The
Commission on Policing and Mental Health has been set up following concerns
about “how police respond to people with mental health conditions”, according
to Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, Britain’s most senior police officer.
But
the narrow terms of reference – and the exclusion of agencies who specialise in
the areas of black deaths in custody – indicate that the new body is heavily
weighted to cast sand in the eyes of those seeking positive change.
Considering
that Afro-Caribbean communities are in the front-line of deaths in custody
associated with mental health problems, why are the specialist campaign groups
Inquest and Black Mental UK
being excluded from the Commission?
Hogan-Howe
promised an independent body would be set up after an inquest into the death of
musician Sean Rigg found that police had used an “unsuitable” level of force
before his death.
Rigg,
a 40-year-old musician and karate expert, died at Brixton police station on 21
October 2008 of cardiac arrest after being restrained by four officers. Since
then, Rigg’s relatives and supporters have been campaigning to establish the
truth about his death.
Even
the toothless Independent Police Complaints Commission was forced to concede
that not only the police, but also the South London
and Maudsley Mental Health Trust had not responded properly. It concluded that
Rigg’s death was “symptom of a deeper problem – the linkage between mental
illness and deaths in or following police custody”.
This
is mealy-mouthed phraseology, considering that some 50% of those who lose their
lives in police custody are under the care of mental health services and that a
significant proportion are black men.
The
inquest verdict into Riggs’ death was far more damning: the jury found that the
Met and the South London and Maudsley NHS
Trust were guilty of a catalogue of errors which “more than minimally
contributed to his [Rigg’s] death”.
The
Rigg family’s solicitor, Daniel Machover, pointed to the whitewash nature of
the IPCC’s findings when the inquest jury delivered its verdict: “....while the
IPCC gave the police a clean bill of health in 2010 … the inquest jury was
highly critical of every aspect of the police conduct, including the eight
minutes restraint in the prone position, a fact totally missed by the IPCC”.
As
Black
Mental Health UK points out, detention rates for people from the UK ’s Afro-Caribbean
community doubled during the period of 2005–2010. Afro-Caribbean's are 50% more
likely to enter the system via the criminal justice system or the police, 44%
more likely to be sectioned, 29% more likely to be forcibly restrained, 50%
more likely to be placed in seclusion and make up 30% of in patients on medium
secure psychiatric wards despite having similar rates of mental illness as
British white people.
The
Commission on Policing and Mental Health is to be chaired by the establishment
figure, Lord Adebowale. Black Mental Health UK director Matilda MacAttram, said
that excluding experts from BMH UK and Inquest, “who have the critical insight
needed in this area which would ensure the transformation in police treatment
of this vulnerable group, leaves one with the impression that this is nothing
but a cosmetic exercise, which will not result in any positive change.”
Given
the discrediting of the police in the wake of the independent Hillsborough
report, state agencies are struggling to retain credibility, and not only
amongst black and minority communities. Cuts in the health service mean that
even well-intentioned people in long-established mental health institutions
like the Maudsley Trust are failing in their duty of care. Creating toothless commissions
cannot disguise this harsh reality.
Corinna
Lotz
A
World to Win secretary
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