Officers’ conduct when responding to request for assistance - Essex Police, January 2019

On 20 January 2019 two Essex Police officers attended to a request for police assistance. A woman reported that her partner had damaged property in the home. The police officers separated the man and her partner upon arrival and obtained information from them both about the allegations. The woman was told by one of the officers that no offences had been committed by her partner and he was advised to leave the property. Prior to his departure, the man was recorded on body-worn video (BWV) to ask the same officer for cannabis. The officer was heard on the footage asking the woman for cannabis and on departure from the property, the man was heard to thank the officer. A few hours later, the woman made a further call to Essex Police to express her confusion about the information she had been given by the attending officers. Later that morning the two officers returned to the woman’s home and recorded an offence of criminal damage.

Essex Police referred this incident to us as a conduct referral.

During our investigation, investigators interviewed the police constable and obtained a witness statement from the second attending officer, force control room staff and the acting police sergeant who was on duty at the time. We listened to the calls made by the woman and reviewed the officers’ actions against Essex Police policies and procedures.

During interview with our investigators the officer admitted knowingly giving a quantity of cannabis to a member of the public during his attendance at the property. The events surrounding this were captured to some degree on BWV.

Our investigation also revealed evidence in relation to how the two police officers who attended the domestic abuse incident had dealt with the allegations made by the woman and how they had responded to the allegations that her partner had damaged her property.

We were of the opinion that there was insufficient evidence upon which a reasonable tribunal, properly directed, could find misconduct for one of the officers regarding their decision not to arrest the man and not safeguarding the woman and her children. However, we were of the view that there appeared to be areas of the officer’s performance that required improvement. We therefore suggested these would be best addressed by management action.

We were also of the view that a reasonable tribunal, properly directed could find that supplying the man with the drugs was a serious error of judgement, and that a reasonable tribunal, properly directed, could find misconduct for the officer for handing the man the cannabis. However, we considered the mitigating circumstances – this was a single incident of brief duration, the officer admitted what they did and stated they would not deal with a similar situation in the same way. Therefore, we considered this could be appropriately handled by management action.

We also recommended that the performance of the other attending officer in some areas also needed addressing.

We completed our investigation in September 2019.

After reviewing our report, Essex Police agreed that both officers would receive management action in the form of a debrief, additional training in respect of the law surrounding Criminal Damage, and having full understanding of a number of relevant Essex Police Procedures.