Circumstances surrounding man’s death following his release on bail – West Midlands Police, July 2021

In July 2021, a man called West Midlands Police to state they would find his body in his flat. Officers attended the man’s address but found the man deceased.

We conducted a Death or Serious injury (DSI) investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of the man who had been released on bail in early May 2021.

During our investigation, we obtained statements from officers who had contact with the man at the time of his initial arrest and release on bail. We also obtained and considered relevant Policy documents relating to procedures to be followed at the time of release from custody. We reviewed custody records, incident logs and interview records. We received evidence relating to the control and allocation of police resources at the time the man made his call and considered this evidence along with relevant call handing policies.

Our investigation concluded in December 2021. We waited for all associated proceedings to be complete before publishing our findings.

We concluded there was no evidence to support that the police caused or contributed to the man’s death. Our investigation did not indicate that a person serving with the police committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner justifying the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

We also concluded West Midlands Police was not required to make any determinations because we were satisfied that the investigation did not raise any performance issues. We shared our findings with West Midlands Police who agreed with our findings.

An inquest was held in February 2022 and concluded that the man’s death was caused by asphyxiation and it was recorded as suicide.

We considered whether there were any organisational learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. In this case, the investigation has not identified any learning.