POLICE officers are being put under \u201cappalling pressure\u201d and being driven to quit the job over lengthy investigations by the IPCC, a national meeting has heard.<\/p>\n
A top lawyer confronted IPCC chief Dame Anne Owers in front of more than 100 police custody officers at Police Federation’s national Custody Seminar this month.<\/p>\n
Ian Kelcey, who represents Police Federation members, demanded to know how new structural changes to the IPCC would improve the situation for custody personnel and claimed it was like \u201cdrawing hen\u2019s teeth\u201d to get any information about cases.<\/p>\n
Mr Kelcey said: \u201cSome of the delays have been unconscionable. Very often death in custody cases can take 18 months before you even get a report. In other cases, people have been charged, gone to court, been tried and convicted in that time. But if you ask your staff to provide information about the progress of these cases, it\u2019s actually harder than drawing hen\u2019s teeth.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers are thinking, \u2018do I really want to continue in this job?\u2019 I think it\u2019s appalling to potentially lose people with that level of experience. It\u2019s appalling for them and their families. Do you really think that the changes will improve the functionality of your organisation?\u201d<\/p>\n
IPPC chair Dame Anne suggested the length of investigations could be attributed to \u201cdelays in evidence gathering\u201d, other agencies such as the Crown Prosecution Service and forces\u2019 Professional Standards Directorates. She did concede that \u201cnew staff took longer than it should\u201d to carry out investigations, and their organisational structure and misconduct backlogs were clogging up progress.<\/p>\n
Dame Anne was speaking to the Police Federation of England and Wales\u2019 (PFEW) annual national Custody Seminar, where a recurring theme had been the difficulties posed by rising numbers of detainees with mental health problems.<\/p>\n
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POLICE officers are being put under \u201cappalling pressure\u201d and being driven to quit the job over lengthy investigations by the IPCC, a national meeting has heard. A top lawyer confronted\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3078"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3082,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions\/3082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}