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

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.

​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.

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 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.

​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 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 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.