Recommendation - West Yorkshire Police, February 2022
We identified organisational learning from reviews into the police handling of allegations of discrimination. During the handling of these reviews, it was established that the IPCC Guidelines for Handling Allegations of Discrimination were either not considered or not applied consistently by the Complaint Handlers. It has since been established that this is also the case with other West Yorkshire Police (WYP) reviews.
IOPC reference
Recommendations
The IOPC recommends that West Yorkshire Police take steps to ensure that complaint handlers consider and apply the IPCC Guidelines for handling allegations of discrimination, when discrimination has been alleged, and are demonstrating within their outcome reports that the complainant’s concerns have been recognised and handled according to these Guidelines.
This recommendation follows numerous IOPC reviews into complaints which have been handled other than by investigation by WYP, where an allegation of race discrimination has been made, but where there is little or no evidence that the discrimination guidelines were considered or followed during the handling of those complaints. In some cases, reference to, and the application of the Discrimination Guidelines, is inconsistent.
Discrimination complaints will often involve a complainant who already has very low levels of trust in the police. The IPCC Guidelines set the standards that complainants, families and other interested parties should expect when making allegations of discrimination against the police and provide a framework for investigating officers to follow when dealing with such complaints.
Do you accept the recommendation? Yes