Police complaints data since system change shared

The Committee for Home Affairs said Guernsey Police has received 14 complaints since the amendment came into law

An amendment to how police complaints are handled in Guernsey has not led to any being dismissed, the Committee for Home Affairs (CHA) says.

The CHA said since a change to allow complaints to be initially scoped (setting out the scope on how to address the complaint) was made in August, police have received 14 complaints - none of which have been dismissed using the new process.

The committee said two were found to constitute gross misconduct or misconduct, three were assessed as not amounting to misconduct, one complaint had been withdrawn and eight remained in the scoping phase.

It said it had shared the data to reassure islanders the force was not unfairly dismissing complaints.

'Complaints scoped early'

The Amendment Regulation 6A allows the appropriate authority to consider readily-available information at an early stage to inform decision-making.

Deputy Rob Prow, President of the CHA, said: "Regulation 6A was identified as a way to ensure those complaints could be scoped early and, if any serious failings were identified, quickly prioritised."

The regulation only allows an issue to be referred for dismissal if there is reason to conclude the complainant's conduct "did not take place, the complaint is repetitious, an abuse of procedures, or is frivolous or vexatious".

Deputy Simon Vermeulen, Vice-President of the CHA, said the police complaints process should give people a way of raising issues but that "it is also fact of life that sometimes the police engage with people who do not welcome that police involvement".

"Just because that is the case does not always mean the police – who work so hard to protect our community – did something wrong," he added.