Seven police officers have been disciplined following a Police Ombudsman investigation which found significant failings in the way police initially investigated a serious assault which later led to the death of a 70-year-old man in Lisburn in 2010.
Jim Heasley was assaulted at Manor Park in the city on 17 October 2010 and died 12 days later, having never regained consciousness. A 48-year-old man (Man A) later admitted his manslaughter, and was jailed for three years.
While welcoming the fact that the perpetrator was ultimately brought to justice, Police Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire said there had been a series of errors in the crucial first week of the police investigation. These, he said, had prolonged the case and caused undue distress to Mr Heasley’s family.
Police investigation was frustrated by assumptions that Mr Heasley had been knocked down or had fallen.
In particular, he said the police investigation had initially been frustrated by incorrect assumptions that Mr Heasley had been knocked down by a car, or had sustained his injuries in a drunken fall.
The PSNI asked the Police Ombudsman to investigate the initial handling of the case on 25 October 2010, following an internal police review. The review resulted in the case being transferred from uniform police to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and then to a Major Inquiry Team (MIT).
Mr Heasley’s family made a complaint on the same day, having become concerned about a lack of progress.
Police Ombudsman investigators reviewed police records, medical evidence, CCTV footage, police and ambulance radio transmissions, the 999 call from the person who found Mr Heasley, and interviewed civilian and medical witnesses and police officers involved in the case.
Among the failings they discovered during the first week of the police investigation were:
- A failure to trace Mr Heasley’s last known movements, including by checking for all available CCTV footage.
- Inadequate witness enquiries in the area of the attack.
- A failure to forensically examine the scene of the attack - bloodstains had been scrubbed clean by a local resident before a forensic examination took place more than a week later.
- That Mr Heasley’s injuries were not photographed and his clothes were not forensically examined before being returned to a family member, who then disposed of them in the belief they were of no further evidential value to police.
- That uniform police failed to seek advice and guidance from the PSNI’s Criminal Investigation Department, despite not having established how Mr Heasley suffered his injuries, and knowing from an early stage that he was unlikely to recover from them.
Police initially became aware of the attack on Mr Heasley at 3.46am on 17 October 2010 when a nurse at the Lagan Valley Hospital called to report the injuries he had sustained, and asked police to contact his next of kin.
The police call handler overheard the nurse making an “off the cuff” remark to another person that “he could have been knocked down or anything”, and noted on the log that Mr Heasley may have been involved in a road traffic collision.
Dr Maguire said there was never any other evidence to support this suggestion, but the call entry appeared to have fuelled the initial mistaken belief by police that Mr Heasley had been struck by a vehicle.
“This, and a subsequent assumption that he had suffered a fall, meant important lines of enquiry were missed,” said Dr Maguire.
The exact scene of the assault was not established until a full forensic examination was undertaken more than a week later, when blood and hair samples from Mr Heasley were found.
Police also initially failed to ask Mr Heasley’s family about his last known movements and normal daily routine, even though an officer was told within hours of Mr Heasley being found that he had been at the Lagan Valley Pigeon Club earlier that night.
The investigation found that police only learned that Mr Heasley had been involved in an altercation with Man A at the Pigeon Club when Mr Heasley’s brother called to tell them so four days later, having made his own enquiries. He also told them that CCTV footage of the incident was available.
The footage was not seized and viewed by police for another four days – after the case had been transferred to CID/MIT.
Other CCTV footage from Longstone Street - the route taken by Mr Heasley between the Pigeon Club and Manor Park - was secured by police, but it took three viewings before an officer identified Mr Heasley and another man, believed to be Man A, “shadowing” him as he walked along the road.
The officer had initially asked a civilian CCTV operator for footage from the wrong date, and on a second viewing had missed the relevant piece of footage.
Officers involved in the investigation accepted that it was not as thorough or professional as it could have been.
When interviewed by Police Ombudsman investigators, eight officers involved in the initial police investigation all accepted to various degrees that it was not as thorough or professional as it could have been.
Dr Maguire recommended that seven of those officers – including five of supervisory rank - should be disciplined in respect of these failings. The PSNI has since taken disciplinary action against those officers.
He also made a number of recommendations for improvements to police procedures to address issues uncovered by his enquiries.
These included:
- that accurate records be kept of all police requests for non-police CCTV footage,
- that officers in D District (incorporating Lisburn) should be reminded of the correct protocols for referring cases to CID,
- and that procedures be reviewed to ensure reports drawn up by call handling staff include all relevant information for the attention of senior police. He noted the Manor Park incident had not been mentioned in the reports as it was not being treated as a crime – with the result that senior management had been unaware of it for over a week.
The PSNI has since confirmed that it has taken measures to implement each of these recommendations.