Police watchdog's case concerns

Tom Davies calls domestic violence a major issue for all police forces

The head of the police watchdog body in Wales, the IPCC, says he wants to ensure reports of emergency calls and domestic violence are handled properly.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission says it has been asked to look at the handling of five deaths in recent weeks.

The commissioner, Tom Davies, stressed that he was not referring to the current cases under investigation.

Mr Davies said the cases involve all four Welsh police forces.

Mr Davies said he wanted to ensure the cases were not a sign that procedures needed to be tightened up.

He called domestic violence a "very, very major issue" with two calls a minute reporting incidents being made to police across the UK every day of the year.

He added: "Without going into the particulars two kinds of things emerge with cases of domestic violence.

"It is the way the call is handled before, and it is also the way the force does or does not take a holistic approach to these cases."

"Call handling is sometimes to do with the system, it is sometimes to do with the recording and the allocation and the work of the individual who receives the call in the way they pass it on.

Holistic approach

"It's sometimes to do with resources, sometimes resources are pressed at a particular moment, sometimes other decisions are made to deploy them elsewhere, which is very understandable.

Mr Davies said it was mainly about having a fully trained police force about attitudes and understanding of domestic violence.

He said IPCC research indicated that police forces were developing a far more holistic approach to the matter.

"It's something that has always been taken seriously but there is increasing co-ordination of the issues that emerge from it," he added.

Handling of domestic violence cases was a very complex issue, Mr Davies admitted, sometimes with charges being withdrawn, or counter allegations being made.

"So it's very, very difficult for the police to get all of this intelligence and all of this information, to be able to be acted on immediately when these calls come in," he added.

"But with multi-agency work and with proper record-keeping and technology, many of the forces are, through their domestic violence and sexual harassment policies, tightening up, and we just want to make sure that this spate is not as the result of any need to tighten up."

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