Medical journal slams police officers on twitter.

It was sad to read a recent tweet by The British Medical |Journal that wrote ‘The police are perpetrating harm, time and time again, stories are breaking of police officers routinely using their position to harm and abuse.’

Yesterday, in east London a police officer under took another long and gruelling shift that saw the officer attend call after call, have very little time to have any form of meal break and then attend a call where a lady was severely struggling with her mental health. The officer and colleague deemed the lady a risk to herself so bought her to the hospital to get the help needed. At the hospital the lady joined the queue and the officers sat with her and spoke with her, doing the best that they could to help the poor lady struggling.

Police officers as stated regularly, are not mental health specialists. They are not ambulance staff, they are not doctors. Yet they spend more time than most others helping those in our community in need.

In theory, the officers could have told the lady struggling that she should access mental health care or take herself to the hospital. They didn’t. They chose to help the lady to the best of their ability. They took her to the hospital and sat with her as she waited the long wait to be seen.

People finger point and frequently tell officers they should be fighting crime- but then who is going to support the many that need mental health care and have no one else to call upon?

The British Medical Journal I’m sure is aware that the mental health facilities across London are struggling. They are also aware of the lack of psychiatrists there are across London and just how on a daily basis are our police officers are answering endless calls for mental health care.

Figures released last year showed one in four calls police officers respond to across London are mental health related. Why do the BMJ not mention this?

Or mention how many officers are taken off duty to do hospital guard on a daily basis?

It is sad to see this toxic culture where every police officer is an abusive individual. This is perpetuating a even more negative culture in our society.

There are officers we all know should not have been in the police. Officers whose behaviour was disgusting, vile and incomprehensible. Forces are changing now at long last.

To tarnish every officer as harmful and abusive is a very bad move, especially by an industry that sees the incredible work so many officers do on a daily basis at their hospitals.

If we keep perpetuating this toxic culture that all police officers are harmful, we will lose more police officers.We already know that the level of PTSD and now CPTSD amongst police officers has increased. We also know that they face very poor working conditions and regular abuse from so many.

Yes there are problems with officers that should never have been allowed to be police officers, but there are also thousands of officers who joined to make a difference and they really do that everyday.

Tweets like this serve no purpose except to add more toxicity to a culture that is promoting further abuse to all police officers.

Perhaps those that wrote this tweet could spend the day across London hospitals to see how many police officers there are and the incredible work they are doing, much of which is not their responsibility.

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