Source · IOPC Learning Case

Recommendation - Metropolitan Police Service, November 2020

Metropolitan Police Service Ref: 2019/123226 Recommended 19 Nov 2020 Response due 14 Jan 2021

Welfare and vulnerable people

A witness at a residential address in E17 phoned 999 at 11.45pm on Wednesday 24 July 2019 to report that two men were fighting outside their house. Four police officers attended but decided no police action was necessary. A second witness phoned 999 at 12.05am to report the men had resumed fighting after the police left. Separately, six police officers in a police van driving on Blackhorse Lane were flagged down by a member of the public who reported two …

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Recommendations

1 total

Recommendation 1

The IOPC recommends that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) should review the spinal injuries topic within its Emergency Life Support (ELS) training for police officers to ensure that scenarios and examples used do not solely focus on motorcycle accidents and injuries. The IOPC conducted an investigation into allegations that a man with a serious spinal injury was not shown appropriate care and attention by police officers because they did not recognise the extent of his condition, despite it being mentioned (pain in neck, numbness etc) and therefore did not treat man as having a suspected spinal injury. This meant that techniques such as inline immobilisation that they had been trained to undertake were not used. During the investigation, material from the spinal injuries topic of ELS training that all officers undertake on an annual basis was reviewed. This showed that the only scenario used as a teaching tool during training was about how to treat a person involved in a motorcycle accident. If additional examples were given when training officers, their understanding of spinal injuries may increase, along with awareness on when inline immobilisation technique should be used. Do you accept the recommendation? Yes

Addressed to: Metropolitan Police Service

Linked bodies: Metropolitan Police Service

Accepted

Force response

Accepted action: The MPS recognises the importance of this recommendation and agrees to take the suggested action in order to enhance its training in this area. We are comfortable that our current approach meets this recommendation in that we do teach other scenarios rather than solely focusing on one type of incident. ELS refresher training is delivered in three year cycles and the next training cycle dealing with spinal injuries will begin in October 2021. To re-inforce the training already provided, this cycle will introduce a specific mandatory scenario which includes a responsive casualty who has a history indicating a possible spinal injury and who then becomes unresponsive. Training will be aimed at inline stabilisation where any spinalinjury is suspected. It will be kept separate from the crash helmet removal session to avoid overlap and confusion. It will not be possible to introduce this prior to October 2021 as we are currently in COVID recovery and concentrating on priority skills.