BRITAIN’S biggest police force responds to mental health-related emergencies every 11 minutes.
The Met received 91,844 such calls about those in distress in the past year, we can reveal.
And they attended 48,040 incidents in which people were feared to be a danger to themselves or others.
A police union chief warned cops were mopping up for the NHS.
And a chief constable said it had become a huge drain on police resources.
Figures obtained by The Sun on Sunday show the number almost doubled in five years.
A police watchdog previously blamed a “broken mental health system.” Covid piled pressure on NHS mental health services, with frontline police officers plugging the gap.
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And Ken Marsh, chairman of the Police Federation for rank and file officers, said last night: “Mental health call-outs for policing are becoming a very dangerous scenario.
“More and more of my colleagues are being used instead of health professionals in the field. It is dangerous for the patient and my colleagues as we do not have the expertise required but are expected to deal with it as if we do.”
Hampshire Chief Constable Olivia Pinkney, the National Police Chiefs’ Council local policing lead, added: “Police receive millions of emergency calls each year and the types of crime and incidents are increasingly complex.
“These can include non-crime incidents such as significant mental health crises and vulnerabilities, as well as missing people, which has a significant impact on our available resources.”
She added: “A snapshot exercise in 2019 showed us that five per cent of all police incidents are mental health related, which means police across the country attend an average of 54 mental health related incidents every hour.”
The London force stressed: “The Met remains dedicated to improving the experience of those living with mental ill health when they come into contact with the police.”
Under government plans, mentally ill people would no longer be held in police cells.
