The movement toward community psychiatric care brought greater involvement of policemen in incidents involving subjects suffering from psychiatric disorders. The psychiatric emergency room (PER) has become a meeting-point of the police and the mental health system. The object of the study was to characterize subjects brought to Israel's largest PER by policemen and to assess their hospital stay. All referrals by policemen during the period May 1991-November 1992 were evaluated. A comparison group of non-police referrals for the same period was used as a control group. Policemen referred mostly adult males, not married (82.5%), with up to 12 years of education, who were suffering from schizophrenia. It appears that policemen refer a subgroup described in the literature as ‘new chronic patients’.