Source · IOPC Learning Case

Police response to an abandoned emergency call – Cleveland Police, March 2020

Cleveland Police Ref: 2020/132889 Recommended 15 Apr 2021 Response due 10 Jun 2021

Welfare and vulnerable people

Case background

Text published by the IOPC.

In March 2020, Cleveland Police received an abandoned 999 call. Cleveland Police made attempts to re-connect the call and managed to speak to the caller. The caller made it clear that immediate police attendance was required. Cleveland Police assessed the incident and made attempts to send police units to the caller’s address. No police units were sent to the address for 11 hours. During this period the caller had allegedly been held against their will and repeatedly assaulted. Upon arrival, the police arrested a man at the scene on suspicion of assault and holding the individual against their will.

During our investigation we obtained and analysed a large volume of digital and documentary evidence including police body worn video images, local and national police policies and guidance documents, local police incident records and police telephone conversations. We also obtained statements from police officers, police civilian staff and members of the public.

We completed our investigation in February 2021. We found no indication any Cleveland Police officer or member of police staff had behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence.

We concluded that no individual performance needs to be addressed but systemic errors contributed to failings. We shared our findings with Cleveland Police who agreed with our conclusions.

We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. We identified three areas of learning and have progressed these under Paragraph 28A of the Police Reform Act 2002.

Recommendations and responses

3 indexed

Recommendation 1

Link to recommendation · Accepted

Addressed to: Cleveland Police

Linked bodies: Cleveland Police

IOPC recommendation

The IOPC recommends that Cleveland Police should implement a system to ensure that despatchers can easily inform the relevant control room staff where it is not possible to deploy resources to an incident. This system should alert relevant staff to un-resourced incidents automatically if possible.

This follows an IOPC investigation where Cleveland Police failed to respond to an emergency telephone call from a vulnerable female member of the public, in a timely manner and prior to her allegedly being assaulted by her half-brother.

The investigation found that the Cleveland Police incorrectly assessed this incident and graded it a lower risk than they should have, which in turn led to a lower level of response. Cleveland Police control room staff and the police computer systems did not assist in escalating this un-resourced incident or highlighting that it had not been resourced for several hours. As a result this incident sat in an incident queue for over 11 hours until it was resourced, which was contrary to force policy.

A recent HMICFRS inspection acknowledged that the force has improved its prioritisation of vulnerable victims and management of incident queues, but noted there is still work to be done to ensure incidents graded as high risk are responded to in time.

This recommendation is aimed at ensuring that unsourced incidents do not get ‘lost’ on the system and that senior staff are made aware that events remain undeployed to, so that they can assist with resourcing.

Response published by the IOPC

Do you accept the recommendation?

Yes

A ‘FIM’ list has been introduced. This allows staff to ‘tag’ an incident to the FIM Inspector (who is responsible for the whole of the Control Room & Commands spontaneous incidents for the Force). When reviewing incident queues, staff are trained to re-THRIVE where there is any change to the information and escalate for FIM attention.

The escalation policy is described in the Collaboratively Meeting Demand Policy and it must be documented on STORM the attempts made to allocate a resource and that where I & P grades remain un-resourced, all efforts must be made to identify alternative resources such as CDSOU, Dogs, these incidents are also escalated to district and FCR supervision to identify a resource to attend.

Timer alerts are in place for I & P grades and timer alerts for Missing persons, which automatically highlight calls that remain un-resourced. The escalation process is used to alert supervisors that resources need identifying or diverting to a superior risk.

Auto generated key word searches assist with risk & harm identification. An email is generated into the Crime Management Unit so that the incident can be considered against the Home Office Crime recording rules to ensure the Force does not under-record and miss identify victims of crime.

New guidance documents have been circulated to ensure all opportunities to resource incidents are taken. This has resulted in vastly reduced demand queues, which are more easily reviewed and managed by supervisors.

Guidance has been circulated to all team leaders and supervisors and added to SOPs in relation to expectations and responsibilities of supervisors concerning checking the THRIVE and grading of every Priority 2 & Priority 3 to ensure correct grading’s and risks are identified. Expectations have also been set in relation to hourly supervisor reviews and ongoing triage processes.

Check the original case on the IOPC website

Recommendation 2

Link to recommendation · Accepted

Addressed to: Cleveland Police

Linked bodies: Cleveland Police

IOPC recommendation

The IOPC recommends that Cleveland Police policy and guidance documents are relevant and up to date, ensuring standard roles and responsibility policy documents for all supervision and staff working within the control room are in place, fit for purpose and reviewed on a regular basis. If policies/processes change then Cleveland Police should ensure that guidance is updated as appropriate and adequately reflect any policy/process changes.

The investigation found that Cleveland Police did not attend the female callers address for over 11 hours, during which there was an identified potential and serious threat to life. Following her emergency call to Cleveland Police, the female caller was held against her will for a substantial period of time and was seriously assaulted.

The investigation found that Cleveland Police control room staff were not totally aware of their respective roles and responsibilities with regard to taking responsibility for and escalating emergency incidents. The investigation found that there appeared to be different working practices in place across various shifts.

This led to a breakdown in communication as well as an awareness of individual and team roles and which resulted in a lack of consistent working across different teams in the control room,. The investigation found that this was a key contributor in the failure to resource an emergency call for assistance in a timely manner, which was contrary to force policy and procedures.

Cleveland Police need to ensure that policy and guidance documents are up to date and available for staff who work in the control room, so that if required they can be referred back to, particularly in relation to roles and responsibilities, risk grading, escalation, response times and control room standard operating procedures.

Response published by the IOPC

Do you accept the recommendation?

Yes

Force Policies are dated and subject to central scrutiny to ensure they are reviewed within the set timescales. This is either yearly, two years or three years, depending on the SOP. Guidance documents are subject to ongoing review & recent updates include the grading and escalation policy for all staff, this is available via a link on STORM. THRIVE training is embedded by the dedicated department trainer and all new FCR staff receive dedicated training during their intake. For all other staff, training days form part of the shift pattern and they receive updates and refresher training, along with Domestic Abuse training and vulnerability factors to consider that impact on risk identification. The Grading and escalation policy has been introduced and has been embedded by daily presentations at pacesetter meetings to the chair, the Chief Superintendent of the Command. The Vision has been set for the Control Room, to influence culture and build on Force behaviours, such as taking ownership and Public Service values. As explained above the FIM list has been introduced which sees oversight of the higher risk cases. Staff are trained to ‘tag’ incidents to the FIM list, such as all concerns for safety and missing persons. Notwithstanding this, should there be risks that remain un-resourced staff can escalate by ‘tagging’ the incident for the FIMs attention to identify a resource for the incident. Recent communications have been sent out re-iterating to all team leaders highlighting the role they play when incidents are re-graded or fall out of dispatch timelines.

Check the original case on the IOPC website

Recommendation 3

Link to recommendation · Accepted

Addressed to: Cleveland Police

Linked bodies: Cleveland Police

IOPC recommendation

The IOPC recommends that Cleveland Police take steps to ensure all current and future officers and staff that work in the control room receive sufficient training, in order to perform their roles effectively. Refresher training should be provided as necessary, particularly when changes are made to the processes and/or systems. This follows an IOPC investigation where Cleveland Police failed to respond to an emergency telephone call from a vulnerable female member of the public, in a timely manner and prior to her allegedly being assaulted by her half-brother.

The investigation found that there was no adequate role and responsibility structure in place at the time of this incident together with a lack of initial and ongoing training for control room staff and supervisors. This meant that control room staff and supervisors did not receive adequate training in order to fulfil their respective roles.

The investigation highlighted inconsistent understanding of individual roles and responsibilities and varying working practices across different shifts, which resulted in misunderstandings of individual/team responsibilities and a failure to enforce standard operating procedures with regards to escalating and resourcing emergency incidents.

- The investigation identified training shortfalls, a lack of understanding of the role/responsibility structure and of the escalation process. Cleveland Policy should ensure that all control room staff and supervisors receive training to cover:
- The roles and responsibilities of the different grades working within the control room.
- Escalation policies – specifically on understanding what to do when an ‘Immediate or ‘Priority’ event cannot be resourced within target response times.
- How to find resources out of area if all local patrols are unavailable.
- Standard Operating Procedures, especially around dealing with vulnerable victims and victims of domestic violence.

The investigation recognised that the work of the control room can often be fast paced and demanding and provides a vital opportunity to Cleveland Police to identify high risk domestic violence incidents at an early stage. As a result it is imperative that staff receive appropriate and regular training.

Response published by the IOPC

Do you accept the recommendation?

Yes

The Control Room has developed an ‘in-house’ dedicated trainer in addition to any training support that L&D previously provided. Feedback from the recent cohort of call takers has been extremely positive, following 10 weeks of on the job training they have a good understanding of risk and vulnerability & taking ownership and responsibility.

The training consisted of ‘on the job’ training, monitoring and auditing with feedback to ensure Policies are followed and high standards are met.

This training continues on training days that are built into the shift pattern. These occur one day every 10 weeks.

Briefings and debriefings take place by FIMs and team leaders as a consequence of the new shift pattern which allows for shift overlaps.

This includes guest speaker subject matter experts to provide case studies that bring the risks to life.

The THRIVE auditing processes and CDI Gold group, cover the monitoring governance and oversight and auditing processes to ensure the recording of accurate details, identifying crimes & victim service.

To support staff both inside FCR and on the front line on district, the Vulnerability desk (set up in December 2019), is based alongside and in-between dispatch and call taking work 24/7 to advise on DA and vulnerability, and assist with risk management and to ensure DA policies are followed. The SOP sets out the desks activities, with a shift pattern that aligns it to response & FCR teams.

The vulnerability Policy document sets out the terms of reference under which the Vulnerability Desk operates. This has a Chief Inspector lead who monitors performance via Power BI indicators, and holds teams and units to account. A vulnerability question set has been created which is populated by Vulnerability Desk staff to provide bespoke guidance to attending officers for every DA, along with background research checks and specific safeguarding advice and actions to be taken.

The dedicated trainer, ensures that as part of the training, staff understand other roles and responsibilities within the FCR, understand the escalation processes, & resourcing and SOPs around vulnerable victims and DA.

This includes DCI leads; subject matter experts from DA, & vulnerability.

The introduction of the new policy ‘Collaboratively Meeting Demand’ between the FCR and Response teams, is aimed at maximising efficiency and effectiveness of resource allocation and clarifying roles and responsibilities and makes it clear that it is everyone’s business and responsibility to keep people safe.

· The policy updated to reflect training inputs to staff to ensure they understand individual roles and responsibilities across different grades working within control room.

· When an Immediate or Priority event can-not be resourced within the target response time the escalation process must be followed. This involves documenting on the incident, what resources are committed with, a roll call must take place and attempts made to resource from CDSOU, if unavailable, INT, or any available resource. If still unable district supervision must be made aware along with the FIM to decide whether they are able to divert a resource from another incident.

· CDSOU, Dogs, OSU, can be tasked or diverted by the FIM as necessary to resource an incident. FCR staff are to follow the escalation policy and FIM has the authority to divert, and command resources as necessary. For additional governance, the FIM list is briefed into Pacesetter meetings for review and governance by Chief Superintendent.

All staff are trained in DA & vulnerability, including by subject matter experts. They undergo THRIVE training and are subject to intensive call monitoring during their training. All staff are subject to ongoing THRIVE call monitoring and dip sampling to maintain standards. SOPs for DA & a full SOP is in place for the Vulnerability desk, through the Vulnerability delivery group, setting out roles & expectations of the desk and Officers.

Check the original case on the IOPC website