The Public Safety Foundation
As many of your readers will know, police officers do enormous good on a daily basis, including in relation to the provision of healthcare. From my own experience as a police officer on the streets of south London, police officers routinely will be first on scene to stabbings – and deal with sucking chest wounds, cardiac arrests, major bleeds, prior to the arrival of paramedics and transport to hospital.
They will routinely be called to assist paramedics, nurses, and doctors dealing with violent and dangerous patients. They also routinely deal with individuals in mental health crisis – and often do so where individuals pose a serious risk to themselves or the public, and are in possession of dangerous weapons, ranging from firearms and axes, to knives, and other items.
Police officers do vital and noble work fighting crime and disorder, saving lives and protecting people from serious harm along the way. The best of them often do so at very real and substantial personal risk. Like our hard-working healthcare professionals, many of whom will read the BMJ, they deserve our support and recognition.
https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p429/rr
The @bmj_latest (British Medical Journal) recently commissioned and published a rather strange off-topic op-ed by @marthaspurrier calling for "the urgent rolling back of police powers", overlooking or dismissing all the good in policing. My response: https://t.co/lQreBroYv6
— Rory Geoghegan (@rorygeo) February 27, 2023
