Recommendation - West Yorkshire Police, March 2023

The IOPC recommends that West Yorkshire Police (WYP) amends or creates policies and procedures in respect of acknowledging receipt and return of evidence from members of the public to ensure that they include a strategy for the receipt and return of evidence.

This follows an IOPC review in which a member of the public (MOP) presented WYP with documentation to support their allegation of criminal activity. This documentation was judged by the force to contain details of civil matters, not criminal activity, and the documentation was destroyed instead of being returned to the MOP, who was expecting the documents to be returned to them. The investigating officer has advised the IOPC that a procedure does not exist for returning evidence to a MOP. This raised some concerns as to whether WYP have a sufficiently robust policy to ensure officers understand what to do if presented with documentary evidence of a potential crime, specifically in relation to whether the member of the public may reasonably anticipate the return of any such evidence. The amendment/creation of such a process would therefore hopefully be beneficial and remove the risk of documents being destroyed when the MOP wants them to be returned to them.

Recommendation accepted:

Apologies for the late response in respect of this recommendation but after consultation we have now included the below highlighted extract in the 2 polices which relate to property; Lost and Found Policy and Evidential Property Policy;

Summary

West Yorkshire Police (WYP) do not accept property into our custody or control except where it is illegal or dangerous for the public or other organisations to retain or dispose of it, or if it will aid the Force as the purpose of WYP retaining property is to maximise opportunities for crime detection or the disruption and conviction of criminals. All property of whatever type is recorded, stored and disposed of in accordance with systems and processes in Force at the time, with no property being retained beyond its legal requirement.

Items that are not included in the Force Lost & Found policy nor are seized as part of an investigation should not routinely be accepted into Force.

Where WYP do take possession of property, falling outside of the above, it is the duty of the officer taking possession to agree with the property owner how they want it to be managed when it is no longer required by us – i.e. disposed or returned to the owner. This should be documented on Niche.

This policy on evidential handling explains the different responsibilities that the Officer in Case (OIC), Sergeants, Senior Leadership Teams (SLT) and Evidence Stores Staff have. The retention criteria for different evidence based on crime types and legislation and the opportunity for photographic evidence. Also the management of the retained property including disposal.