Good morning. It’s an intuitive proposition: the police’s primary duty is to protect the public and stop crime, and it must discard any responsibilities that interfere with that goal. But an exclusive story by Vikram Dodd that led the Guardian yesterday suggests how much more complicated the picture is in reality.
Vikram revealed that Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley will soon order officers not to attend the thousands of mental health incidents they get called to in London each year, unless there is an immediate threat to life. Rowley says that the force simply does not have the resources or the training to deal with the scale of the task. Now health leaders are warning that thousands of people will simply be left without support if the Met walks away.
