Man commits suicide after being in custody - Nottinghamshire Police, May 2017

In May 2017 Nottinghamshire Police arrested a man and took him into custody. Concerns were raised about the man’s mental health because he had disclosed how he had recently attempted suicide and had thoughts about committing suicide every other day. The man also described how he would take his own life. While in custody, the man was seen by a healthcare professional, who said that the man had no mental health diagnosis and that he was fit to be detained and interviewed.

The man was released without charge the following day and he went home. A few hours later Nottinghamshire Police was informed that the man had been found dead at home.

During the investigation, investigators obtained statements from the officers concerned, examined CCTV footage, incident logs, the custody record and obtained statements from witnesses. Three officers were subsequently served with misconduct notices.

Based on the evidence available, at the end of the investigation, we were of the opinion that three officers had a case to answer for misconduct: one officer for failing to consider the risk to the man on his release based on the information provided by his family and for not recording that the man had regular thoughts of suicide; a second officer for failing to follow policy in not documenting handover from and to other officers; and a third officer for not gathering all the information available in the custody record when considering the risks to the man on his release from custody.

We were of the opinion that the potential misconduct matters identified were at the lower end of the misconduct spectrum and would be best addressed by way of management action.

We also recommended that the force may want to consider defining specific times for the assessment of detainees by healthcare professionals and put steps in place for escalation should that time be exceeded.

After reviewing our report Nottinghamshire Police’s view was that the first officer had considered all of the information and made sound decisions with that information. The force determined that the second and third officers’ actions were a matter of poor performance which should be dealt through an action plan.

We carefully considered the force’s rationale and additional information and agreed that their proposals were appropriate.