Mentally-ill woman stabs another to death

[CommanderJameson]

No winners in this one.

Nicola Edgington all but decapitated Sally Hodkin, in 2011. This is, in itself, terrible.

But the tragedy is that Edgington actually repeatedly called 999 to explain that she was mentally ill, in a very bad state, and that she felt she posed a real and serious risk to others.

Obviously Edgington needs to be put in a secure place where she can be properly looked after, and where she can no longer pose a risk to the public.

But it grips my st when someone who is obviously desperately ill (she had killed her own mother during a psychotic episode, six years earlier) can't raise the police, who appear to have comprehensively cocked it up.

Hodkin's husband's world has been destroyed, Edgington has another death on her hands, and it could all have been avoided.

[CommanderJameson]

Puggit said:

It's the system that's broken, and although the Police could have helped prevent the death, why are the police being used as specially trained healthcare workers?

In this case, I don't think they were. They were being asked to deal with someone who was telling them, with some conviction, that they were going to do something terrible. That's not "healthcare", it's "policing".

Puggit said:

Successive governments have removed the treatment and specialist accommodation for these people

Yep. The concept of "care in the community" had been around since the 50s, but it was under Saint Margaret that it really gained traction.

Puggit said:

in order to fund pet projects which are not needed.

Maybe, maybe not.

[CommanderJameson]

Elroy Blue said:

Following her phone call, she was taken to a secure mental health unit. She was released by THEM and then went on to kill. As usual however, it's always the Police's fault.

90% of our time is spent dealing with bloody mental health becuase the 'professionals' wash their hands of the problem and don't want to know. I'm sick of having to put mentally ill people in cells because our so called health care experts can't be arsed.

We've talked a woman down off a bridge. Taken her to a secure mental health ward and a few hours later she's back on the bridge. The 'experts' releasing her after declaring her perfectlt fine as she'd been able to form a 'reasoned opinion to kill herself'.

Just what a Police Officer with as much mental health training as a car salesman is supposed to do with a paranoid Schizophrenic is beyond me. But I do know we're the ones that are left dealing with them every day and every night.

Phone calls. She made at least 4.

IPCC said:

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said:

• Police in Greenwich were not notified that Edgington was living in the area following her release from an indefinite hospital order in 2009 after she killed her mother

• Officers and police staff did not carry out a Police National Computer (PNC) check during their interactions with her on the day of the murder which would have alerted them to her conviction for manslaughter

• Officers missed an opportunity to use their powers under section 136 of the Mental Health Act when Edgington tried to leave the A&E department shortly after she arrived with police

• Edgington's second 999 call from the A&E department was downgraded because she was considered to be in a place of safety and an officer was not asked to return, despite Edgington saying she could be very dangerous

The first bit is not the police's fault, and lies at the door of the hospital that released her. They're not psychic.

As for the rest, if not the police, with their training for dealing with violent individuals, then who? Psychiatric nurses? They are trained to manage dangerous people in the setting of a hospital, not out and about with other folk on hand to help or hinder.

If you've got a person with a knife who's ringing you up and telling you that they're going to use it, surely that's a police matter? Why wouldn't it be?