What happened
Alan Bailey was 84, a retired design engineer from Cheadle Hulme in Greater Manchester. He had Alzheimer’s disease and weighed about seven stone.
He was assessed by health workers without his family present and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. An ambulance was called to take him to Tameside General Hospital. During the journey he became agitated and slipped out of the straps holding him on the stretcher.
Staff called the police to help escort him. An officer handcuffed and restrained him in the moving ambulance to stop him undoing the straps.
He was kept in a general hospital for six days before the order was revoked and he was moved to a mental health hospital. There he fell and broke his hip. He died in April, eight weeks after he had been handcuffed. The inquest examined the restraint.
The outcome
The inquest recorded a verdict of accidental death on the fall.
Coroner John Pollard told the officer who handcuffed Bailey that the decision “beggars belief” and was “totally ridiculous”. He said he was writing to Greater Manchester Police, and would contact Pennine Care NHS about Bailey’s treatment.
No prosecution or disciplinary outcome is recorded. Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy said the callout was inappropriate, that “this is a medical issue and not a police issue”, and that the force was negotiating a new protocol with local NHS services.
What went wrong
The failure was one of escalation, and it happened before any hold was applied.
A frail man who slipped a stretcher harness was met with handcuffs rather than a clinical and manual-handling response. Once the cuffs were on, in a moving vehicle, the officer had to restrain him further.
The force accepted the family’s position that police should not have been called. Its chief constable said officers could not replicate the training medical staff receive to recognise warning signs.
What it teaches
When a detained dementia patient slips a stretcher harness, the answer is a clinical and manual-handling response, not handcuffs. Escalation to police converts a care problem into a criminal-restraint posture, and that is very hard to unwind once the cuffs are on.
The decision to call is the decision that matters. By the time officers arrive, the crew have handed the problem to people with less clinical training, fewer options and an enforcement mindset.
The protocol is the fix. If nobody owns the agreement for police attendance on a mental health transfer, the crew on the night are improvising.
Questions for the room
- At what point in that journey did the situation stop being a transport problem and become a police matter, and who made the call?
- You are the crew with a seven-stone man with dementia undoing his straps in a moving vehicle. What do you do in the next minute, without the police?
- Who in your organisation owns the protocol for police attendance on a mental health transfer, and when was it last tested?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable, on two independent press reports of the same inquest. The restraint did not cause the death. An unconnected fall did, and the verdict was about the fall. This is a restraint incident, not a restraint death.
No dated coroner’s document was located and the conclusion date is not stated in the sources held, so the outcome is recorded without a date. The reports differ on whether the inquest sat at South Manchester or Stockport, so this page gives no venue.
The officer is not named. No prosecution or disciplinary outcome is recorded.
Our physical interventions training covers the alternatives that should be tried before anyone is restrained in a vehicle.
Sources
- BBC News, 19 December 2011, “Dementia patient handcuffed in ambulance ‘excessive'”
- Daily Mirror, 4 July 2012, “Alzheimer’s patient handcuffed on ambulance trip”
Reviewed 20 October 2026.