Officers initial personal accounts for the Dunmow Shooting did not comply with the current APP guidance. Essex police should consider ensuring authorised firearms training includes the current APP for post incident procedures in full. The current training does not fully cover the requirements for officer stage one, two, three and four accounts.
Yes
The firearms training package has been reviewed in conjunction with Essex Police weapons training. The training is delivered on a modular basis throughout the year and the fifth module, which includes training of stage one, two, three and four accounts, commences on 9 Jan 2017. In response to this recommendation the training input will include each of the four stages, and will make clear that the guidance is that a stage three account will include the officer’s honest held belief.
The IPCC recommends that Essex Police consider how information obtained by officers which is relevant to an incident is disseminated to the Force Control Room and officers at the scene of the incident. The purpose of this is to ensure that all relevant information is provided in the quickest and most appropriate form.
Yes
The issue has been discussed in detail between PSD command team and Contact Management command team, responsible for the management of the force control room (FCR). It is recognised that some relevant information was not relayed to the officers allocated to this incident, and that the information may have informed their decisions. It appears that the training/policies/procedures are in place which should cause FCR staff to relay all reasonably available and relevant information to attending officers, in order to inform their decisions. In this instance, Essex Police naturally accepts that one such piece of information was not relayed and intends to address this through engagement between the FCR Chief Inspector and Inspectors/supervisors, reinforcing the importance of providing the fullest information reasonably available.