Complaint about police actions - West Midlands Police, December 2016

On 31 December 2016 West Midlands Police (WMP) officers responded to a report of a 19-year-old man causing a disturbance at a pub in Bloxwich. They took the man to the address he gave them for his home, approximately ten minutes away.

Approximately thirty minutes later, WMP received another call saying that the man had returned to the pub and was again causing a disturbance. The same officers arrived to take the man home. Officers state that the man asked to be taken to Cannock, around five miles away, as his friends were there. The officers drove the man to the outskirts of Cannock, where they dropped him off.

The following morning, the man’s mother complained to WMP that, in spite of having told officers he was suicidal, her son had been left to walk five miles home and had returned in the early hours of New Year’s Day in a distressed state. She also informed WMP that her son had Asperger syndrome.

During the investigation, our investigators obtained statements from the officers who participated in the transportation of the man, interviewed the man’s mother and reviewed the incident logs, airwaves transmissions, call recordings and data tracking the location of the police vehicle. We were not able to interview the man because of his health.

Based on the evidence available, the Investigator found no indication that any person serving with the police may have committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.