Public Protection update report – Operation Compass

Report: 10
Date: 13 October 2011
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Operations on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report provides an update on the activity conducted by Operation Compass and the 32 Boroughs in relation to Missing Persons.

A. Recommendation

That Members note the content of this report.

B. Supporting information

1. MPA members have requested an update of the activity conducted by Operations Jigsaw and Compass in the 32 Boroughs. Operation Jigsaw will be subject of a separate report.

Merlin

2. Merlin is the data system used by the MPS to record all persons who are reported missing. It has been in existence since 2003 and all outstanding missing persons prior to its inception have been added. A Merlin record is created each time a person goes missing even if the person is located prior to the report being completed. The Merlin report records the enquiries to trace the missing person, including research, risk assessment and supervision. All missing persons are assessed as low, medium or high depending on the risk to the individual or the community and the circumstances leading to them being reported as missing. When an individual returns they are ‘debriefed’ this information is stored on the system and allows valuable intelligence if the person were to be reported missing again.

Operation Compass

3. Operation Compass was set up in 2004, as a small central strategic and policy unit to provide assistance and support to Boroughs and to monitor performance and compliance. The unit has subsequently become the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) to progress missing persons issues raised by other Forces, the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), London Councils and other partnership agencies and charities.

4. MPS Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the Investigation of missing persons and unidentified bodies was published in March 2005. This incorporated National recommendations made in the Association of Chief Police Officer (ACPO) ‘Guidance on the management, recording and investigation of missing persons’. The Standard Operating Procedure is currently being reviewed and will be published in the near future.

5. Operation Compass has been incorporated in to the Safeguarding and Dangerous Offenders Team in line with the Territorial Policing Development Programme and is currently line managed by a Detective Inspector. There is one Detective Sergeant and one Detective Constable who have responsibility for Missing Persons, the Every Child Matters agenda and Public Protection Desks. The team assist in the risk management process by identifying and reviewing all unsolved high risk missing person Merlin records overnight to ensure policy compliance, effective investigation and management procedures are in place. This team still line manages the MPS Missing Person Bureau (MPB).

6. The Safeguarding and Dangerous Offender’s team ensure MPS training material reflects up to date procedures and organisational learning from missing person cases nationally. The team deliver courses to detective and uniform inspectors and Command and Control staff around ‘Risk Management’ and lessons learnt. The team also host an annual seminar for Borough Missing Person Unit staff and line managers to update them on new initiatives within the MPS or across the UK. These are attended by guest speakers from outside partners, charities and other units within the MPS.

Missing Persons Bureau (MPB)

7. MPS Missing Persons Bureau (MPB) was set up in 1929, becoming part of Operation Compass in 2008. The team is made up of four police staff members, one Band D and three band E’s. The MPB records missing persons and unidentified persons/bodies reported by other Forces with a potential London connection. It conducts research to ascertain whether any reports can be cross matched to a London report of a missing or found person/body. The MPB also provide support for Borough investigations of missing persons and unidentified persons/bodies and act as a national SPOC for all forces and the NPIA.

8. In the last financial year the MPB reviewed 96 unidentified bodies and 287 unidentified persons reported to the MPS, carried out advanced cross match searches on the unsolved cases and highlighted lines of further enquiries to the owning borough. A cross match search is a comparison between the description of a missing person and the descriptive details of any unidentified bodies or persons notified to the MPS. The MPB also took primacy for researching over 700 London connection missing persons; 34 London connection unidentified bodies; 11 London connection unidentified persons and approximately 60 enquiries from members of the public.

Borough Missing Person Units

9. Boroughs retain the investigation and ownership of all missing person cases unless they are suspected to be a murder victim. In these circumstances the investigation is the responsibility of the Serious Crime Directorate (SCD). Every MPS Borough has a dedicated Missing Person Unit (MPU) comprising of between 2 and 5 police officers and most are supervised jointly with the Public Protection Desk. Borough Commanders have autonomy over resourcing Borough MPU’s, terms of reference and performance. Some MPU’s are responsible for the secondary investigation of unsolved missing persons whilst others direct the investigation carried out by front line officers.

Performance Monitoring

10. There are no Government targets concerning missing persons. However the MPS monitor qualitative performance data to indicate monthly compliance with SOPs, timeliness of supervision; mandatory checks, risk assessment and completion of debrief interviews.

11. Since January 2011, an improved data extraction process has been introduced to establish the scale of repeat missing persons. A monthly performance report is compiled by TP performance unit highlighting and identifying repeat missing children and identifies the top 10 individuals for each Borough. It is the Boroughs responsibility to instigate partnership problem solving to reduce the level of repeat missing children. The Boroughs are accountable for their performance in this area directly to the Commander of Crime and Customer Focus.

12. In the next year Performance reviews will be carried out on reported missing persons concentrating on debriefs, supervision of reports and any other pertinent issues that arise from reviews of cases.

Headline Performance

13. There were approximately 46,000 new missing person reports between 1st April 2010 and 31st March 2011. The busiest Boroughs are Haringey (average 294 per month), Lambeth (292 per month), Croydon (243 per month) and Lewisham (194 per month). The least busy Boroughs are Richmond (50 per month), Havering (53 per month), Sutton (59 per month) and Kingston (61 per month).

14. The breakdown of figures of missing persons between 1st April 2010 and 31st March 2011 is as follows. 4415 Males under 14 years, 9003 Males aged 14 to 17, 10473 Males aged 18 years and over, 3596 Females under 14 years, 11349 Females aged 14 to 17, 7051 Females 18 years and over and 9 Transgender or sex unknown.

15. MPS records date back to 1950 and there are a total of 1324 unsolved cases up to 31st March 2011. This represents approximately 0.5% of the total number of missing person reports. These include murder cases where the record must remain open, because the body has not yet been found, to enable cross match searches with bodies subsequently found, cases where the missing person is understood by police to be safe and well in another country but this has not proved possible to verify to enable closure and complex immigration cases. However the majority of missing persons are found within a short period of time.
16. Performance across the MPS in relation to the completion of risk factors and debriefing is good, with MPS averages for Risk factors 82% and debriefs 81%. There is still a challenge to ensure that all reports undergo initial supervision within the two hour timescale, with only Wandsworth consistently achieving over a 40% compliance rate. This is an area of performance that the MPS is committed to improving through performance reviews.

Impact of Key Developments

17. The Missing Person SOP’s are currently being reviewed but no significant changes are anticipated since the last publication in 2008. There have been continual updates to procedures, which have been implemented, as organisational learning has been identified within the MPS and from other Forces. These updates have been publicised on the Missing Persons Website and the Intranet. For example new ACPO guidelines state that all persons under the age of 18 will be assessed as at least Medium risk which the MPS has implemented.

Anti - Violence Strategy

18. The new monthly performance report has been developed to identify high level repeat missing children, which will enable improved partnership problem solving. This policy is consistent with the MPS Anti-Violence Strategy as it highlights missing children who are victims or perpetrators of crime before, during or after they go missing, particularly in relation to violent and sexual crimes. It is expected that the Anti-Violence Strategy will enhance and support this work stream.

External Partnerships and Internal Key Stakeholders

19. Operation Compass represents the MPS at a strategic level with a variety of partnership agencies, including the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), London Child Protection Committee, London Councils and various charities.

20. At present some boroughs make use of the ‘Missing People’ charity organisation who offer support to the families of missing persons and publicise the missing persons photograph on their internet site and also in the Metro free newspaper. The MPS is currently promoting the use of this charity to all missing person units to enhance the support offered to families.

21. The overwhelming majority of child mispers are missing from care. The London Child Protection Procedures (LCPP) states “Sometimes children stay out longer than agreed as a boundary testing activity which is well within the range of normal teenage behaviour. These children have taken ‘unauthorised absence’ and would not usually come within the definition of ‘missing’.” Every London borough is signed up to this policy and private care homes are also bound by it. However some local authorities are more robust in discharging their parental responsibilities than others.

22. There is a requirement, when a child is late returning home, for the carer to take such steps as any parent would be expected to take to locate their child, such as phone them on their mobile, phone their friends, or physically go and look for them where the child is believed to be. There is a concern that private care homes which operate for profit employ the minimum possible number of staff, particularly at night, who either do not have the time, inclination, or capacity to make any parental enquiries. Phoning police immediately a child is late home and reporting them missing when they are, in reality, an unauthorised absence, is abdicating their parental responsibility.

23. Haringey have reduced their overall number of mispers by 56.1% in the last year, achieved largely through ensuring that the local authority fulfils their parental responsibilities. Haringey police found that some care homes had adopted inflexible policies where staff were not permitted to make a judgement on whether a child was missing or not. Haringey police addressed this by hosting multi-agency meetings at the Civic Centre where police were able to illustrate to partners that the LCPP was flexible, allowing unauthorised absence to be recognised and dealt with as such, without police initiating a missing persons investigation; and highlighting the fact that care homes were not absolved of their responsibilities by merely informing police. Haringey police have supported this initiative by holding workshops and providing training for care home staff and management agencies.

Best Practice, Creative Initiatives and Projects

24. Pockets of good practice regarding partnership working exist across the MPS. Havering have monthly meetings with their local Children’s Services to discuss all children reported missing and put strategies in place to prevent children going missing, this could explain their monthly reduction in missing persons reports by an average of 9%.

25. Although the Eclipse project, which was a partnership initiative between police and Barnardos, identifying and working with children at risk of sexual exploitation in Croydon has ended, due to the lack of funding for Barnardos, police and children services are continuing to conduct joint debriefs of children at risk and jointly working to reduce the risk.

26. Lewisham have shown a month on month reduction on reported missing persons by proactively investigating missing persons and having four dedicated officers who carry out all debriefs therefore developing a corporate debrief and a relationship with repeat missing persons this has led to a 23% reduction in reports. On other boroughs debriefs are carried out by operational officers.

27. These aspects of good practice are being shared MPS wide via the Compass internal website and training days to which all borough Missing Person Units are invited.

TP Development

28. The strategic leadership of the MPS remains fully committed to Public Protection as evidenced by the introduction and continuing development of the Anti-Violence Strategy. Despite the rationalisation of resources within TPHQ Community & Customer Service the focus remains very much on ensuring levels of performance are improved and support is provided to boroughs MPS wide in the investigation of missing persons. This is emphasised by the development of data concerning repeat missing persons and of missing persons who have been victims or perpetrators of crime.

C. Other organisational and community implications

Equality and Diversity Impact

1. The incidence of missing person reports affects all communities, ages and genders. An equality impact assessment was carried out when the policy was introduced in 2005 and again when it was reviewed in 2008 and 2010. An annual monitoring report is also compiled to ensure the policy addresses equality and diversity issues. Only 10 complaints against police were made, 6 of which related to lack of policy compliance and 4 related to officer’s behaviour. There was no evidence this impacted adversely on any diverse communities.

2. An equal number of males and females are reported missing and children make up 58% (28363) of the reports. In total 21% of persons who were reported missing had been reported more that once. A disproportionate number of the black community are reported missing (36%) compared to their 12.4% representation of the London population (2001 census) although the number of black youths in the population is 18% and this is the most common age group to be reported missing. The issue was discussed with the independent advisory group and it was recognised that police do not impact on people going missing and there was no evidence of any negative outcome.

3. The new monthly performance report identifies high level repeat missing children which will enable improved partnership problem solving with the objective of reducing the 58% of reports that are for missing children across differing boroughs.

4. The missing person’s policy is applicable to all diversity strands. The policy’s primary object is to locate and safeguard vulnerable people whatever their background. Resource allocation is dependent on the level of risk that they are graded. There is no evidence that the policy has adversely affected any member of the public who fall under any of the Protected Characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.

Consideration of MET Forward

5. Addressing the issues of repeat missing children, through partnership intervention, is intended to impact on reducing crime as many of these individuals are either victims or suspects of crime. Reduction of repeat missing person episodes will free up police time to carry out more preventative work and will increase confidence in policing. There is an element of public protection under the Met Specialist strand of Met Forward as a large amount of the work that is completed is around vulnerable people who are missing particularly children.

Financial Implications

6. An upgrade is required to meet NPIA Codes of Practice regarding exchange of data between Merlin and the NPIA national database for missing persons. However whilst the specifications/costs are established and funds identified, an interim measure has been implemented whereby NPIA staff are being trained in the use of Merlin through the NCALT package at no cost to the MPS and given access to the system from terminals already in place at their premises.

Legal Implications

7. There are no legal implications.

Environmental Implications

8. There are no environmental implications.

Risk Implications

9. At present all High Risk missing persons are reviewed centrally , if any learning is identified this is communicated directly to the borough concerned and where there are wider implications an entry is made on the Compass website and E mailed to all officers in Missing Persons units. It will also be incorporated in the Missing Person SOP if appropriate. Likewise any learning or good practice identified from Reviews eg. Murder or Chapter 8 which impact on missing persons policy or guidance will also be incorporated in to the updated SOP.

D. Background papers

None

E. Contact details

Report author: Detective Inspector Audrey Teodorini, Central Jigsaw, MPS

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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