Interview: Detectives’ role in supporting families in their darkest hour

Ask detective Alison Hamilton what motivates her and she will recite a simple motto which all Humberside Police officers working with grieving families are encouraged to remember.

“At the very worst time in the lives of a family, the very least we can do is our very best,” she says, but the message does not begin to explain the complex challenge of helping relatives come to terms with the loss of a loved one after a murder, terrorist attack or natural disaster.

Det Sgt Hamilton’s paid responsibility is to manage Humberside’s covert authorities bureau, but it was for her role as a family liaison co-ordinator that she was invited to Clarence House recently to meet the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.

Charles and Camilla wanted to know more about the vital support she and others provide to families in their darkest hour, and she was able to share her experiences of having worked in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Det Sgt Hamilton was among the British officers who travelled to New York after the 9/11 tragedy to help relatives of British victims. She was involved in the response to the Bali bombings in 2004 and played a crucial co-ordinating role after tsunamis hit South East Asia.

When not engaged in operations abroad, she arranges support for families after brutal killings in some of the region’s most deprived areas. And she does it for free, voluntarily, in her own time.

Some officers might find it a burden. Det Sgt Hamilton considers it a privilege, an opportunity to contribute something positive when a family is at its most vulnerable.

It can also be a key process in solving a crime, for relatives often hold vital clues about a victim’s lifestyle and contacts, which can lead detectives to a suspect.

“Family liaison officers are highly-trained investigators,” Det Sgt Hamilton says, “but you wouldn’t think that if you were to look at how they are portrayed on television.

“In a play or a television drama, it tends to be that they’re there to provide the tea and sympathy, arranging child care, perhaps even the washing up, and that is not their role.

“They go into the family and from the very first moment they cross the threshold they are saying ‘I am here as an investigator but I will provide you with the best support and involve the best services to help you at this difficult and traumatic time’.

“They are not there to pick the kids up from school. They are investigating the death of that family’s nearest and dearest.”

Det Sgt Hamilton, an officer with 24 years’ experience, believes families need to be treated with “respect and dignity” and not “kept in the background”.

“There are several occasions where a family has held information that is critical to the direction that the investigation moves in,” she says.

Det Sgt Michael Nicholson agrees. His roles include working with vulnerable witnesses, providing tactical advice on policing prostitution and leading Humberside’s strategy for tracing missing people.

Like Det Sgt Hamilton, he is a family liaison co-ordinator in his spare time, one of eight on the force’s rota.

He remembers working with the mother of a victim from Iraq, “where police are viewed very differently to here”, listening to her concerns and using information provided by her family to find out how her son had died in a fight.

“We had an idea who the offender was and the family at that stage proved absolutely crucial,” he says. “They knew who he was because there had been a falling out and some tension; ultimately, they located exactly where he was.”

The death of a loved one can widen cracks in a family, fault lines which had previously lay dormant after past disagreements.

Murder trials will hear harrowing details of how the victim died, adding to relatives’ pain, and the outcome can be especially hard to bear if it emerges that a fellow family member was the killer.

No two cases are the same, and the detectives must decide which officers to assign to a family, based on their previous experience and expertise.

Fifty family liaison officers are available to help in homicide cases, while a separate department deals with the aftermath of road tragedies.

Choosing the right team members to send is a balancing act, taking into consideration not only the needs of the family but also the impact the case may have on the officers themselves.

For example, officers who have recently given birth or suffered a bereavement are usually spared child death cases, inquiries which Det Sgt Hamilton finds particularly distressing.

“You tend to personalise things,” she says. “I think it’s because I’m a mother myself, but I know others don’t feel the same degree of emotional attachment.

“I worked for a number of years in child protection but I would find it very difficult to go back into that arena having had children myself.”

For Det Sgt Nicholson, also a parent, the death of a teenager is hardest to handle, “the 15 to 19-year-old lads who are just at the start of their adult lives, and then suddenly it’s gone”.

“My youngest child is 18,” he adds, “and I think ‘there but for the grace of God...’”

Officers must also protect their own relatives from the pain and suffering they encounter at work.

“I have dealt with things that are quite horrendous, perhaps, for members of the public,” Det Sgt Hamilton says, “but my family don’t deserve to have me in a dysfunctional state so I don’t deliver that to them.

“When I was in New York there was an incident which an NYPD officer told me about. It upset me and it caused me a lot of distress.

“I realised that by passing information on to people you can distress another party.”

Det Sgt Hamilton was in New York after 9/11 to liaise with US officers and meet families arriving from the UK, many of whom had brought DNA samples to help identify their loved ones.

“We were working long hours in quite difficult circumstances because of the level of threat and the potential recurrence of terrorist activity,” she says, “but in many ways the work was little different to what we have here.

“Everybody did the absolute best they could. They provided the services they could at that time and I think a lot of UK families benefited from that.”