Complaints Against Officers Should Be Investigated Locally

THE Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) should be a supervisory-only body, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said, as new figures show that the investigations are quicker when carried out at a local level than under IOPC supervision.

From April 2019 to January 2020, internal investigations into complaints against officers supervised by the IOPC took an average of more than two years to complete, compared to just over five months for unsupervised ones.

However these are the last statistics before the police complaints and disciplinary systems were reformed in February 2020. The changes aim to resolve more complaints at a local level.

The IOPC’s 2019/20 annual report showed that 35% of their investigations were completed within six months, and 83% within 12 months.

Steve Kent, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair, said: “If there are 83% of cases being done within a year then it is a step in the right direction, because we’ve seen cases go on for two or three years and nationally there have been cases that have gone on for significantly longer than that.

“From observation, the IOPC is significantly slower than local investigators. The explanation might be that they have resourcing issues. But it might be down to the fact that they’re just not as efficient as police officers at investigating other police officers, and getting these things down quicker.

“My view has always been that the IOPC should be a supervisory-only body, in that they should supervise professional standards investigating cases.

“We would always welcome tailor-made police departments investigating officers, rather than it being outsourced. In South Yorkshire we’ve got one of the top HMIC-recognised professional standards in the country. They should be the ones who are leading this and that would therefore make it quicker.”