This week marked yet another occasion where police had to deal with a man standing on top of a roof.
Police were forced to cordon off an area in Anfield and persuade a man down from the roof of the Dockers Club on Townsend Lane on Tuesday , which he had scaled after officers entered a property to carry out a drugs warrant.
Almost two hours later he was persuaded down and put into a police car. He remains in custody on suspicion of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs.
In November the police were involved in a nine-hour stand off with a man who refused to come down from the roof of a house in Church Road, Walton.
Police raided the house leading to Stephen McCoy, 23, fleeing onto the roof in heavy rain at around 7.30am and staying up there for nine hours.
He was later sentenced to 17 years and nine months in jail for conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, assaults on two police officers and for breach of bail.
Another man staged a rooftop protest on top of St Helens town hall and declared infamous killer Raoul Moat as his hero.
Depressed and drunken Shaun Adamson was waving a banner saying “beware the police state” and smashing up roof tiles with a hammer. Adamson pleaded guilty to affray and criminal damage and was jailed for 14 months.
But why are men in Merseyside climbing on roof tops?
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The ECHO spoke to forensic psychologist Dr Keri Nixon, who works at the University of Chester’s Institute of Policing and also as a consultant forensic psychologist.
Dr Nixon said that there could be many different reasons why someone might go up a roof.
She said: “One reason could be that they have serious mental health issues going on, so it could be a cry for attention, as they know the emergency services will come out.”
She added: “Or it could be a power issue because they know once they get up there they’re going to be commanding the police, who will have to go into critical incident management.”
Dr Nixon also cited Contagion Theory – a theory of collective behaviour which argues that crowds cause people to act in a certain way – as another possible reason why there has been a pattern of roof top incidents in Merseyside.
The Bridgend suicide incidents – when there were multiple similar suicides among young people within the space of two years in Bridgend County Borough in South Wales – is an example of possible Contagion Theory.
Dr Nixon said: “We see Contagion Theory happen when there’s a suicide. If people who are depressed and have got suicidal ideation see somebody else doing it, it creates this influx.
“It could be that people in the area who are on the run from police and are anti-social in some way have seen people running onto roofs in the media and think ‘that’s a good idea’. It’s a simple effect.
“It’s dependent on the individual case but because they’ve seen it in the media they know it’s one way to get a lot of exposure and cause a lot of grief to the police. It’s not a rational decision. The man on Tuesday night got arrested in the end anyway – just after causing a lot of fuss.”
She added: “If it’s somebody that’s not got suicidal ideation and is on the run, it could just be a panic move – they panic and run up the roof because it’s the only way they can go.
“It’s interesting there’s been a spree of these incidents recently.”
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/