Police criticised over slow response on suicidal soldier

POLICE took more than four hours to arrive at the home of a Yorkshire soldier who was later found hanged despite assuring his relatives their concerns for his welfare were being treated as a "priority", the police watchdog has found.

West Yorkshire Police's response to 999 calls about Hugh Cunningham was "not the best it could be", an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) concluded.

Mr Cunningham, 29, was found dead at his home in Bowling Hall Road, Bradford, on August 20 last year. A coroner ruled last month that he had committed suicide.

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The police force said it had experienced a "particularly busy night" when the calls were made, dealing with serious incidents including an outbreak of public disorder believed to have involved guns.

The IPCC found, however, that the force had enough officers but there was "no supervision to ensure resources were identified, deployed and controlled in a timely manner".

Mr Cunningham's sister contacted the police at 9.33pm on August 19 after reading a message he had left on the website Facebook, which suggested he might harm himself. She had called him on the telephone, but his response was incoherent.

She suggested an address where her brother might be but, when officers attended, they found it was the wrong place.

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Police received another 999 call at 12.27am from Mr Cunningham's friend, who had seen the message and gone to his house but had received no answer when he knocked on the door.

He said he was going to force entry into the house, but the call-handler told him not to and said the call would be graded as needing a priority response – meaning an officer would attend within an hour.

Mr Cunningham's friend waited outside the house until 3am, before deciding to go home. A minute later, Mr Cunningham's other sister called police to express her concerns.

At 3.06am an officer was sent to Mr Cunningham's home, but while en route he was diverted to deal with a public order incident reported to involve firearms.

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Another officer was sent at 4.47am but she was unable to gain entry to the house and was diverted to deal with another incident at 5.10am.

Police did not force entry to the house until 10.05am, when Mr Cunningham's body was found.

IPCC Commissioner Nicholas Long said "Our investigation has shown that West Yorkshire Police's response was not the best it could be, but the individual decision making of staff was understandable given the information at their disposal."

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "A new post has been created to ensure calls are graded correctly and responded to, however, as the report concludes, there is no evidence to suggest that a more timely police response would have led to a different outcome."