The inquest after the sad death of Daniel Lyle has prompted a Preventing Future Deaths report from the Inner London coroner about police training. Daniel died after falling from height whilst experiencing a psychotic episode and this occurred whilst an operational police officer was attempting to talk to Daniel and bring the matter to a safe conclusion. All officers were cleared of any shortcoming in their response by the Independent Office for Police Conduct but in addition to the obvious tragedy for Daniel and his family, you have to feel for the principle officer negotiating, as well – having been there and done that, no doubt he would have been hoping to persuade and influence, to safeguard a vulnerable man him whilst others worked to mitigate risk around the incident.
My thoughts remain with all of them.
The coroner heard specific evidence from the officer negotiating about the handling of the incident itself but also about training in dealing with mental health emergencies. He had some training in the Metropolitan Police and also in other police forces over the previous fifteen years of his service, amounting to a “patchwork”. The officer stated to the coroner that he would welcome training around the recognition of symptoms of mental health emergencies and tactics around de-escalation albeit he acknowledged police personal safety training touches on these topics as well. If I’ve understood the wording of the PFD correctly, the officer welcomed the idea of mental health training by mental health professionals about signs and symptoms and that does happen in some areas.
This is not the first PFD notice to touch on the topic of police training or police refresher training. Training remains a live topic in my view, not least because work done on developing packages for the police service hasn’t necessarily been implemented. The Crisis Care Concordat (2014) required local and national agencies to improve crisis care responses and one aspect of that was the College of Policing updating national guidance on mental health and introducing the first national training packages to compliment it. Those materials were released in 2016 and by 2018 when Her (now His) Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary released the first ever thematic inspection of mental health and policing, “Picking Up the Pieces”, they made a recommendation that all forces should revisit the topic of training by August 2019 because they found no police forces had delivered the material. I’m not aware of whether that recommendation was followed up.
FAST FORWARD
And here we are: having since had at least three PFDs that I’m aware of asking forces to look again at training or refresher training around mental health. I can only add that I think this remains necessary: we see far too many difficulties – and not just in policing – which relate to a lack of knowledge around the interface of policing and mental health. Some of that is about practical handling of situations, like the tragedy here involving Daniel; others are about sometimes about legal issues like the Mental Health and Capacity Acts and how the requirements of that legislation translate in to joint protocols between agencies – or how they don’t.
So it’s seems to be a live issue for many but what I found very interesting in the wake of discussion about the national roll-out of “Right Care, Right Person” (which does include training for police officers and staff) was comment by the Police and Crime Commissioner lead on mental health about her view there should be no extra training because officers should be focusing on their core roles. One potential problem with this is HMIC’s finding that some hadn’t had the basic level of training the College of Policing stipulated was the minimum requirement in 2016 and of course, whatever that requirement should be, there is also the question of refresher training which we see in so many other areas of policing and which has been highlighted by a Coroner.
I have four hours of mental health training under my belt and half of it was wrong. Mental health related demand remains a significant part of an operational officer’s job and I suspect nothing is going to change that any time soon.
Winner of the President’s Medal,
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All views expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2023
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 – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 