Missing man and reports of welfare concern – South Yorkshire Police, January 2023

In the early hours of 29 January 2023, a man was reported missing to South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officers by two of his friends. 

Officers took details of the man and the concerns to start enquiries. This included searching the local park near his home address as well as conducting address checks of family and friends.

Enquiries continued throughout the night and a full handover was given to the day shift. SYP treated the man as a medium risk missing person and a police officer was tasked to complete any outstanding enquiries.

Later that morning, the man was found dead in the local park.

The same day SYP referred the matter to us as a Death or Serious Injury (DSI).

On 21 March 2023, we received a complaint from one of the friends that they were unhappy with the initial search of the park carried out by officers and that they did not react to potential evidence in the park that was provided by themselves regarding the concern for the man. The friend also complained that they were left on their own in the park in the early hours of the morning whilst officer carried out the search.

During our investigation, our investigators obtained witness statements from the two friends who reported their concerns for the man. Key police witnesses, including the officers who conducted the missing person enquires, their supervisors, as well as control room staff also provided statements to us. 

We secured copies of the SYP incident log and missing person report for examination. 

We reviewed all evidence against local and national missing person guidance and policies.

We conducted a walk through the local park with friends and family of the man to gain further understanding and insight into SYP’s conducted enquiries. 

Our investigation concluded that SYP acted in line with policy and procedure and there was no indication that any of the police officers or police staff may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence.

We concluded our investigation in October 2023 and shared our report with SYP who agreed with our findings.  

We did not investigate the man’s death as that was a matter for SYP and HM Coroner.

In January 2024, HM Coroner held an inquest into the man’s death and concluded that the man died by hanging and concluded that the cause of death was suicide.

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 we identified a potential area of improvement in respect of the process of creating missing from home reports when a person is reported missing via means other than via a telephone call. It was not clear whose responsibility it was to create the report given the call handlers had not directly received the report, and it might be that this required clarification in the policy.  SYP agreed with this and have already put in place an amendment to the policy to ensure the recipient of the report is responsible for creating a missing person report.