Very sad news from east London this week, where the Metropolitan Police have used firearms at an incident which seems to have been a mental health crisis in progress and it has ended with the death of a vulnerable man who had called the police to say he wanted to take his own life and was in possession of loaded firearms.
The incident itself is under independent investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct and this post is not about the specifics of it, which are not known to me in any event. This post is about some of the social media reaction to the incident which was reported in the media in a level of detail not that much greater than the opening paragraphs of this post. So it’s not known to those reacting on line, either.
The charity Inquest posted about the incident on social media and confirmed they will be supporting the family of the deceased man. In reaction to their post, we see the following responses —
“They clearly have inadequate de-escalation skills.”
“So heartbreaking that someone who even warned them that he was struggling was sent firearms officers to de-escalate things.”
These are just two, but they both emphasise de-escalation skills so let’s start there, then we’ll move on to sending firearms officers to incidents where someone claims to have a loaded firearm.
DE-ESCALATION
The police haven’t always used the phrase de-escalation skills or de-escalation techniques, but it’s a red-herring to suggest that what the police don’t do or can’t do, is de-escalate and this is also especially true of firearms officers whose training in this regard is way above what response officers receive, for example. I’ve written about de-escalation before, including my own experience of a failed attempt – and I was once asked about this at a Home Affairs Select Committee evidence session in 2014. The police are very good at de-escalation, overall and in training, a lot of emphasis is placed on effective communication, adopting principles that minimise pressure on people, especially wehre mental health, drugs or alcohol may be involved. I once had this very discussion with a professor of mental health nursing who had researched de-escalation in his own profession: it’s worth noting HASC asked me about de-escalation like we see in mental health nursing.
He replied that de-escalation training is of limited effect: whatever impact it has on nurses as individuals – and it was described as limited in improving the natural abilities people have anyway – the benefit wears off over time and it doesn’t amount to a set of objective techniques where if you only say and do the “right” things in the right order, you will see a predictable outcome. Oddly enough, people are unique and complicated and how they react to a police officer or a nurse attempting de-escalation may well depend on many factors outside the control of the professional and which may not be known to them as the try. Finally, he mentioned he’d attended training in his local police force to see how the police train their officers and felt police training was better than much of the nurse training he’d seen.
They don’t call it “de-escalation training” but this doesn’t mean it isn’t “de-escalation training”.
Of course, what you also cannot control is the impact of uniforms on people. The police turning up, whether it’s unarmed response officers, perhaps with tasers, or whether it’s authorised firearms officers (AFOs), you cannot control what impact that will have on a vulnerable person who has called the police to indicate their intention to end their life. In fairness, vulnerable people ringing 999 to state these intentions is not uncommon. I’ve worked in a busy control room as a firearms commander making decisions about 999 calls exactly like this and it’s as complicated as it gets.
So let’s talk about armed policing.
FIREARMS OFFICERS
Genuine question, not at all flippant. If someone says they have a loaded firearm, who else are you going to send or what else are you expecting to happen, than the deployment of armed police officers?
Firstly, as part of the considerations, you would obviously undertake as many intelligence checks as you can to see what we know about the person, especially with reference to their ability to access or their history with firearms. So it’s not 100% that you would automatically deploy armed officers to such a report, but you’d have to be pretty confident you’re not putting unarmed officers at unacceptable risk by making that decision. And in terms of other agencies responding instead – because you believe paramedics, mental health nurses or social workers would better de-escalate things – if you can find me the professional who would go to such an incident without the police attending first, I’d be thrilled to know of it. I’ve never known it in over twenty-five years of doing this and I wouldn’t expect it.
The legal threshold for deploying armed officers is that the commander making the decision has “reason to suppose officers may need to defend themselves or others from someone with a firearm or potentially lethal weapon”. Reason to suppose – not ‘believe’ or ‘suspect’, but suppose. It’s a much lower threshold than ‘believe’ or ‘suspect’. In other words, if you think it might be necessary officers may need to resort to a firearm to protect themselves. If someone says “I’ve got loaded firearms” do we think that claim MIGHT be true? Yes, we do – because we don’t guess about whether it’s probably nonsense or some exaggeration, you act on what you are told is the case. We don’t expect police officers to simply disbelieve people – that’s not how things work.
As said, above: you cannot know the impact of uniformed police officers attending and it will only be more impactful if the officers are armed, I understand that. But as part of the human rights type decision-making about the deployment of armed officers, you have to ask whether it is a proportionate response to the supposed threat. If a person may be about to kill himself or pose a wider risk, it will be proportionate to deploy armed police officers to mitigate that risk so unarmed officers are not put in jeopardy and so the police as a whole have protected those affected by the incident. And here’s another thing which is often unmentioned when people react to reports of armed officers being deployed. They don’t only turn up with firearms and in order to use them. They are also equipped with various “less-lethal” options which are not carried by unarmed officers. Things like ‘AEP’ – an attenuated energy projectile or ‘baton gun’, to you and me. This can be used from distance and is less likely to be fatal than a police firearm, but only AFOs are authorised to carry and use it.
In any incident thought to revolve around someone’s mental health, the need for AEPs to be prepared is a standard part of the briefing given by firearms commanders and the deployment and all AFOs carry taser as well as their firearms. Judgement about whether taser, AEP or a firearm is the correct equipment, if any is needed (and it usually isn’t), is then a matter for the officers and the commander on the ground.
NEGOTIATION
The final point to make about the perceived frustration about de-escalation: we know in the above incident a police negotiator was sent to the scene. We know no more than that at this stage, but it again shows thinking about de-escalation – police negotiators are the best there is at de-escalation, albeit in an unavoidably police context. The selection process for negotiators is difficult, training extensive and their ability unparalleled, in my experience of them. That said, they cannot guarantee outcomes because that’s not how human interactions work.
Let the IOPC investigate – nobody commenting on this knows what happened, but suffice to say suggestion the outcome demonstrates a failure to de-escalate just shows what is known and not known about de-escalation. There won’t be a firearms officer reading the news report who won’t be thinking whether this tragedy was a potential ‘suicide by cop’ incident. We know plenty of people have stated an intention to end their lives and then rung 999 suggesting they had a firearm and I’ve known and dealt with incidents where firearms officers and / or negotiators have attended, de-escalated and then found themselves resolving the situation without recourse to force.
British firearms officers are amongst the best trained in the world and British police negotiators are used internationally. Remember, nobody is posting about successful de-escalation of incidents, including the handful of very similar reports I’ve been involved in where no firearms were discharged and people were safeguarded. So before anybody leaps to the conclusion anyone caused the outcome or fell short of what was expected, let the investigators and investigate and then see what they say in light of the established facts not known to any of us. This will no doubt include body worn video from all the officers involved, in addition to lots of other material. There will also be an inquest in due course which will examine all of this as well.
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, 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.
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