Police contact with man before his arrest – Greater Manchester Police, August 2019

In August 2019, a man, who has a high risk registered sex offender, moved into the Greater Manchester area. As a result, an officer within Greater Manchester Police’s (GMP) sexual offender management unit (SOMU) was allocated to manage the man. Part of this should have involved conducting home visits and risk assessments on the man. However, this did not take place.

In January 2020, the man was arrested following a report that he had raped a woman. He was charged and given court bail. However, the SOMU were not made aware of this offence and it wasn’t picked up by them due to a duplication in the man’s records on the police system.  

In August 2021, the man was arrested and charged for a further rape. At this point, a review of his SOMU management was conducted and found that SOMU had no contact with the man during their management of him. 

During this investigation notices were served on an officer and their supervisor for their lack of management. They both cited heavy workloads combined with the pandemic as being the reason for not conducting any home visits or risk assessments. A number of witness statements were obtained about the workings of the SOMU, along with ones who had dealings with the man’s record on the police systems. 

Our investigation concluded in August 2022, but we waited for all external proceedings to be finalised before publishing our findings.

We concluded no person serving with the police may have committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner justifying the bringing of disciplinary proceedings. 

We identified that the actions of two police officers fell below the expected standard and concluded that the most appropriate proceeding would be the reflective practice process (RPRP).

An officer reflecting on their actions is a formal process reflected in legislation. The reflective practice review process consists of a fact-finding stage and a discussion stage, followed by the production of a reflective review development report. The discussion must include:

• a discussion of the practice requiring improvement and related circumstances that have been identified, and
• the identification of key lessons to be learnt by the participating officer, line management or police force concerned, to address the matter and prevent a reoccurrence of the matter.

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, the investigation has not identified any learning over and above that which had already been identified and actioned by GMP.