Should Acute Behavioural Disturbance be considered a Public Health Problem?

Date: 17th October 2019
Venue: Old Council Room, King's College London

Police restraint related deaths have hit the headlines on many occasions eg Sean Rigg, Olaseni Lewis, Thomas Orchard, Terence smith, Dalian Atkinson. These have been tragic incidents with Inquest lasting many years and threats of misconduct and manslaughter against police officers. Why do people die, who is dying and what is anything can be done to prevent this?

Dr Meng Aw-Yong is an Emergency Medicine clinician and Forensic Medical Examiner (medical Director Met Police), co-author of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Best practice Guideline of Acute Behavioural Disturbance (ABD), past member of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, Expert on ABD and restraint (including response to Dame Angiolini’s review of Death in Police Custody).

He will explore what causes these deaths and how they can be reduced but more importantly who can make these changes and why there has been such a long delay to change ?

Date: 9th December 2019, 18:00
Venue: Gordon Museum of Pathology
Speaker: Jo Millington

The role of a bloodstain pattern in an investigation can evolve significantly from crime scene to court. Through this process the BPA evidence can be considered by multiple actors with various remits, from the initial investigation and into the subsequent court process … and beyond. The investigator may initially use the distribution of bloodstains to identify possible mechanisms of production. When suspects are identified, the bloodstaining will be evaluated in light of the accounts that have been provided.

Throughout the criminal justice process, the analyst will be required to present an evidence-base that substantiates their observations and supports the conclusions that they present to the court. This can include to decision-makers whose only experience of BPA is from the television.

The BPA findings may also be assessed by other scientists, instructed on behalf of the defence or as part of a post-conviction review, and their role may include consideration of the original case record against a completely new set of propositions.

The original bloodstain pattern analyst must therefore ensure that their records can support every stage of the enquiry. The record must be consistent, comprehensive and complete, so that anyone who reviews their work can investigate the bloodstains as though they were looking through the original investigators eyes.

In this talk, Jo Millington will discuss the role of bloodstain patterns across a number of criminal case investigations and, with the help of the audience, attempt to interpret some of the bloodstain patterns that have recently gained notoriety, thanks to Netflix et al.