Here's an idea to avoid a death in custody... don't be a criminal!

When you strip it all down, across the country, numbers are low.11 deaths in custody last year. That's 11 too many agreed. But then how many,in hindsight,preventable deaths occur in a year in a proper medical environment such as people waiting for treatment/examination in understaffed and overloaded A&E's ? That busy custody suites cope with the sheer volume of those brought in and get through a year of shifts without it going wrong is frankly down to the sheer professionalism of the staff and probably an element of luck. And all this talk about partnerships. What partnerships?. Trying to get a MH assessment or a placement out of custody during the day is bad enough. On late's or nights...!!! And what are police to do,realistically,about post custody suicide figures. 59 apparent suicides post release. Aside from the fact that this seems to attribute a link to the suicide and a period in custody,there are so many other factors that could drive someone to that point. We can fill in the pre-release proforma's as much as we want but we cant keep them in beyond a certain point and if there's no one out there to pick them up on release then that is not for the police to take the blame for.

Agreed, it’s an incredibly low number. You’re never going to get the number to absolute zero, yet the usual people who are divorced from reality seem to think that the police kill people on a daily basis. From what I’ve seen, a MH patient is probably safer with the police than the MH services, especially how police seem to show far more compassion than some of the MH staff who I’ve come across.

A very low number of people die in police custody but through fear of iopc and manslaughter charges custody officers have become generally risk adverse impacting upon the front line policing of the UK. I accept the role of custody staff is challenging but decisions being made to make someone’s detention safer is ridiculous. Other public sectors are not getting the scrutiny that policing gets yet again. We hear of waits in ambulances of over seventeen hours, people firing in the back of them but no one appears to bat an eye lid. Today, you arrest someone who has a long standing medical condition that they couldn’t be bothered to go to see a GP or go to hospital before they get arrested but once they are guess what we have to take them to hospital! PIC states they feel suicidal guess what they get a s136 this is just wrong. How many people go to gp’s feeling suicidal and don’t get sectioned? The Home Office need to start saying no because the impact of police custody medical issues sometimes pushes prisoners ahead of the general public. Unless a life and death situation then no to hospital or s136 on words alone. Nobody wants to see people die in custody but I also don’t want to see partners put under unnecessary because we are scared of the consequences it’s not the individuals but the policies like these. Look at this in proportion we have had avery safe custody environment for last thirty years. Safer detention and now this just makes us fear and do things in case it happens. We need to work smarter in custody and make use of technology why do pic’s need to be at hospital? We have HCP’s on site and we should use technology to speak to hospital doctors via Skype. Blood samples could be taken and run to hospital for submissions by one cop in an hour instead of cops sat in a&e waiting rooms for hours denying the public of this precious resource! Just saying

It’s easy to say … custody staff are risk adverse, this or that decision is ridiculously when it’s not your head on the block…. I lost count of the number of times a smart-arsed colleague questioned a custody officers decision or authority with the phrase …. I thought we were in the same job….. You have the potential to lose your job quicker in custody than anywhere else.

It’s always amazing that one death in or following police custody results in incredible media and activist attention, all kinds of demand for change, yet many people die following contact with healthcare professionals, and yet just a gentle shrug by the media, or sympathy for the staff for being in difficult circumstances. Yet this sympathy suddenly turns to outrage and anti police sentiment when it comes to the police.