Recommendations - Metropolitan Police Service, September 2024

The IOPC recommends that the Metropolitan Police Service provides access to resources for Met CC and local borough command units with the locations of lifebuoys or other rescue aides along the River Thames and any other significant bodies of water.

This follows an IOPC investigation where a male entered the Thames after he was informed that he was to be placed under arrest. Shortly after, the male experienced difficulty in the water and despite efforts made by Metropolitan Police Service officers to assist him, the male was pronounced dead at the scene. Despite public rescue equipment being available close by where the male entered the water, this equipment was not utilised or acknowledged by multiple officers who attended the incident. Instead officers awaited for the arrival of a throwline.

A review of current officer training indicates that water safety training provided to officers as part of their Operational Safety Training relates specifically to the use of throwlines, but also details the consideration of looking for other rescue aids. However there is no information provided to officers in boroughs located along bodies of water with an awareness of where to locate public rescue equipment or how they may be able to find them in the event a throwline is not available. Furthermore within the METCC SOPs operators are advised to tell officers to look for rescue aids, however they do not have tools to provide information on where these might be located.

As noted by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA), land owners, including local authorities and business owners, often install public safety equipment along bodies of water so that it is readily available for use by anyone located nearby. Further to this, there is public information available online which provides the location of life buoys, river wall grab chains and exit points which could be of use to Met CC staff and local boroughs when they are advising officers attending water based incidents.

Not accepted

The recommendation is not accepted on the following basis:

The recommendation whilst in theory is a good idea it would be difficult to achieve for the MPS and require significant time, resource and cost to create a database of locations for rescue aids. This database would only be accurate on the day a rescue aid was visited and verified. It is further complicated by the various stakeholders who install and maintain them as they are not installed or maintained by the MPS. Research has not been able to readily identify a reliable online resource of such locations.

As further context to the scale and complexity of the tasks required to achieve the recommendation; the MPS is responsible for policing 47 miles of the River Thames from the Dartford Bridge to Teddington Lock. If you include both north and south of the River
Thames, that is nearly 100 miles of river. The MPS also polices 250 miles of canals in London. There are also numerous lakes, ponds and reservoirs in the capital, some of which are publicly accessible and many are managed by privately run utility companies.
There are 32 Boroughs in London that also maintain various waterways.

Officers can be advised to “look around” by MET CC operators (separate recommendation for MET CC) to see if they can see a public rescue aid, but directing officers to potential sites that we do not maintain or control, could have missing equipment or have been
removed, could cause further delay and endanger lives.

Officers are trained in the use of throwlines as per MPS policy and these are situated in police vehicles. MPS officers complete the online training package on water interventions and use of throwlines. This provides guidance on making a risk assessment, and provides an intervention framework to assist officers as well as how to use a throwline.

The IOPC recommends that the Metropolitan Police Service should issue further guidance to remind METCC staff of the importance of utilising the Opening code SMF prompts when assisting an officer responding to a water-based incident.

This follows an IOPC investigation where a male entered the Thames after he was informed that he was to be placed under arrest. Shortly after, the male experienced difficulty in the water and despite efforts made by Metropolitan Police Service officers to assist him, the male was pronounced dead at the scene. Despite public rescue equipment being available near to where the male entered the water, this was not utilised by the officers who attended the incident. The incident had begun as a police generated activity, however later transformed into a water based incident. However this was not accurately reflected on the CAD, nor the relevant SOPs utilised or advice given to the officers dealing.

Currently, when an officer informs the control room that they are engaged in an incident involving a body of water, the operator should input an opening code which categorises the incident as such. In circumstances where an incident changes a secondary code can be added to reflect this. The relevant code for a water based incident is 664. This activates prompts detailing key actions for the operator which they should always complete such as contacting the marine support unit. In addition they should complete the SMF RISKWATER, which includes a list of advice to give to the responding officers, including to advise the officers to check for any safety equipment which could be used. In this case the opening code 664 was not added to the CAD and therefore these prompts were not available to the operator, who did not advise the officer to look for safety equipment. The evidence suggested there may be a lack of understanding within METCC about the importance of assigning additional opening codes and the prompts that are provided.

Accepted

Met Command & Control (MetCC) has considered and accepts this recommendation.

The current policy on police generated incident does not emphasise the importance of utilising secondary qualifying codes.

This has been reviewed and will be amended to reflect the IOPC’s recommendation by January 2025. The policy is currently in the consultation stage of development with our internal Operational Support team.

MetCC has also considered the IOPC’s recommendation regarding the importance of using relevant Standard Message Formats (SMFs) such as RISKWATER, to ensure that front line policing are aware of relevant risks that personal protective, rescue and resolution aids are obtained and utilised when appropriate.

We will be implementing these recommendations with a three-term-tier strategy over the next 17 months.

The short-term resolution will be to update our current staff via the weekly digest articles and the “updates tickertape screens” that are at all of our centres. Emphasising the importance of utilising secondary qualifying codes to ensure that all relevant standard operating procedures are available for relaying over the radio to front line policing and all relevant standard message formats are used. This work commenced on the 4th October 2024 and is ongoing.

Our Mid-term phase will be to add a segment to our twice yearly professional development days; these will be added to the 2025-26 training package that begins in April 2025.

The Long-term solution is to add these recommendations to the training course provided to all our staff as part of their mandatory career development training. This will be completed ready for the August 2025 training cohorts, ensuring that we have a future proof process installed that complies with the recommendations for all our new staff moving forward.

The IOPC recommends that the Metropolitan Police Service provides training and visual resources to officers within borough command units with a proximity to large bodies of water on the location and availability of water rescue equipment.

This follows an IOPC investigation where a male entered the Thames after he was informed that he was to be placed under arrest. Shortly after, the male experienced difficulty in the water and despite efforts made by Metropolitan Police Service officers to assist him, the male was pronounced dead at the scene.

Despite public rescue equipment being available close by where the male entered the water, this equipment was not utilised or acknowledged by multiple officers who attended the incident. Instead, officers waited for the arrival of a throwline, which caused a delay to any lifesaving equipment being deployed. In an MPS response to a Preventing Future Deaths report published in September 2023, it stated “Basic Command Units are to ensure officers are aware of locations of rescue aids/lifesaving equipment.”

However, the investigation found there is no training provided to officers regarding the availability of other types of life saving equipment, which is often available along large bodies of water, other than a throwline. Evidence in this case showed a resource on the local council clearly depicted the available life buoys along Kingston River. Therefore, this investigation has identified there is still a gap which needs to be addressed.

Not accepted

The Metropolitan Police Service (“MPS”) has reviewed and rejects this recommendation by the IOPC.

Water safety training in the form of ‘Throwlines’ training has already been rolled out to all officers as part of annual Public and Personal Safety Training.

In addition, the MPS has worked with the Royal Life Saving Society and subject matter experts from the MPS Marine Policing Unit to refresh our training on dealing with incidents around significant bodies of water. A mandatory E-learning package called “Water Interventions” went live in November 2023. The deadline for completion of this package was 15th February 2024. This on-line training provided guidance on how to act around water, what officers are allowed and not allowed to do and what dangers they could encounter should they enter water in the course of their duty. The following topics were addressed;

1. How to conduct a dynamic risk assessment before deciding whether to enter water
2. How to evaluate environmental and health hazards
3. How to describe common bodies of water police may encounter and their dangers
4. How to follow the correct SOP’s when dealing with a water incident
5. How to deploy the recommended Intervention Framework
6. Knowledge regarding 4 rescue aids that can assist in a water incident intervention. These being: Throwlines, Lifebuoys, Branches and Floating objects
7. How to effectively use a Throwline
8. How to follow the requirement for post-incident management

In response to the specific recommendation, there is already standing operating procedures within the Met Command and Control Centre to direct officers to look around for potential life-saving equipment and rescue aids. Directing officers to potential sites that are unreliable/not captured or mapped could actually cause further delay and endanger lives. We have brought this matter to the attention of the Front Line Policing Health and Safety lead and we consider that it is disproportionate to train circa 20,000 officers regarding the availability of equipment, when we don’t know exactly where the equipment is and officers have already had training on safe water practices. Officers currently have annual Emergency Life Support Training. We will pass on the information to local training contacts within Basic Command Units (BCUs) for their information, however this recommendation does not fit in with current learning and development priorities, which are focussed on crime supervision, child exploitation, missing persons and domestic abuse.