Police Responsible for More Deaths

David Oakes - Murderer

The police have been blamed for the deaths of Christine Chambers and her daughter Shania. The pair were shot by Christine Chambers boyfriend David Oakes, who has been sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment. I am very disappointed that senior officers in Essex Police have simply rolled over and apologised for the alleged failings of the police and promised that lessons will be learnt.

I have previously written about the difficulties of prosecuting domestic abuse cases and about the apparent unwillingness of domestic abuse victims to press charges. There are also links between this case and my last post concerning Tia Sharp. If you read the first article you cannot miss the similarities between that case and this latest one. No lessons were learnt. I am not sure that there are any to be learnt.

Victims - Christine Chambers with daughters Shania and Chelsea

If the police failed in some way then I agree that we must look at our strategy and processes and see if we can do anything better. When I see the IPCC stating that not enough resources are placed in domestic abuse then alarm bells begin to ring. When I see that this offender has been in front of a judge and given a non molestation order and breached it I am not surprised as most breaches of such orders usually result in a ticking off by the judge and further bail. Every incident of domestic abuse is investigated. Invariably the victim will not press charges. I think we understand that victims are frightened of their attackers and perhaps we need to look more carefully at why.

Huge resources are spent trying to persuade victims to press charges. Every case is risk assessed using a 16 page form. Alarms, refuges and all sorts of support are offered but in most cases victims fail to support prosecutions. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are not easily persuaded to go ahead with victimless prosecutions, quite rightly, when few of them are successful.

There are more and more demands made by various inspection authorities for the police to put more resources into domestic abuse, child abuse, anti terrorism, vulnerable adults, anti social behaviour. Etc. No thought seems to be given as to where these resources will come from. Police Officer numbers have been cut 16,000 in the last year. Most of these resources have come from the front line. Response officer numbers are pared to dangerous levels. Neighbourhood officers are becoming local crime investigators and prisoner handlers. Less than 50% of all crime reported is investigated at all. More resources placed in specialist departments will mean even fewer victims crimes being investigated.

What I think I would like to have heard the Essex ACC was this;

Appropriate resources are allocated to investigate domestic abuse. All incidents of domestic abuse are risk assessed and investigated. We do everything we can to persuade victims of domestic abuse to press charges but unfortunately they do not feel that the justice system offers them the protection they want. When offenders are charged they are invariably bailed by the courts and regularly breach bail conditions and re offend. Occasionally those on bail go on to commit very serious offences including murder. The courts are not investigated for their responsibility in these cases.

Sometimes we have to accept that the way some individuals chose to live their lives puts themselves and their children at greater risk. The police and other authorities should do all they can to protect vulnerable victims, including victims of domestic abuse. Sometimes it has to be accepted that because of peoples life choices and the constraints of our present justice system, not every victim can receive the protection that society would like them to have.

Police Bungling Responsible for Another Death

"But he still loves me"

Unfortunately, I see that Ellie Bloggs has beaten me to this storey but I have a slightly different perspective on it.

A victim of domestic abuse has tragically been murdered. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have looked into this and decided that the police are partly to blame. Silly old police took eleven reports of incidents from the victim. The incidents were all low level and a risk assessment was carried out each time. As they were low level incidents the case was never categorised as high risk. Apparently, we should have come to the conclusion that because there were so many incidents the victim was at high risk. How stupid of us. Why don't we make them all high risk then our backsides are covered?

If the offender/victim had been categorised as high risk would it have made any difference. I doubt it very much. I have attended dozens of domestics incidents from minor rows to serious assaults. If there are any grounds to arrest anyone we do. We try and obtain statements from victims. More often than not they will not provide them. despite the beating they have had they tell us they still love the insecure prat they are living with and he loves her and he won't do it again etc. etc. The victim then gets spoken to by specially trained officers and still refuses to make a statement. The offender gets interviewed by specially trained officers. He knows the victim hasn't made a statement so says nothing, or she fell over etc. We try and deal with it by way of victimless prosecution but there are usually no witnesses and that is it, the offender walks out. If he then goes and stabs her to death, that is our fault apparently.

The family blame the police. They told us he was dangerous. They want to blame someone so the IPCC investigate and after months of pouring over the paperwork we are criticised for ticking the medium risk box instead of the high risk box.

I have two issues with this. I have said before that I am fed up with this nanny state we live in where it never seems to be the fault of the offender who stabbed the victim. It is always the fault of one of the public services who seem to have taken over responsibility for every aspect of peoples lives. If I really thought my sister was at risk of death from physical abuse I would round up the family and use the pressure that families can to deal with the problem. It may not always work and services should help, but can we not get back to a society where people take more responsibility for their own lives and that of their loved ones instead of just foisting it onto some overstretched public service and blaming them when it goes wrong. We cannot do everything unless you want your taxes increased substantially more.

The second issue I have is with the IPCC. Almost every week I read all these wonderful words of wisdom from the IPCC. They tell us when we have failed to investigate someones crime properly, when we haven't looked after someone in custody well enough visiting them every 5 minutes rather than 15. They tell us when we have not attended someones address quick enough to answer their 999 call and when the Neighbourhood Officer has not dealt with some local problem properly. They recommend all sorts of changes to policies and procedures to make sure this does not happen again.

If we really mess up I am all for saying sorry and learning from it. In most cases what the IPCC are recommending is more bureaucracy, more resources and more time spent dealing with a particular issue.

I can assure you that police resources are stretched to the limit. If we put more resource into domestic abuse it has to come from somewhere. That means someones 999 call won't be answered so quickly, someones else's crime won't get investigated and someones neighbourhood problem won't be solved. That will be more criticism from the IPCC and more bureaucracy, more resources moved around on the board and little achieved.