Contact with man before his death – North Wales Police, November 2021

The IOPC recommends that North Wales Police should incorporate the dangers of confirmation bias, encourage critical questioning, challenging assumptions, and the importance of exercising professional curiosity in matters of concern for welfare and Missing Person investigations. The force should ensure that the issue is covered in training and consider an appropriate methodology of how officer bias and assumptions can be challenged.

This follows an IOPC investigation where neighbours reported a male in distress up on the roof of their terraced houses  'off his head on drugs' and asking for police to be called. He was unsuitably dressed for inclement weather and wearing one shoe. The male made off prior to police arrival and his whereabouts thereafter could not be established. There was evidence that officers assumed from the outset that the male was evading the police and had gone to ground having made off because he believed he would be arrested for criminal damage to the roofs and TV aerials. The male was well known to police and several officers had experience of his evading arrest in the past when wanted. He was later reported missing and was found dead in a local river some days later. Arguably, if officers had taken a more questioning approach, they could have considered that it was equally possible in the circumstances that no one had seen him in the intervening period because he had come to harm.

‘Confirmation bias is ‘the tendency to seek, attend to and interpret information in a way that is consistent with our preconceptions, including expectations and pre-existing theories’ (College of Policing, 'Conducting effective investigations' PDF , July 2022). College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice (APP) states that 'Officers and staff should exercise professional curiosity to actively identify and investigate vulnerability-related risks, so they can deliver the appropriate policing response. Professional curiosity includes: exploring and understanding what is happening by asking questions and maintaining an open mind' ( College of Policing 'Curiosity' web page ).

The IOPC recommends that North Wales Police take steps to understand supervisors’ experiences of carrying out risk grading for missing persons cases, to determine whether further training may be required to ensure that the investigative actions carried out are consistent with the grading provided.

This follows and IOPC investigation where a North Wales Police Missing Person's Coordinator reviewed a missing person investigation and concluded that despite being graded as medium risk throughout, supervisors were setting and carrying out actions that were consistent with a high-risk missing person investigation including requesting media releases, arranging drone searches,  carrying out financial and mobile phone checks and utilizing the informal intervention of specialist search officers.  Where officers are required to carry out actions consistent with high risk missing person investigation the questions inevitably arise why are the investigation is not graded as high risk.

The IOPC recommends that North Wales Police allocates a dedicated Single Point of Contact (SPOC) to families/next of kin during Missing Person Investigations where possible. The SPOC should ensure the family know who their SPOC is, provide regular, meaningful updates and explain the actions taken by police.’

This follows an IOPC investigation where the family of a missing person had contact with multiple officers over a period of days and were provided with ad-hoc updates both in person at the local police station and by telephone about the ongoing investigation.

Whilst updates given to the family by various officers and staff were no doubt well-meaning it led to a situation where the information given had a negative effect on the family's view of police actions as they were not given any context for the decisions. There is evidence of lack of sharing information between the family and the police e.g. the police were unaware the family were carrying out ground searches.  A more consistent communication approach and the ability to provide context to police actions could potentially prevent relations between police and the family from declining and provide reassurance.