Complaint regarding police actions - West Mercia Police, April 2018

On 26 March 2018, a 14-year-old boy went to hospital in Telford, Shropshire, for a facial injury that he said he had received in a road traffic incident. Staff at the hospital were suspicious and did not believe the account he gave. They reported the matter to the police. This case was recorded as a Child Protection Incident.

At 2.42pm on 9 April 2018, the teenager’s mother contacted West Mercia Police to report her concerns regarding a black Audi driving repeatedly past her house. She also indicated that her son had been involved in an incident two weeks earlier that had been reported to the police by a hospital in Telford.

At 3.46pm, the police received a 999 call from a member of the public reporting that they were witnessing three male occupants from a black Audi attacking another car with weapons and appearing to be targeting whoever was in the rear of this car.

In response to this, an incident log was created and graded as requiring an immediate response. Officers were deployed instantly to the scene, from where a bloodied knife was subsequently recovered.

At 4.08pm, the same day, the teenager’s mother contacted the police once more to inform them that her son and friends had been assaulted and had sustained stab wounds.

The boy’s mother made a complaint that West Mercia Police had failed to respond to her initial call on 9 April when she reported the Audi driving repeatedly past her house. We investigated her complaint.

During the investigation, we obtained and examined documentation generated during the course of West Mercia Police’s investigations and dealings with the complainant. The force’s Operations and Communications Centre Manager also provided a witness statement in relation to the complainant’s initial 999 call on 9 April.

Evidence indicated that this incident was graded as a priority call with an expectation of attendance within 60 minutes. We identified that the force had been unable to respond to this incident due to other ongoing incidents which were graded for an earlier response. Before the teenager’s mother could be contacted to explain the delay, she called again. This call was graded and attended as an ‘emergency’.

In our opinion, there was no evidence that West Mercia Police failed to respond appropriately to the contact with the teenager on 26 March 2018 and to his mother’s 999 call. We did not uphold the complaint.

Our investigation found that the officer who was contacted by the hospital did not record the incident as a crime until 12 April, which went against Home Office guidance on recording crimes. We suggested that the officer would benefit from an operational debrief. We completed our investigation in October 2018.

After reviewing our report West Mercia agreed.