Source · IOPC Learning Case

Concerns for man's welfare - Cleveland Police, May 2022

Cleveland Police Ref: 2022/170167 Recommended 15 Aug 2023 Response due 10 Oct 2023

On 20 May 2022, Cleveland Police received notification of a concern for welfare for a man who had failed to attend court. Officers attended an address believed to the man’s home, however, this was later revealed to be the wrong address and they did not find the man. On 21 May 2022, officers attended the correct address and found the man to be unwell and in need of an ambulance and hospital treatment having ingested a large amount of medication …

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Recommendations

1 total

Recommendation 1

The IOPC recommends that Cleveland Police should implement a system or protocol to ensure that potential discrepancies in address – in which a reporting person provides an address that does not exactly match those available to select on Force systems – are clearly and prominently noted on incident logs, and to ensure that responding officers consider any such discrepancies and the fact that they may be caused by police systems rather than errors on the part of the reporting person. This follows an IOPC investigation where it became clear a member of the public had given the correct address of a missing person during a phone call to police. The caller was not confident of the address, and the call handler found two similar addresses in the verified address drop down list on the police system, but not the address given. The call handler therefore asked which of the two addresses the caller was referring to, when in fact it was neither of those addresses and they had given the correct address. As a consequence of the address confusion initial attending officers went to the wrong address and did not find the missing person.

Addressed to: Cleveland Police

Linked bodies: Cleveland Police

Accepted

Force response

Recommendations accepted: Cleveland Police have systems in place through Storm to validate addresses. Since the initial incident, subject of IOPC investigation, occurred any that are new are created through a GIS request, meaning the force constantly have an up to date address book of all premises in our area.