West Mercia Police must do more to protect children, says report
Children who are victims of crime and abuse are still not being dealt with effectively enough by West Mercia Police, a report released today said.
"Significant delays" in the examination of computer and electronic devices by police in the force are undermining child sex investigations, the report released today by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary reveals.
Inspectors say it took officers five months to analyse devices seized from a 41-year-old man who had been arrested for the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl.
In another case, eight months after police became aware of a 16-year-old autistic girl's relationship with a 47-year-old man on Facebook, she had still not been interviewed or had her computer or phone analysed. No safeguarding measures were put in place to protect her, the report said.
But the report praises police for making improvements in some areas since the original report in November 2014, where it was ordered to take urgent action in a number of areas.
However, there is still work to do, it says.
Child protection is priority, say Shropshire police chiefs
Police chiefs have welcomed the report, and accepted its findings.
Today's report is a follow-up to an original review carried out at the end of 2014. It says at the time of the review there were 150 computers sitting waiting to be analysed by officers.
West Mercia Police is now outsourcing some of the work in a bid to clear the backlog.
"Long delays occurred in an investigation into a 16-year-old autistic girl's relationship with a 47-year-old man on Facebook," the report said.
"Eight months after this had come to the force's attention, she had not been interviewed or her computer and phone analysed.
"During that time, no safeguarding measures had been put in place. There had been no improvement since our initial inspection in the delays incurred in the analysis of computers. At the time of the review, the force had 150 computers awaiting analysis, compared to 142 computers in November 2014, with the longest having waited five months.
"West Mercia Police was addressing this through the deployment of additional staff and had recently outsourced some of the work to reduce the backlog and process cases more quickly. However, in the meantime, investigations were significantly delayed.
"In one case, this involved a five-month delay in analysing devices seized from a 41-year-old alleged offender who had been arrested for the rape of a 15-year-old girl."
Inspectors in the original report found that nearly half of around 70 child protection cases they looked at were handled inadequately. In the follow-up, it looked closely at cases of child sex exploitation.
HMIC examined seven cases relating to children who were said to be at "high risk" of sexual exploitation. The force's approach was considered "good" in less than half, with their work praised in only three cases. It was found to "require improvement" in two, and "inadequate" in the other two.
The force was praised for the "significant achievement" of clearing a backlog of more than 200 domestic abuse cases waiting to be investigated at the time of the original report in 2014.
The follow-up report said there was now no backlog at all, and cases in the main were being looked at within 24 hours after coming in.
