Concerns for man's welfare - Cleveland Police, May 2022
On 20 May 2022, Cleveland Police received notification of a concern for welfare for a man who had failed to attend court. Officers attended an address believed to the man’s home, however, this was later revealed to be the wrong address and they did not find the man.
On 21 May 2022, officers attended the correct address and found the man to be unwell and in need of an ambulance and hospital treatment having ingested a large amount of medication tablets. The man died in hospital on 22 May 2022.
We obtained statements from the police officers and police staff, and the paramedic involved in the incident. We also secured and reviewed CCTV and body worn video footage relating to the incident, along with incident logs and reports. We compared these against local and national policies, procedures and guidance.
Our investigation concluded there was an indication a Cleveland Police officer may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings. We concluded our investigation in February 2023 and shared our report with Cleveland Police who agreed the officer had a case to answer for misconduct.
A misconduct meeting was held in June 2023 for the officer which found the case against him proven for one of three allegations and the officer received a written warning.
The inquest into the man’s death was also held in June 2023 and the Coroner reached a narrative conclusion that the man died as a result of an ‘excess of medication’.
We carefully considered whether there were any 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 organisational learning was identified in relation to highlighting discrepancies between an address given by a reporting person and those on force systems so that responding officers are aware of the discrepancies and can consider them.
IOPC reference
Recommendations
The IOPC recommends that Cleveland Police should implement a system or protocol to ensure that potential discrepancies in address – in which a reporting person provides an address that does not exactly match those available to select on Force systems – are clearly and prominently noted on incident logs, and to ensure that responding officers consider any such discrepancies and the fact that they may be caused by police systems rather than errors on the part of the reporting person.
This follows an IOPC investigation where it became clear a member of the public had given the correct address of a missing person during a phone call to police. The caller was not confident of the address, and the call handler found two similar addresses in the verified address drop down list on the police system, but not the address given. The call handler therefore asked which of the two addresses the caller was referring to, when in fact it was neither of those addresses and they had given the correct address. As a consequence of the address confusion initial attending officers went to the wrong address and did not find the missing person.
Recommendations accepted:
Cleveland Police have systems in place through Storm to validate addresses. Since the initial incident, subject of IOPC investigation, occurred any that are new are created through a GIS request, meaning the force constantly have an up to date address book of all premises in our area.