A man called 999 anonymously to report a man’s body hanging from a tree behind a supermarket and gave the name of a nearby road. In fact, he was planning to hang himself.

There were two outlets of the supermarket near the road the man had given; the one he meant was next to a wood.

A local beat officer agreed to look for the body; however she did not read the log herself and understood from a colleague that she was looking for a man hanging from a bridge. She guessed which outlet of the supermarket the man had meant and went there, but it was the wrong one. Unable to find the body, she reported back to a dispatcher in the control room to say she was giving up.

A second dispatcher radioed her to clarify that she should be looking for a man hanging from a tree.

The beat officer did not reassess the situation in light of the new information, even though she had not checked the other outlet of the supermarket which was near to a wood. Instead, she agreed with the dispatcher that the call was probably a hoax as the man had not given his name, he had rung off, the officer had not found a body and no one else had called the police about it.

Despite categorising a large number of calls as hoaxes, the force had no procedure for deciding whether to identify a call as a hoax. Nor did the dispatchers, who had no experience themselves of people reporting their own suicide in this way, seek the benefit of a supervisor’s advice.

Key questions – for officers/staff:
• As a dispatcher, do you seek advice from a supervisor before recording a call as a hoax, where there is a threat to life?
• As an officer responding to a call, do you reassess your response to an incident when you receive new information?

Key questions – for policy makers/managers:
• Do you have a procedure for identifying hoax calls?

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