Police contact with member of the public after a vehicle stopped – West Midlands Police, March 2019

On 23 March 2019, a vehicle was stopped by West Midlands police officers and seized it on suspicion of it being stolen. A 17-year-old boy was in the vehicle but was not arrested. While on a call requesting recovery of the vehicle, a Contact Centre Operator overheard one of the officers make comments towards the 17-year-old boy which could be deemed inappropriate and discriminatory. The Contact Centre Operator wrote the comments on the incident log and brought it to the attention of their supervisor.

During our investigation, we examined several pieces of material from West Midlands Police including the incident log, telematics from the police vehicle, the officer’s pocket notebooks, and training and disciplinary records. A CCTV trawl was also conducted which identified CCTV that captured part of the incident from a distance. We obtained witness accounts and conducted a misconduct interview with the subject in the investigation.

Our investigation was completed in December 2019, but we waited for all external proceedings to be complete before publishing our findings. We were of the opinion that one police officer had a case to answer for gross misconduct. We advised this should be in the form of a misconduct hearing. This took place in June 2021 where the findings determined the officer had breached the Standards of Professional Behaviour in respect of Equality and Diversity, Authority, Respect and Courtesy, and Discreditable Conduct. The officer had resigned from West Midlands Police prior to
the misconduct hearing, but the Panel concluded that it would have dismissed the officer if they had still been a police officer.

Throughout this investigation, we have carefully considered whether there are any opportunities for organisational learning or improvement. In this case, we did not identify any organisational learning.