Despite the temperatures and the rain this weekend summer is on the way!

First up: Commonwealth Games leave restrictions. I’m well aware restrictions are never popular after what could be two years without a proper summer holiday. I’m sorry we’ve had to do this and I understand the impact this may have on you and your families. It’s why we wanted to tell you about the restrictions more than a year in advance.

The games are a huge operation for the force. The event is going to be exciting and a fantastic time for policing in the region. I want to assure everyone that we will do all we can to be flexible on leave around these dates as the plans develop. We will keep you updated.

The progress on lifting restrictions and ending our responsibilities under COVID legislation will be welcomed by all of us as police and private citizens. However, I don’t think this is the end of the COVID related challenges.

Having watched the disorders in Europe and the extraordinary scenes in Manchester at the...

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As training and common sense (the latter a factor which is frowned upon by the Ministry of Justice owing to the possible discriminatory connotation of the word "common" which might be unequal among some sections of the population) dictate it is at the very least unwise and at the worst most injuducial to criticise in public a fellow member of the bench however junior.  Indeed the chairman of a bench or a District Judge [MC] must not in any public remarks allude to a previous or future court`s decision which was or is likely to have been or to be out of his/her control. It would appear that HH Jason Taylor QC at Swindon Crown Court felt that either those unwritten rules did...

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In December of 2015, NHS England published a Patient Safety Alert (PSA) on the topic of medical ‘observations’ following restraint.  A PSA is notification to NHS Trusts across the country of an emerging topic that requires urgent attention by healthcare providers to check that their own procedures are consistent with the latest guidance in the alert.  This document reminds us that risks during restraint are quite well known before adding, “harm can also occur in the period following restraint from the effect of illicit substances, alcohol, prescribed medications (including any rapid tranquilisation) and co-existing medical conditions. People with diagnoses of severe and enduring mental illnesses are at increased risk of coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, infections, epilepsy and respiratory disease, all of which can potentially be exacerbated by the psychological and physical effects of restrictive intervention; between 2008-2012 there were 11 deaths within 24 hours of restraint in mental health...

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In 2010, the American Heart Association wrote “naloxone has no role in the management of cardiac arrest.”  This came as a surprise to many medics who routinely gave naloxone to cardiac arrests patients suspected of opioid overdoses, and may come as a surprise to many medics who continue this practice.

The idea against using naloxone is fairly simple.  If the opioid overdose caused the cardiac arrest, the cause of death is hypoxia.  Naloxone can reverse apnea in patients who are still alive, but naloxone cannot undo a hypoxic death.  Patients in cardiac arrest from opioid overdoses need to get their hearts started with epinephrine.  All naloxone can do is put the patient in withdrawal should their be resuscitated with ACLS drugs.  What about ventilation?  That’s what ambu-bags are for.

In their new March 2021 paper, Opioid-Associated Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Distinctive Clinical Features and Implications for Health Care and Public Responses: A Scientific Statement From the...

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Mental health law varies by country, even within the UK.  As soon as you start comparing mental health laws in non-British countries with our own approach you see even more ways to that such complex matters are handled.  In Germany, the courts play a far greater role in psychiatric admission than in the UK where they are usually not involved at all.  As if that’s not enough, where a person’s mental health becomes relevant to criminal proceedings it all moves up one or two more notches and as Professor Jill Peay noted (in Mental Health and Crime, 2010) the work done at the interface of mental health and criminal justice is amongst the most challenging of all.

The Court of Cassation in Paris, France’s highest court, has recently ruled that a man who admitted killing a woman in her sixties will not stand trial.  Kobili Traoré admits killing Sarah Halimi in 2017 by beating her and then throwing her from the window of her third-floor Paris apartment in what was described as an “anti-semitic frenzy”.  Psychiatric reports...

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