Complaints and misconduct file review 2018 – City of London Police

From:

Matt Parr CB
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary

To:

Ian Dyson QPM
Commissioner
City of London Police

Sent on:

21 December 2018

Complaints and misconduct file review

Dear Ian,

I write to give you a summary of the review of complaints and misconduct files that we carried out in your force on 1 and 2 August 2018. Thank you for the assistance and information your staff gave my inspectors.

Information and updates to complainants

2. During our 2017 legitimacy inspection we assessed whether forces had complied with the legislation that requires them to give certain information to complainants. This legislation^[1] requires forces to:

• explain to complainants how their complaint may be dealt with;
• advise them who is dealing with the complaint and give their contact details; and
• give the complainant a copy of the record made of their complaint.

3. We found that your force had only given the information in 17 of the 25 cases we assessed. We were pleased to find an improvement during our review in August this year. We found that your force had provided the required information in 17 of the 20 cases we assessed.

4. In 2017, we also assessed whether forces had given complainants regular updates on the progress of their complaint investigation at least every four weeks, as required by the legislation^[2]. We found that your force had only given the required updates in 17 of the 25 cases we assessed. These weren’t always the same complaints as referred to above.

5. We were again pleased to see that the review we carried out in August showed an improvement. We found that your force had given updates to complainants in all but one of the 20 cases we assessed.

Discrimination

6. In 2017, we reviewed how forces handled allegations of discrimination. In your force, we found that only one of the 11 discrimination cases we looked at complied with the IPCC (now IOPC) guidelines for handling allegations of discrimination (PDF document). The main reasons were that investigators didn’t understand the allegations, hadn’t obtained and probed the account of the person complained about and failed to gather the evidence properly. We took the view that none of these complainants received a satisfactory service from your force.

7. While we were pleased to see an improvement in our 2018 review, we were still disappointed to find that your force had only complied with the IOPC guidelines for handling allegations of discrimination in five of the nine cases we reviewed. The main reasons were that investigators hadn’t conducted background research into the person complained against and hadn’t probed their account of what happened. However, we also found cases which were investigated well.

8. We took the view that despite these issues, seven of the complainants out of the nine cases we reviewed received a satisfactory service from the force.

Next steps

9. We expect to conduct another review of your complaint and misconduct cases in future integrated PEEL inspections.

References

[1] Regulation 15 of the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2012 and Paragraphs 3.4-3.8 of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) statutory guidance

[2] Section 20 of the Police Reform Act 2002 and Regulation 12 of the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2012

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Complaints and misconduct file review 2018 – City of London Police