For once, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has accepted there may be a problem. Not willing to accept institutional racism, he’s opted to admit institutional ineptitude.
Mark Rowley has ordered his officers to stop attending emergency mental health calls, saying the service needs to get on with its core responsibility of “fighting crime” instead.
Well-meaning health professionals have reacted with dismay at the idea support is being withdrawn from those in need. But even Rowley himself has admitted that the police are the wrong people to be handling situations like these in the first place, an argument long made by police abolitionists.
