THE Government needs to act to stop the police service plugging the gaps of underfunded mental health services, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said: \u201cWe always have been and always will be the service of last resort, where we plug the gaps from the NHS, from social services, and it\u2019s just not good enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been having these conversations for probably the past 10 years and nothing\u2019s ever been done about it. We need legislative change to make sure that we don\u2019t actually have the same level of duty of care, otherwise we\u2019re just going to continue to be in this position. There needs to be a change, where the duty of care is put back onto other public service agencies like the NHS.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoupled with, of course, funding for them to deal with it. We are here to maintain peace, law and order, and to deal with criminals. We\u2019re not a second-tier NHS service, which is what we have become, and it\u2019s got to stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice officers are absolutely exhausted and whenever this comes up it puts an enormous strain on them. When we\u2019re taking people with mental health crises into police custody, it\u2019s just not appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve said that South Yorkshire Police officers were having to deal with members of the public with mental health crises \u201call the time\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cYou\u2019re talking pretty much every day. We\u2019re getting calls for service to deal with mental health calls, to go and section and transport people, which is totally inappropriate. If you remove that and allow police officers to deal with what we should be dealing with in terms of other vulnerabilities in society and crime, then the picture would probably change quite dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Government report from 2018 that has just come to light found that up to 4,500 people in mental health crisis were unlawfully held in police custody in England and Wales in a year.<\/p>\n
PFEW Chair John Apter commented: \u201cAlongside us, other policing bodies, including the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council, have supported urgent need for action as the police service continues to be used to plug the gaps of other agencies when they already struggling to cope with demand. This is grossly unfair and must stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would urge the Government to take responsibility, both legislatively and financially, so that real money is put into secure non-police facilities, drug and alcohol services, community health and social care programmes so that the most vulnerable people in society can be helped and protected.\u201d<\/p>\n