Man sustains injuries after calling police - Greater Manchester Police, October 2016

In the early hours of 20 October 2016, a man contacted Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to report a group of teenagers banging on the door of his flat. Police attendance at the address was initially delayed and then a decision was made to close the incident log without police attendance.

At around lunchtime the same day, GMP received a call from the ambulance service about a man who had been found with serious injuries to his legs in the stairwell of a block of flats. He was identified as the same man who had called the police earlier that morning reporting the teenagers banging on his door.

Our investigation found evidence that the man had previously reported a number of incidents of a similar nature to the police.

During the investigation, our investigators met with the injured man, obtained witness statements, as well as accounts under caution from staff and police officers identified as subjects. We analysed the evidence obtained against legislation, policies and guidance.

Evidence indicated that GMP identified welfare concerns as a result of previous incidents reported relating to the man, and brought them to the attention of the relevant partner agencies.

Evidence also indicated that response to the man’s call on 20 October 2016 was delayed by radio operators due to other higher-priority incidents and lack of resources available. An officer reviewed the incident log and did not escalate it, as they thought from a comment made by one of the radio operators that the incident was going to be allocated imminently. Another officer then made the decision to close the log without police attendance – which is in accordance with force policy – but did not fully record their rationale for doing so.

Taking into account the overall situation and the time which had elapsed since the incident in question, we were of the opinion that these had been relatively minor performance issues for one radio operator and two police officers, which could be addressed informally. We completed our investigation in June 2019.

After reviewing our report GMP agreed and advised that the performance issue for the two officers would be dealt with by words of advice from their line managers. As the radio operator had left GMP, no further action would be taken.