POLICE officers will still have to wait for \u201chours on end\u201d with mental health patients despite the Home Secretary\u2019s new proposals, Essex Police Federation\u2019s chairman has said.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith (pictured) said that Theresa May\u2019s plans to have more health-based places of safety across England and Wales would not necessarily reduce police time spent on helping people with mental health issues.\u00a0He was speaking after her speech to the Federation annual conference in Bournemouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes it might mean more health-based places of safety but officers are still going to have to stay with those people because there are not the social services to come out,\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cA member of public might be drunk or violent so it means two or three officers waiting with them for hours on end because there is no one to take over from us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith said he did not believe the Home Secretary grasped all of the issues police faced when dealing with mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has grasped that there are not enough places of safety and that a police cell should not be a place of safety. But once we get them to these new places of safety – which are going to cost lots of money – there are not the trained people to come and take them off our hands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Essex Federation chairman said he did not believe Mrs May said very much in her speech at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Home Secretary comes every year and, whatever you ask, she never really says anything and she refuses to change anything,\u201d he said. \u201cShe could quite easily have said compulsory severance is off the table and she would have won the room over but she didn\u2019t. She said nothing on pensions when questioned. She didn\u2019t offer any change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs May announced that, subject to consultation with the Sentencing Council, the government will change the law so that the starting point for anybody who kills a police officer should be a life sentence without parole.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Smith said he did not believe that the new law would ever come in.<\/p>\n
While the Home Secretary received applause when she took the stage and following her speech, Mr Smith said it was not a \u201chappy atmosphere\u201d in the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realised that we needed backbenchers on our side because if anything goes through Parliament we need their support,” he said. “Officers are certainly not happy but we\u2019re resigned to fact that whatever we say to this government they\u2019re not going to change because they think they know best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POLICE officers will still have to wait for \u201chours on end\u201d with mental health patients despite the Home Secretary\u2019s new proposals, Essex Police Federation\u2019s chairman has said. Mark Smith (pictured)\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}