WOW! Did you watch “Catch a Copper” on Channel Four last night? … just WOW! It was embarrassing to watch and I can admit: I had to stop watching it, take a break to calm down and then view the rest of it on catch up.
Inspector Jon Owen QPM said it best and he said it very plainly, “I’m ashamed”. And he just about managed to say this after we saw him sitting there quite literally open-mouthed, wide-eyed and shaking his head at what he was watching in the first case the programme highlights. It involved a mental health crisis incident on the Clifton Suspension bridge in Bristol. Full disclosure: Jon is a good friend of mine and I value his expertise on this topic more than any other. He has been rightly recognised for his work on policing and mental health with the award of the Queen’s Police Medal and he’s the only other serving officer who has been recognised as an expert on this in Coroner’s courts. He makes a big impact, so his is a very credible view on this:
“It looks awful because it is awful … where’s the kindness? It’s hostile, it’s aggressive, it’s short-termpered. I’m ashamed.”
Avon and Somerset Police (ASP) invited in the television cameras of a documentary maker to specifically cover the business of their Professional Standards Department (PSD). For those who aren’t aware, PSD investigates police officers where complaints are made OR – as with the bridge incident – after concerns are raised internally. Review of some body-worn-video (BWV) footage had caused someone to highlight an incident and PSD decided to fully investigate it. The conclusion of the story (spoiler alert): is the two officers involved resigned from the police and are no longer serving. Judgement was made by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) that this was not a criminal incident, despite PSD and even the Police Federation in Avon and Somerset stating they thought it could be.
SUSPENSION
The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a significant location for ASP, with a number of people accessing the are whilst distressed, causing concern someone may fall, whether intentionally or otherwise – and from all over the wider region as it’s an iconic location. People on the bridge are already restraining the lady in the incident when the police arrive – she is already under some degree of control on the ground. Within no time at all of arriving, one of the officers says, “Right, you’re under arrest on suspicion of causing a public nuisance” and we then have BWV footage of the restraint which follows, including use of a spit guard, PAVA (pepper spray) and manual restraint. All the while, accompanied by no serious effort to communicate in a way that might calm things down or reassure the woman. As said, it’s all hostile, aggressive and short-tempered.
The public are probably wondering a number of things –
- Firstly, as Jon Owen quite rightly said, “Where’s the kindness?”
- The chair of the Police Federation for Avon and Somerset said, ““They dehumanise her – that’s the hardest part for me. They don’t treat her like a human being.” They’re going to struggle to justify their actions and what we’ve potentially got, is criminal assault.”
- Secondly, why reach straight for arrest for an alleged criminal offence? – if detention were thought unavoidable once the police arrive, why wouldn’t you detain this lady under the Mental Health Act 1983 to ensure care and assessment of her obvious distress and potential mental health needs?
- The (common law) offence of public nuisance can be used in some situations where people are on bridges, but the offence involves fairly widespread impact or at least potential impact on others.
- For example, where Just Stop Oil protesters shut down bridges over arterial roads, affecting the traffic movement on those roads and preventing thousands of people from using motorways or railway lines, it may come in to play because of the widespread disruption.
- How officers can form a view that anything similar has occurred when the woman was not found by them on the adverse side of a barrier or with any obvious evidence about wider impact on the public, I’ve no idea.
- I know the programme makes clear the lady is “a regular” because that’s said by the people at the bridge as officers arrive – but it doesn’t change the above.
- Again, the chair of A&S Police Federation said, “Even if it’s the fifteenth time we’ve dealt with her that week, she still deserves to be treated correctly.”
There is a range of dialogue from the officers which left me as open-mouthed and wide eyed as Jon. The context ceases to be important really, because it’s just too foul to be justified in any context, but especially with a vulnerable, obviously traumatised person in distress.
- As the lady continues to show obvious signs of distress –
- “Do you want to shut up?”
- As she continues to resist in the vehicle on the way to custody
- “Don’t you dare fucking do that”
- As she cries in the car
- “What are you crying about? … do you not get bored of this”
All the while, the lady is screaming, almost in animalistic distress, complaining that her face is burning (PAVA) and she’s contained within a spit guard saying “let me breathe”. Not once in the entire incident do the officers ask what’s happened to her that day, speak to her reassuringly, suggest they’re going to try and help, what they can do to make this any easier or better.
They just taunt her with utter unpleasantness – it’s grotesque.
But weirdly enough, the one that nailed me for it’s utter irrelevance was the more innocuous comment during transport to the police station whilst the woman is still in very obvious distress, one officer asks the other –
- “Is now a good time to pick up a tandoori.”
- “There’s never bad time for it.”
EH?! … I really mean that: just EH?! Seemingly irrelevant, it’s actually all just signalling to her and to each other (and now, to all of us!) how utterly unimportant and irrelevant that lady and her predicament is to them.
BAD APPLES
When you read the academic literature on policing and police cultures, you see extensive debate about the “rotten apple” idea – that no organisations as large as police forces could exist without there being a certain number of ‘rogue’ or ‘corrupt’ officers, the rotten apples. The metaphor is used to suggest there’s only “one or two” problems, relative to the overall number and we should have confidence in the rest. Of course, the majority of police officers do a difficult job well, the majority of the time but the metaphor does actually mean something else, that the rotten apples which spoil the barrel – ie, the whole barrel.
They corrupts the rest and all of the contents are lost as a consequence. You only need to look at social media reaction to this programme to see how this is a reflection of policing as a whole, not just a reflection of the officers whose conduct is rightly highlighted for question.
Two views on the making and broadcast of this –
- The police are going to say it’s to their credit that they’re acknowledging these kinds of incidents, highlighting them and showing them attempting to deal with them and that it’s spectacular television viewing precisely because it’s exceptional and this shows the determination of the Chief Constable, PSD and specialists like Inspector Owen to get rid of those who’ve fallen way short of what’s required.
- Some might wonder if the counter argument might be to wonder what else goes on that isn’t captured on BWV or highlighted internally to PSD and then broadcast on documentaries – if they’re prepared to show this, then what won’t they be prepared to show? I strongly suspect the answer is “not much, actually”, but then others are looking at this from a different viewpoint and may be hard to convince.
For what this is worth, I do insist these kinds of things are utterly exceptional and that’s why it made such compelling, if distressing, television – but you’d probably imagine I wouldn’t say anything else. But what it does lay bare is the potential to think about attitudes in policing, inc towards mental health even if many are able to hide those attitudes behind their ability to police professional, notwithstanding what they may think.
NOT POLICE WORK
We saw another incident where the police assist the NHS with a patient who left a mental health unit. Long story made short, those officers say a range of inappropriate and dehumanising things and their handling of it was then subject to what is now known as ‘reflective practice’ – this means sitting down with their line manager and learning from the handling of the incident by thoroughly debriefing it and reflecting on what could or should have been done differently. Watch it for yourself because it speaks for itself – just make sure you’re in the right frame of mind given the kind of thing you’ve read, above.
But in the reflective practice discussion with their sergeant, one of the officers said something really quite astonishing – and bearing in mind he knew he was being recorded on a television camera, he openly admitted to frustrations at having to deal with mental health work and other vulnerability incidents. His actual words are quite remarkable and worth repeating –
“I’ve made a few mistakes. But mental health, domestics, we are going to them so much, so often it’s just becoming another job and we we’re not always seeing the victim at the end of it. If you don’t become desensitised, you can’t do the job. Because you’ll just get ruined in the first week. And if you let stuff effect you and you put too much empathy or connect too much with one person, then you’ll be distraught. You’ll be off on sick, because we can’t maintain that. If you become desensitised you can’t do the job. The public don’t actually know what we do. Like, they see the cop shows like interceptors and and they think that’s what it’s like. It’s all safeguarding, vulnerability and mental health. It’s all we deal with half the time. It’s when they’re not getting the support that they are wanting from other services, they call the police. That really isn’t our remit. It’s down to social services.”
The provision of support that should be given by others of course is not the police “remit” and it never was. But firstly, we don’t know the person at the bridge is offered or receiving that support – for all we know, the police can be the first agency to learn someone is struggling with their mental health because we know that some psychaitrists think up to 75% of people living with mental health conditions receive no support at all. In the second example of the lady who left the unit, support from another agency is right there being provided, but the nurses are seeking assistance from the police because of a potentially violent restraint incident in a public place as they attempt to keep her safe.
So think about the detail of this stuff that “isn’t really police work” – one woman apparently intent on suicide on a bridge in a public place and another who has left a mental health unit (which it would appear she had a right to leave, in the sense that she wasn’t a sectioned patient and hadn’t been detained under a holding power) but who is intent on accessing a river and needs detention for safety reasons in the opinion of a number of mental health professionals. Only the police have legal powers in public places to detain people under the Mental Health Act 1983 – literally no-one else can do what needed doing in these two situations.
So what else did we think should happen if not policing?!
BITTNER
Of course, plenty of events we see regularly give rise to the question about whether other agencies have offered the kind of support and oversight someone may require – last week’s events in Nottingham show that very plainly – but regardless of it, the role of the police is to “do something … when something’s happening that ought not to be happening about which somebody ought to do something now.” In case it’s a shock to anyone thinking of joining the police, almost every single thing you’ll ever deal with once you join is due to some failure by someone else, somewhere – much of it is failures in person responsiblity, where people drink too much, become violent or drive cars badly knowing such standards would fail a driving test, etc. But many things arise from business or other agency failures to prevent things from happening. Bars sell alcohol to drunk people, which is an offence; mental health services sometimes inappropriately discharge patient for disengaging when really, they should re-double their efforts to follow them up, etc.
The list of things which contribute to the need for policing to become involved is massive.
I’m genuinely stunned how many police officers think about applying to join, then manage to join without realising that chasing criminals was never, ever going to be how you spent most of your time and that most of the work the police do will be at the margins of society, with people who are troubled or struggling in any number of a thousand ways. It could hardly be otherwise – and it was never going to be.
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, 2024
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 