Three police officers will face misconduct proceedings after they were accused of “incivility and lack of professionalism” in the way they dealt with a bereaved family.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) told Thames Valley police to improve the way it approaches grieving families after criticising the force’s handling of the case of Ellis Downes, who drowned in the river Thames in 2016.
The 16-year-old’s relatives sought help in finding him from civilian volunteer divers, who criticised the police for initially trying to stop them entering the water. The divers flouted the instructions and found Ellis’s body 48 hours after he was pulled under the water by the current.
The IPCC confirmed a delay had occurred “due to a misunderstanding as to whether [the volunteer divers] had the correct authorisation” and told the force to make further improvements to the way it deals with civilian dive teams.
Speaking at the time of Ellis’s death, Peter Faulding, a professional diver who volunteered to help in the search, called Thames Valley police’s handling of the incident “disgusting”. He said the policing “wasn’t done in a sympathetic manner”, claiming that more than a dozen officers had stood aside as relatives of Ellis helped carry the divers’ equipment.
The teenager’s father, Darren Downes, also said at the time the police had shown a “complete lack of compassion”.
The police watchdog found that the three officers, whom it did not identify, “had a case to answer for misconduct for their incivility and lack of professionalism during their dealings with Ellis’s family in the immediate aftermath of his disappearance”.
The force agreed and the officers will face the less serious misconduct meetings, where they can be given words of advice, management training or – at worst – a final written warning. They will not be put before the more serious misconduct hearing.
The IPCC said it had recommended the force reviews the “accreditation and use of civilian diving teams to support police searches. This will prevent any confusion arising in future.”
It added that Thames Valley police would review its “policies around rescue and recovery phases of searches and the actions that should be taken during these periods”. The force should “also look at the circumstances when a dive team will be considered”, the IPCC said, after criticism from Ellis’s family that police divers were not sent in immediately.
Lastly, the watchdog told the force to “implement improved bereavement training for frontline officers after complaints from the Downes family about how they were dealt with by CID officers”. In response, Thames Valley police said that had been done, with particular regard to the “timing and the deployment of trained family liaison officers because, in this case, we recognise that it should have been done earlier”.
Ellis’s father said on Tuesday he thought that responding to bereavement was part of every police officers’ training.
He said: “It’s about humanity and commonsense when dealing with families in our situation. Not sure you need training for that.”
In relation to the other recommendations, Thames Valley police said it had launched an internal review and improved its training.
The force added it had “made a decision to contract an accredited external dive company to provide the service in water rescue/recovery operations rather than rely on mutual aid from other forces. The contractual arrangements are currently being worked through.”
