THE Independent Office for Police Conduct\u2019s \u201ccase to answer” test received a bashing by the Federation of England and Wales which dismissed it as \u201ccompletely broken\u201d and a \u201cwaste of public money\u201d this week.<\/p>\n
The case to answer test is applied when an officer comes under investigation by the IOPC, when the decision maker must conclude whether \u2018in their opinion\u2019 the police officer has a case to answer for misconduct.<\/p>\n
But Phill Matthews (pictured), the PFEW\u2019s Conduct and Performance Lead, received a round of applause from officers when he took it apart at this year\u2019s Annual Conference in Birmingham.<\/p>\n
Mr Matthews told IOPC Director General Michael Lockwood: \u201cWe think the case to answer test is broken and it needs completely resetting. It doesn\u2019t actually improve public confidence in any way shape or form; it lets families down because they believe something might actually happen and it really undermines officer morale – not just for the person that is subject to that case to answer, but also the team but sometimes the whole force.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can completely demolish morale for a long time afterwards. It is a waste of public money, public time and from our perspective does nothing to improve public confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The IOPC also came under criticism for the excessive time taken to resolve investigations, and for a lack of transparency.<\/p>\n
However, the body has come a long way in making improvements, Mr Lockwood told the conference on Tuesday (22 May).<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe have a lot of comments from serving officers that \u201cwe are out to get coppers and we are the criminal\u2019s friend\u201d. And then we get the same from members of the public – that we are the officers\u2019 friend. If we chase popularity we are not going to win, but respect from all sides is what we are trying to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Lockwood said he wanted investigators to have a good understanding of what it means to be a firearms officer, custody officer, police driver or neighbourhood officer, which is why around a quarter of staff come from a police background. He also said he was sympathetic that officers and their families come under stress when they are investigated, but that he could not compromise the quality of the investigation to speed it up.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThe single biggest criticism against us is length of time investigations take. The headline is that we are bureaucratic and slow. Tackling this issue will be a priority for me. Last year a third of investigations concluded within six months and two thirds concluded within a year. Last year we closed more cases than we opened and the closure rate was up 60% on the previous year.\u201d<\/p>\n
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THE Independent Office for Police Conduct\u2019s \u201ccase to answer” test received a bashing by the Federation of England and Wales which dismissed it as \u201ccompletely broken\u201d and a \u201cwaste of\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}