Recommendations - Greater Manchester Police, May 2024

The IOPC recommends that Greater Manchester Police reviews the current safeguards that are in place to prevent human error causing an unplanned server shutdown, within the force IT infrastructure, in the future, and ensures if it were to happen again, there would be appropriate levels of resilience in place, so far as possible, to ensure recording functionality is maintained. Where opportunities for improvement are identified, these should be implemented by the force.

This follows an independent IOPC investigation concerning a police pursuit where a pedestrian lost their life in a subsequent road traffic collision between a member of the public's vehicle and the vehicle being pursued by roads policing officers. During our investigation, we attempted to obtain recordings of the radio transmissions for the pursuit, however, no recording of the transmissions was available. Our subsequent investigation established there should have been, however, due to an unplanned shutdown of the server handling the pursuit transmissions, caused by human error on the part of the forces IT contractor, there was no recording made by the server. This meant whilst the radio channel allowed for communication as normal, the recording functionality was not online, and our investigation was not able consider the recording of the transmissions like it should have been able to.

The IOPC recommends that Greater Manchester Police reviews their guidance on the use of force radio channels whilst a pursuit is ongoing, with the aim of reducing non-critical and non-time sensitive radio traffic from unrelated incidents whilst pursuits are underway, allowing for pursuit updates to be passed in a timely manner. Officers do, however, have available to them the use of an 'emergency button' on their radios which allows them to override any radio traffic, giving them priority over all other radio traffic. As part of the forces review, GMP may wish to consider how officers are trained on the use of emergency buttons for such situations and assure themselves this training is adequate.

This follows an independent IOPC investigation concerning a police pursuit where a pedestrian lost their life in a subsequent road traffic collision between a member of the public's vehicle and the vehicle being pursued by roads policing officers. During our investigation, we reviewed body worn video and dashcam footage, as well as obtained accounts from the officers and police staff involved. As part of our investigation, officers engaged in the pursuit reported to us during the pursuit, they had difficulties updating the control room that their police vehicle had made contact with the suspect vehicle, attributing this difficulty to a busy radio channel.

The IOPC recommends that Greater Manchester Police reviews the current arrangements that are in place for police drivers to check and certify their in-car audio and visual recording equipment is functioning correctly at the start of each tour of duty and establish within force policy the requirement for an officer to complete such a check. GMP should do so to ensure the current arrangements are adequate for the purpose in which they were implemented for, and if they are not, take steps to ensure they are adequate. Establishing the requirement within force policy to complete such a check will ensure officers are clear on what is expected of them.

This follows an independent IOPC investigation concerning a police pursuit where a pedestrian lost their life in a subsequent road traffic collision between a member of the public's vehicle and the vehicle being pursued by roads policing officers. During our investigation, we obtained the dashcam recording of the pursuit from the police vehicle, however, the recording equipment malfunctioned and only recorded the video and not the accompanying in car audio. Previous IOPC investigations, along with information from GMP, have indicated this is an infrequent but recurring fault. Since this incident, GMP have told the IOPC police drivers have been instructed to ensure the working functionality of their equipment at the start of each tour of duty.