Leon Briggs Death in custody misconduct hearing collapses.
Discussion
sospan said:
Friday afternoon after 4pm was a popular time for requests by social services, health etc to request police attend for welfare checks on their clients. They usually resulted from case meetings earlier in the day but dragging on so their staff were finishing work and couldn’t attend.
It appears to me that this ^ is a country wide scenario, from my own experience and anecdotally from friends and relatives service elsewhere.sospan said:
I worked in our ops room taking 101/999 calls. A civilian.
We were, in effect, the go-to organisation for everything.
We had calls for fires, ambulance (non emergency),water leaks, civil incidents like “ you must go and collect money I am owed”. If I politely told the caller no then I could easily have a complaint made about me.
Patterns were evident in many types of situations.
Friday afternoon after 4pm was a popular time for requests by social services, health etc to request police attend for welfare checks on their clients. They usually resulted from case meetings earlier in the day but dragging on so their staff were finishing work and couldn’t attend. It got to the stage where senior officers were stepping in to speak to them about their apparent buck passing. I and other colleagues had interesting conversations with these people and the recorded conversations were clearly showing buck passing. These organisations would voice budget cuts lack of staff as excuses. Their answer was to let the police pick up THEIR shortfall. Just before I left there we were in consultation with the Ambulance Service about injury assessment and using police vehicles to get injured people to A&E due to shortages of ambulances.
We used to have discussions about mental health related incidents. They are very difficult to deal with due to reasons such as unpredictability, health, safety of the person AND anyone else.
We used to get regular callers with drug, alcohol, mental health problems. By gaining a rapport with them you could often help them without an officer attending or an escalation of the call. Luckily nothing untoward happened to them that would mean we were held negligent. You needed a good understanding of the regular caller but would still arrange attendance in quite a few instances. Arse covering in a way but in the end a duty of care.
Damned if you do and pilloried if you don’t.
Do I miss it?
Yes and no.
Your points are exactly correct. The organisation needs to simply say “No” to these other organisations. It’s literally the same every Friday between 3pm and 5pm when the buck is passed literally dozens of times in my force alone.We were, in effect, the go-to organisation for everything.
We had calls for fires, ambulance (non emergency),water leaks, civil incidents like “ you must go and collect money I am owed”. If I politely told the caller no then I could easily have a complaint made about me.
Patterns were evident in many types of situations.
Friday afternoon after 4pm was a popular time for requests by social services, health etc to request police attend for welfare checks on their clients. They usually resulted from case meetings earlier in the day but dragging on so their staff were finishing work and couldn’t attend. It got to the stage where senior officers were stepping in to speak to them about their apparent buck passing. I and other colleagues had interesting conversations with these people and the recorded conversations were clearly showing buck passing. These organisations would voice budget cuts lack of staff as excuses. Their answer was to let the police pick up THEIR shortfall. Just before I left there we were in consultation with the Ambulance Service about injury assessment and using police vehicles to get injured people to A&E due to shortages of ambulances.
We used to have discussions about mental health related incidents. They are very difficult to deal with due to reasons such as unpredictability, health, safety of the person AND anyone else.
We used to get regular callers with drug, alcohol, mental health problems. By gaining a rapport with them you could often help them without an officer attending or an escalation of the call. Luckily nothing untoward happened to them that would mean we were held negligent. You needed a good understanding of the regular caller but would still arrange attendance in quite a few instances. Arse covering in a way but in the end a duty of care.
Damned if you do and pilloried if you don’t.
Do I miss it?
Yes and no.
The latest one is kids who haven’t been to school for a few days. Last week my team had 4 separate jobs going on where schools had rang in simply because kids hadn’t been to school with no other reasons for concern.
Hampshire police have a good policy when it comes to other agencies welfare checks. I have tried to get my force to take a serious look at it and got nowhere.
Other agencies lack of staff is not a police issue they should be told.
When I was a response Sgt, we had a period of heavy snow. Social services felt it was too dangerous for them to carry out a visit on two children (because of the snow and they didn’t want their staff leaving the office) but were quite happy for the police to go.
The address was in the middle of a town in Oxon, not a rural nightmare.
I phoned the social worker up and she effectively agreed that she was happy to expose police to the risk of driving, but not herself. She agreed it wasn’t in the police remit but simply refused to go there. I explained we wouldn’t be attending and I wasn’t impressed that she was happy to place my colleagues at risk rather than herself.
30 minutes later, I was asked to review two missing children. That’s right. Despite knowing exactly where these kids were, the b
h had reported them as missing purely to shift responsibility to the police.
The address was in the middle of a town in Oxon, not a rural nightmare.
I phoned the social worker up and she effectively agreed that she was happy to expose police to the risk of driving, but not herself. She agreed it wasn’t in the police remit but simply refused to go there. I explained we wouldn’t be attending and I wasn’t impressed that she was happy to place my colleagues at risk rather than herself.
30 minutes later, I was asked to review two missing children. That’s right. Despite knowing exactly where these kids were, the b
h had reported them as missing purely to shift responsibility to the police.Carnage said:
When I was a response Sgt, we had a period of heavy snow. Social services felt it was too dangerous for them to carry out a visit on two children (because of the snow and they didn’t want their staff leaving the office) but were quite happy for the police to go.
The address was in the middle of a town in Oxon, not a rural nightmare.
I phoned the social worker up and she effectively agreed that she was happy to expose police to the risk of driving, but not herself. She agreed it wasn’t in the police remit but simply refused to go there. I explained we wouldn’t be attending and I wasn’t impressed that she was happy to place my colleagues at risk rather than herself.
30 minutes later, I was asked to review two missing children. That’s right. Despite knowing exactly where these kids were, the bh had reported them as missing purely to shift responsibility to the police.
Replace the snow bit with “working from home due to COVID” and that’s where we are at today The address was in the middle of a town in Oxon, not a rural nightmare.
I phoned the social worker up and she effectively agreed that she was happy to expose police to the risk of driving, but not herself. She agreed it wasn’t in the police remit but simply refused to go there. I explained we wouldn’t be attending and I wasn’t impressed that she was happy to place my colleagues at risk rather than herself.
30 minutes later, I was asked to review two missing children. That’s right. Despite knowing exactly where these kids were, the b
h had reported them as missing purely to shift responsibility to the police.ED209 said:
Carnage said:
When I was a response Sgt, we had a period of heavy snow. Social services felt it was too dangerous for them to carry out a visit on two children (because of the snow and they didn’t want their staff leaving the office) but were quite happy for the police to go.
The address was in the middle of a town in Oxon, not a rural nightmare.
I phoned the social worker up and she effectively agreed that she was happy to expose police to the risk of driving, but not herself. She agreed it wasn’t in the police remit but simply refused to go there. I explained we wouldn’t be attending and I wasn’t impressed that she was happy to place my colleagues at risk rather than herself.
30 minutes later, I was asked to review two missing children. That’s right. Despite knowing exactly where these kids were, the bh had reported them as missing purely to shift responsibility to the police.
Replace the snow bit with “working from home due to COVID” and that’s where we are at today The address was in the middle of a town in Oxon, not a rural nightmare.
I phoned the social worker up and she effectively agreed that she was happy to expose police to the risk of driving, but not herself. She agreed it wasn’t in the police remit but simply refused to go there. I explained we wouldn’t be attending and I wasn’t impressed that she was happy to place my colleagues at risk rather than herself.
30 minutes later, I was asked to review two missing children. That’s right. Despite knowing exactly where these kids were, the b
h had reported them as missing purely to shift responsibility to the police.I refused to send anyone to the non missing mispers, too.
SW calls in to report a concern for 2 of his clients. He'd seen them go to the park without an adult (presumably) and was concerned about their welfare.
HE'D SEEN THEM......they were his clients, and yet he wanted to Police to attend......to put in a report that he would just duplicate.
HE'D SEEN THEM......they were his clients, and yet he wanted to Police to attend......to put in a report that he would just duplicate.
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