Refusing s135(1) Warrants

This brief post is just a complaint on behalf of AMHPs everywhere.  In recent weeks and months, I have received queries from AMHP services and AMHPs who are at jobs, for my advice on how to handle a situation where they have sworn out a warrant from a Magistrate under s135(1) and, having organised a Doctor to attend, they ask for police support.  It seems increasingly common that AMHPs complain of police forces refusing to supply officers to execute the warrant and this is causing problems.   I’ve had yet another email about this again tonight, from an exasperated AMHP whose Christmas seems to be hanging in the balance over an incident they have been told to attend and “see how you get on” where the risks involved are considerable.

Accepting completely there will be an aspect to this situation that I don’t know, it always strikes me intriguing how a risk assessment which would see me thinking of sending more than a double crewed car has somehow seen three attempts to secure police support have all failing with an instruction to ‘crack on’.  So with all that background, here’s a list of relevant of stuff to bear in mind, if you are a control room call-handler, a front line cop or supervisor when a request comes in to support an AMHP by executing a s135(1) warrant –

• Most MHA assessments don’t involve the police, so if an AMHP as not only requested the police, but gone to the trouble of queueing at court, you should assume that they really do believe police attendance is required to manage risk of some kind.
• Once the magistrate has issued the warrant, there is a statutory duty on the police service to execute the warrant within a reasonable time, based on whatever assessment of urgency prevails.
• AMHPs cannot execute warrants under s135(1) – or s135(2), for that matter.
• They only have “all the powers of a constable” over a patient once they have made an application for someone’s hospital admission and the patient is being taken and conveyed under section 6 MHA.
• It should never be forgotten – patients and professionals have died and / or suffered serious injuries around the delayed execution of warrants or mis-informed.
• In particular, there was a case a couple of years ago in Sheffield where a Coroner insisted upon improved processes to be established after a delay in police resourcing of a s135(1) warrant, contributed to the creation of a situation where a patient was killed in an altercation.
• My most complex MHA assessment in private premises job was one which involved considerable arguments over s135(1), but one thing to bear in mind is that any warrant issued by a magistrate involves someone who presents a type of risk which may need managing by the application of reasonable force that only the police have the power to do unless and until the person is ‘sectioned’ by the AMHP.

DUTY TO ATTEND

I have spent many hours in recent years trying to insist that police forces are not adopting an approach where, they would basically refuse to attend an incident unless MH services had sworn out a warrant.  If we are now in a position where we refuse to attend when there is a warrant, then things are worse than I feared.  I think we all understand how demand on policing is rising, there may be occasions where officers are not available at the first time of asking, or there is a delay.  But if large organisations like a police force simply cannot ensure the resourcing of a warrant that will most usually take no more than a double-crewed car, we have some problems.

Inability to resource a request should, in my opinion be escalated to duty sergeants or inspector, not least because it’s difficult enough to bring together an AMHP, a Doctor, police officers and potentially an ambulance, so if agencies don’t actively prioritise it, there will always be ways to obfuscate:  “tell us when the ambulance gets there and we’ll send officers”, etc., etc..  If the ambulance service play the same game, it just becomes all kinds of difficult.  Imagine being the AMHP?! … no wonder these people keep emergency food and blankets in the backs of their car.

Once an AMHP has obtained a warrant from a court and is asking for police attendance, there is a legal duty kicking in, right there.  Fair enough: it may mean some juggling of resources and priorities and a delay; and this is why local protocols should specify – in detail – how all of this gets done.  But what shouldn’t ever be happening is that we tell AMHPs to crack on and ‘see what happens’.  If I were the AMHP, I’d hand in an envelope to the front office containing the warrant and a short note.  It would invite the police to either ring on a number to arrange to attend the MHA or to endorse the warrant with reasons for it not being executed and returned to the Magistrate’s Clerks for the area.

Winner of the President’s Medal,
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award

All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2019

I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current.  Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.

Government legislation website – http://www.legislation.gov.uk