999 calls mental health - 391/18

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

“For each of the following financial

years: 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17

1. Please provide the total number of 999 emergency calls recorded

for any reason. You previously supplied data on incidents created as a result of a 999 call, and here I am interested in the total number of 999 emergency calls irrespective of whether or not they subsequently logged on the appropriate command and control

database.

For the financial year 2016/17 only, please provide:

2. Of the total number of emergency calls, how many subsquently resulted in the creation of an incident log?

3. Of the total number of emergency calls, how many resulted in police officers being called out to respond?

4. How many emergency calls have you received relating to mental health?

5. Of this total number of emergency calls relating to mental health, how many resulted in police officers being called out to respond?

6. How many section 136 Mental Health Act 1983 detentions were conducted by officers?

7. Of the total number of section 136s, please provide a breakdown by ethnicity of how many resulted in detainees being taken to (a) a police station/ custody suite and (b) to an alternative place of safety.”

In Response:

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as attached with the below being taken into consideration.

An officer attending is based on whether or not there is a number in the relevant field.  This does not necessarily mean an immediate response but means that at some point during the investigation an officer attended at a time mutually agreeable to both parties.

The incident was assessed as a mental health incident if there was a final incident code that indicated that there was an element that was mental health related.  It is possible that some of these incidents will not have been drawn through to the final dataset as there are only three fields where an officer can record a final incident code and other codes may have been deemed to have been a higher priority.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would expect that you to take into consideration the factors highlighted above so as not to mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.