Police Not Guilty of assault of elderly care home resident

[Nanny0gg]

The police that tasered the 92 year-old amputee in the nursing home have been found not guilty of assault!

What on earth? What does constitute assault then?

I'm appalled by this judgement

1. The lowest level of conflict resolution is about 10 floors below their starting point. Nothing about their behaviour was in keeping with any conflict resolution training. 2. They WERE prosecuted.

Having seen the quotes from the CQC report (and I've read a lot of them over the past few years) Im pretty certain they had a massive turnover of staff and most of the staff around would be inexperienced or not very good all the staff with any experience who were sny good would have high-tailed it out to a better home (which will be 98% of homes).

Those two thugs in uniform were out of their depth and shouldn't be out on their own in the first place. Undertrained, underskilled, scared, useless.

Memory and the ability to imagine the future ( so envisioning consequences etc) use the same neural pathways. So someone with advanced dementia is unlikely to be able to understand the implications of not following instructions. Add to that he was already distressed for whatever reason and them the police come in and immediately start shouting at him - chances of satisfactory outcome are 0%. Stand out of reach and talk, calmly asking him about family and interests - only chance of a satisfactory outcome abd experienced carers should be able to do that without calling the police.

It's obvious from the footage that he doesn't understand what's going on or why those yobs are yelling at him.

What’s clear from the video is that he wasn’t a threat in that moment to himself or others. There was no need for the action they took. How they’ve been found not guilty is incomprehensible.

I tend to think the reverse. I suspect it was inexperienced staff on shift, who maybe had never seen someone's behaviour change due to a UTI, with generic knife training fresh in their minds.

I mentioned earlier in the thread that I've been told by an external trainer that I should call the police if any service users have a knife. I understand why that man had to say that, because he delivers training to all kinds of adult social care services. His guidance has to be appropriate for staff caring for younger residents who are physically capable of chasing after others with a knife. He can't say 'use your common sense'! He has to give training that would prepare staff to handle a dangerous scenario.

However, an elderly wheelchair user waving adapted cutlery isn't the same level of threat as a fully mobile mid-forties resident who has grabbed a sharp blade from the kitchen knife block, so I wouldn't actually handle the situations the same way.

"I’m sure the care staff were experienced and had dealt with many, many patients with dementia over the years without resorting to calling the police."

I suspect they weren't experienced which is why the situation blew up.

I think it’s probably more due to low paid workers not wanting to take risks with their safety and from a ‘imagine how this would look if it goes wrong and we haven’t called the police’ perspective. The care home manager said he knew the resident well and had never seen him behave like that before. UTIs can cause some very difficult and strange behaviour in older people with dementia and even those with experience wouldn’t necessarily be able to handle it well and with the added blame culture we have now, I don’t blame them for calling the police. It’s a shame the police went in so heavy handed and it ended so sadly.

Given the CQC report I'd put money on there being a combination of inexperienced/can't get a job anywhere better staff and understaffed.

That’s the nature of so much care work and it doesn’t seem to be looking like it’s going to improve any time soon. The police lack resources too and there’s too many bad apples getting in. Something needs to change, but it won’t. It’ll keep getting worse.

I've just watched the video and the way this man was treated was appalling. Absolutely no humanity shown. The man didn't have a clue what was going on.

Little timeline for us.

In 2017 the home was rated Good.
The tragic incident with Donald Burgess occurred in June 2022.
CQC next performed an inspection in September 2022.
In the words of the 2022 report The last rating for this service was good (published 7 August 2017).
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to the way in which an incident was managed. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question.

Home was still rated Good. But obviously management knew they were under increased scrutiny and would have been anticipating a CQC visit.

CQC did a surprise inspection in August 2023. That's the one I read last night, and that got Requires Improvement

https://api.cqc.org.uk/public/v1/reports/f0546333-5ce4-4ae4-a771-c3b8f3009826?20221207130000

This is from the 2022 CQC report, which rates the home as Good

"● Staff worked to ensure people were engaged and involved with what was happening at the service. There were regular meetings where people were introduced to new members of staff, they were told about improvements that were being planned for both inside and the exterior of the home. They were reminded of
upcoming celebrations and given opportunities to discuss how they would like to celebrate them or if there
was anything else they would like to discuss."

To me, that implies that they had high staff turnover and CQC were asking how the manager handled that. Increased staff turnover is perhaps to be expected after a resident got tased, but I suspect it was high before, too.

There dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t
it’s the threat to himself not others
imagine the headline agitated dementia patient take his eye out with knife as police stand back and watch

also the whole episode from the carer first trying to get the knife by staff and then ringing the police then to turn up we literally see 90 seconds of something that has probably gone on 40 plus minutes and no knowledge off the guys history or the full story

Threat to himself, well they didn't help with that did they, he is dead! The police couldn't have handled it any worse.

Have you ever met anyone with dementia?
You don't treat mentally unwell people like that.

Absolutely disgraceful. If this was a jury decision then the Tate brothers will be hoping it's reconvened for them. Indefensible behaviour. Imagine how these officers deal with issues at home.

Except he wasn’t agitated or trying to harm himself.

The cops acted like utter thugs. I watched the footage and was disgusted.

They had no de-escalation skills, they went in loud mouthed and aggressive. I am honestly shocked how they escalated that situation. Power hungry tossers.

That poor man.

The thing to remember is that if the person had just complied with the police they wouldn't have tasered them. It's notable that well-known instances of supposed "police brutality" all have the same key theme: the victim was aggressive and/or threatening and/or disobeyed the lawful instructions of an officer.

90 seconds two minutes at best I woukd struggle to process that fast if someone was yelling at me

He had a UTI which caused delirium.

So no, he probably couldn't 'just comply' with the police. Not that they actually gave him any time to do so. He had a butter knife in his hand, in his room and was not a danger to anyone at the point they pepper sprayed him, used a baton then tasered him.

Were you in Court to hear all the evidence OP? Because if you were not you cannot really make a judgement on the verdict.

Having read the CQC report and the reports of how this elderly disabled man was treated - I would rather take that trip to Switzerland than end up in a nursing home.
I am sure the officers were found 'not guilty' because nobody really gives a shiny shite about the elderly

You don't have to be in court. The footage is there for all to see, and nothing excuses it.