Posted: Jul 23, 2016 7:00 pm
I don't mind if they start with, "get on the fucking ground". So long as that is the appropriate response. This was a call to an allegedly suicidal person. They get there and someone is there talking to the subject. That someone is familiar to the subject, is explaining who they are and what's going on. Why the fuck is their response not to think, "cool, not as serious as first reported, what can we do to help this guy with his autistic patient?"
I had to coordinate getting a highly disturbed psychotic guy off the roof of our unit some time back. big incident. My role then supercedes all the managers and directors in the hospital, my call on everything from calling in help from emergency services, everything. I've known this patient for 9yrs. Who got him down safely? A police officer who met him 40 minutes before he jumped down from a lower bit of roof.
That situation was organised chaos. I never felt for a moment throughout that it was totally under control. I did feel I had in place a number of contingencies for a number of different outcomes from him taking a dive off the roof to successfully breaching the secure perimeter to getting stuck on the roof. It took over 5hrs to get him down and involved the efforts of around 30 people.
The priority throughout was his and everyone else's safety. No heroics, no unnecessary risks. Sure we had to watch him be at risk a number of times including hanging off the end of the building after slipping. But training has to trump emotion in these situations. I had to remove a couple of people who weren't coping well with their emotions.
Eventually, a police officer turned up to replace a colleague going off duty. Our man on the roof gave him some shit about being a bit fat, I don't remember his response but it was light hearted and funny. They struck up a rapport. Staff who knew him for years shut up. The expert police negotiator backed off. 40 minutes later, he's down in one piece. No threats, no need to preserve anyone's authoritie. A team effort from everyone worked. We did some things right, could have done things better in places and some of our procedures have been changed. You couldn't script or plan for the ending. You just roll with changes sometimes to see what happens. You don't have to be in total control of these situations, you can't be.
It's a model that police forces could seriously benefit from using.
I had to coordinate getting a highly disturbed psychotic guy off the roof of our unit some time back. big incident. My role then supercedes all the managers and directors in the hospital, my call on everything from calling in help from emergency services, everything. I've known this patient for 9yrs. Who got him down safely? A police officer who met him 40 minutes before he jumped down from a lower bit of roof.
That situation was organised chaos. I never felt for a moment throughout that it was totally under control. I did feel I had in place a number of contingencies for a number of different outcomes from him taking a dive off the roof to successfully breaching the secure perimeter to getting stuck on the roof. It took over 5hrs to get him down and involved the efforts of around 30 people.
The priority throughout was his and everyone else's safety. No heroics, no unnecessary risks. Sure we had to watch him be at risk a number of times including hanging off the end of the building after slipping. But training has to trump emotion in these situations. I had to remove a couple of people who weren't coping well with their emotions.
Eventually, a police officer turned up to replace a colleague going off duty. Our man on the roof gave him some shit about being a bit fat, I don't remember his response but it was light hearted and funny. They struck up a rapport. Staff who knew him for years shut up. The expert police negotiator backed off. 40 minutes later, he's down in one piece. No threats, no need to preserve anyone's authoritie. A team effort from everyone worked. We did some things right, could have done things better in places and some of our procedures have been changed. You couldn't script or plan for the ending. You just roll with changes sometimes to see what happens. You don't have to be in total control of these situations, you can't be.
It's a model that police forces could seriously benefit from using.