Call handling and deployment of officers - Essex Police, October 2019

On 15 October 2019, at 8.04pm a woman called 999 and told Essex Police that her ex-partner had told her over the phone he was burgling her property and removing her belongings. The woman confirmed she was not at the property and police advised her not to attend. Within seven minutes of the call, a supervisor had changed the police response from emergency to priority.

At 9.19pm the woman rang Essex Police and said she was now at the address. Essex Police received calls between 9.56pm and 10.02pm from a neighbour and family members reporting that a fight had broken out at the home, including information that the woman’s ex-partner had assaulted her.

At 10.08pm, two police units arrived at the home and found a woman unconscious on the ground near to the property, and the woman who made the original call with a head injury reporting that she had been knocked unconscious prior to the arrival of officers. Ambulances attended and took both women to hospital. It was subsequently confirmed that they had not received serious injuries and were discharged during the early hours of the morning.

Essex Police referred the matter to us as is usual when a member of the public is injured after any form of contact with police. Our investigators reviewed 999 recordings of the calls into Essex Police force control room (FCR), reviewed incident reports generated by the FCR and obtained and reviewed body-worn video footage of police officers who attended the scene. We also obtained and reviewed policies and procedures, reviewed statements already taken from FCR communications officers, supervisor and attending police officers, obtained statements from a dispatcher within the FCR and FCR trainer, and received correspondence from local policing team duty sergeants.

During our investigation there was no indication any police officer may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence.

We identified areas of potential learning around training to dispatchers around resourcing and grading of incidents.

We shared our report with Essex Police who agreed with our conclusions.