colleagues from the Department of Health and other organisations. A Home Office spokesman repeated Mrs May’s belief that “police officers should be focused on crime” and said it was working with partners to ensure “people with mental health issues are dealt with by the most appropriate emergency services”.