Recommendation - Metropolitan Police Service, July 2026

The IOPC recommends that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) review all of its training on the required actions officers are expected to undertake when dealing with domestic abuse related incidents. Specifically, the review should consider whether the training is sufficiently clear on the importance of: 

• Completing DASH 2 risk assessments in medium and high-risk incidents and its importance in identifying coercive controlling behaviours. 
• Adding full intelligence checks, covering a minimum of five years, to CONNECT. 
• Requesting victim withdrawal statements and documenting on CONNECT if a withdrawal statement has been requested and refused. 
• Ensuring Body Worn Video (BWV) is appropriately recorded, saved and the footage is accurately linked to the CONNECT investigation when a domestic incident has been reported. This is achieved by adding the BWV URL and all the required data: description, time, and date to the media manager card within the investigation. 
• Safeguarding child victims of domestic abuse, regardless of whether the child is physically present at the address at the time of the incident. 
• All officers actively considering whether a referral to a Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) is required. 
• Importance of professional curiosity and awareness of perpetrator tactics, specifically ‘DARVO’ – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. 

This follows an independent IOPC investigation into the death of Ms A where Ms A’s ex-partner and father of her child (Mr B) was arrested for murder. Police records show that the MPS had contact with Ms A and Mr B on multiple occasions in the year prior to her death in relation to domestic incidents, including in response to reports of actual bodily harm (ABH) made by both parties against one another and non-fatal strangulation made by Ms A. 

During the course of the investigation, it became clear that multiple MPS officers across different incidents referenced in the final report did not complete a DASH 2 risk assessment or request and record a withdrawal statement in the appropriate circumstances. 

DASH2 is intended to improve how officers identify risk, vulnerability, context and patterns of harm by prompting officers to ask broader, more exploratory questions. DASH 2 is used by secondary investigators for all medium/high risk cases. It is designed to reveal elicit further information and places greater emphasis on patterns of behaviour over time, identifying non-physical abuse, wider context of relationship dynamics and should support a more contextual approach in officer decision-making. 

The MPS recently adopted the CONNECT system, as an integrated core policing IT solution to manage investigations and other key processes. In a similar way to DASH2 compliance, an attending officer did not record adequate intelligence checks, and another did not upload their BWV footage onto the CONNECT system, and these breaches of MPS policy were not followed up on by their supervisor during regular reviews of the incidents. This meant that officers missed the opportunity to accurately assess the risk posed to the victim by the perpetrator and, in relation to the withdrawal statement, to explore in more detail why they did not wish to assist a prosecution. 

Similarly, on multiple occasions different officers did not recognise that they needed to select ‘yes’ to a safeguarding question due to the fact that Ms A and Mr B’s child was not physically present at the address when officers attended. There were also multiple examples of supervisors failing to pick up on this issue in their reviews. This is despite the fact that the MPS’s ‘Safeguarding Children’ and ‘Domestic Abuse’ policies are clear that officers need to complete a CONNECT pre-assessment checklist (PAC) even if the child is not physically present. 

The investigation also highlighted that officers did not always understand who was responsible for making MARAC referrals. MPS ‘MARAC guidance’ and the force’s ‘Domestic Abuse’ policy are clear that ‘all police officers should actively consider making MARAC referrals.’ 

On several occasions, officers did not show professional curiosity in their response to incidents nor identify coercive controlling behaviours through the use of risk-assessment tools.

Officers should have considered perpetrator tactics, such as DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, in line with College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice (APP) that states ‘officers should prove the situation and be aware that the primary aggressor is not necessarily the person who was first to use force or threatening behaviour in the current incident. […] Officers should examine whether a manipulative perpetrator may be trying to draw the police into colluding with their control or coercion of the victim, by making a false incident report.” Awareness of such tactics may help an earlier identification of the primary aggressor to ensure robust intervention.