Alison Hernandez, Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner introduced David Ford, Regional Director for the South West IOPC who delivered the item to the Panel and highlighted the following key points:

The IOPC came into existence in 2013 and aimed to provide public reassurance in Policing in ensuring that the Police were accountable for their actions and lessons were learned when things went wrong;

Hundreds of investigations were carried out every year by the IOPC;

Work had been carried out with police forces nationally to improve complaint handling

Stakeholder teams built positive relationships with diverse communities, organisations and groups

The Policy team helped to shaper legislation both internally and within the wider policing landscape

Police forces by law must report incidences of complaints of seruious allegations or serious assault, Police misconduct and where the public have had a serious injury or death as a result of police intervention to the IOPC for investigation;

If the IOPC agreed to undertake an investigation there would be three main phases to the investigation and included; initial notification and setting up of the case, phase 2, the IOPC would conduct the investigation those investigators would have the powers of a Police constable during the investigations, phase 3 would see a lead investigator producing a report summarising the evidence and handed over to IOPC decision maker to determine additional matters which could include CPS referral, misconduct referral and best practice. The IOPC would continue to support the investigations at trial, at miusconduict hearings or at inquests where there had been a death;

The IOPC would deal with 5,000 referrals every year and would independently investigate between 400-500 of those referrals. The casework teams reviewed 2-3000 cases each year ensuring outcomes were reasonable and proportionate;

The IOPC, as a result of investigations would embed a learning culture to enable best practice across police forces;

The IOPC had been trying to reach those communities that were harder to reach to make them aware of the IOPC and its aims to instil public confidence in the police force;

When high profile and serius incidents take place – the iopc would engage community at the earlisest pout to explain the process of an investigation – This had been done within the Keyham tradegdy, the community were engaged with early and their voice was heard which was reflected in the press release at the time;

Police legitimacy had been affected greatly due to high profile incidences which did not reflect what the vast majority of police officers do on a daily basis. To respond to the concerns of the public the IOPC had been developing a sector wide programme to restore public confidence to policing;

In response to questions raised it was reported that:

The IOPC broke down the national statistics, regionally, on a quarterly basis and reported them on their website. The IOPC published the number of complaints received, categories of complaints and would also report on the IOPC’s performance in the region;

The IOPC kept track of the public’s opinion and ran 6 monthly public perception reports;

David Ford would meet with all Police and Crime Commissioners in the South West region on a quarterly basis as well as Chief Constable’s. Investigations of Police and Crime Commissioners would be handled outside of the region to provide public confidence that the investigation was wholly independent.