Response to a missing person report - Gwent Police, August 2019

A woman contacted Gwent Police to report her partner was missing. She informed the police control room that he had recently experienced an episode of mental ill health and that she was concerned for his welfare as he had left the house late at night, saying that he was going for a walk, which was out of character.

An officer attended his address and spoke to the man’s partner, assessing him as a medium risk missing person. The officer recorded information on Gwent Police systems, but the computer system automatically sent details of the incident to her sergeant, who had already gone off duty. The officer did not manually send details of the incident to the sergeant who was on duty or record information regarding the incident on a whiteboard used to record details of missing persons. Because of this, the sergeant on duty did not review the status of the incident or the risk assessment. No action was taken in relation to the incident for approximately seven hours overnight.

The next day, the incident was allocated to another officer, who conducted further enquiries and actions, including a search of the man’s address and a further area search. The man was re-assessed as a high-risk missing person approximately three hours after the incident had been allocated to this officer. The officer conducted further enquiries to locate the man during the afternoon. Consideration was given to the use of drones, police dogs and the police helicopter. In addition, a Police Search Advisor reviewed the incident. Another officer later took over responsibility for the search. However, the man was found deceased approximately seventeen hours after he went missing, having apparently hanged himself.

The case was referred to us and we began an independent investigation. We reviewed police documentation and radio communications as well as obtaining witness statements from the partner of the man who went missing and his neighbours. We also obtained witness statements from the officers who were involved in responding to the incident.

We concluded that the evidence did not indicate that a person serving with the police may have committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner justifying the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

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 to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents.

In this case we recommended that officers should be reminded of the importance of sending incidents to a new sergeant who has come on duty when a sergeant has gone off duty before the end of the shift, and of flagging relevant incidents on the whiteboard.

At an inquest held in summer 2020, the Coroner recorded a finding of suicide.