The rollout of body-worn video could allow police to leave mental health patients in hospital, potentially freeing up hours of their time, the Chief Constable has said.
Jo Farrell said the cameras will help give officers confidence to move on more rapidly from taking people in mental health crisis to hospital, where police on average can wait six hours.
Farrell said she recognised officers’ reluctance to leave hospital in these situations was a “challenge”, with fear of being investigated by the police watchdog among the reasons.
The Chief Constable said body-worn video would allow officers to show themselves leaving the patient in a “place of safety”, so it was on record.
The Scottish Police Federation (SPF) praised her for speaking out on the issue, arguing that using the technology in this way would be a “huge step” and would allow police to “get back to basics”.
Speaking at a meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee where she addressed MSP Jamie Hepburn, Farrell said: “We are heading towards the complete rollout of body-worn video in May. That will be a powerful tool in giving officers support and confidence.
“For example, I might take a short video of you and say ‘Mr Hepburn, I’m going to leave you here. We’re in A&E. You’re going to be seen in due course. There will probably be a wait’.
“We will be able to use that as one of the levers to give our sergeants and inspectors the right support to say, ‘We’re going to leave you. You’re in a place of safety. It’s an A&E department. You’re not here under arrest. We need to move on to other duties’.”
She added: “From speaking to officers, I know that the desire to stay with the person is driven by two things: genuine empathy with the person who is in crisis, and wanting to do the right thing; and then, in varying degrees… a fear of the consequences, because, if that person then leaves the hospital and some harm comes to them, as the committee knows, we are bound, for those incidents, to be investigated by the Police Investigations and Review Commission (Pirc).
“That is quite a strong cultural grip on the organisation, and, on an individual officer level, I understand that.”
“The drain on the resource of officers is huge, so we need to look at ways that we can free up people a lot more quickly”
Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs
Her comments come after she warned that officers “cannot continue” responding to mental health incidents and must instead prioritise the prevention and detection of crime.
She stressed mental health “is not a justice issue”, apart from when there is a risk to life and the public.
Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs told the same committee that 85 per cent of mental health calls police deal with do not involve any crime.
He said initiatives introduced to drive down the time officers spend on mental health calls have so far had a “negligible” impact on the experience of the front line.
Speirs said the mental health pathway, which means police can divert calls away from the force, and the mental health index, which allows officers to access clinicians when dealing with incidents, are “working well”, but apply to only a “fraction” of mental health calls.
He told the committee: “The impact of those initiatives has little bearing on the day-to-day volume of calls. We have talked about dealing with 475 calls and incidents per day.
“On average, two officers are tied up with such an incident for about six hours. The drain on the resource of officers is huge, so we need to look at ways that we can free up people a lot more quickly.”
He added: “Over two years, we have transferred 15,000 incidents, which is 20 a day. Set that against the 475 calls a day, and you can see that the effect on a frontline officer’s experience is negligible.”
SPF chair David Threadgold said the cameras could enable officers to spend less time dealing with mental health complaints in the community, as well as in hospitals.
He said: “This is a huge step. This is not just for A&E, it also has the potential to be used in a street setting or a home setting.
“This is about having confidence to make handovers. It’s not about escaping scrutiny or trying not to provide immediate assistance.
“We need to discharge matters responsibly, and pass members of the community who need mental health assistance onto people who have the appropriate abilities and training to deal with them, which are mental health professionals.”
He added that there was a “huge issue culturally” with police line managers taking decisions “because of concern about being investigated by Pirc or the Crown”.
He continued: “The chief is talking about providing an option for officers so individuals can safely stay in A&E and, we would hope, also at home or with friends or family. That will create a huge amount of capacity and let police focus on getting back to the basics of policing services.”
He said the SPF has been calling for “real change” on this issue for years, and is “very pleased” that the Chief Constable is backing action.
He added: “The way we are delivering policing in Scotland has to change and this is a key part of it.”
Police Scotland began the much-delayed £13.3 million rollout of its body-worn video cameras in March 2025.
The devices were recently brought in across the Greater Glasgow division, which the force said means more than 10,000 cameras are now in use across Scotland.
The devices are attached to officers’ body armour and record audio and video. Officers with the devices are expected to activate them when using police powers, such as an arrest, stop-and-search, or when executing a search warrant.
Officers in Renfrewshire and Inverclyde, and Argyll and West Dunbartonshire are due to be equipped with cameras shortly, completing the first phase of the rollout, which covers frontline officers and police custody suite staff.