PSNI man disciplined for ‘appalling’ probe

A PSNI officer has been punished over an “appalling” investigation into an alleged assault on a teenage girl.

The girl reported that a man whose daughter she had been fighting with had struck her in the face with a golf club during an incident in north Down in late 2014.

However, over a year-anda-half later, by which stage the officer had still not submitted medical records or statements from all witnesses, the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) decided not to take the case further.

A Police Ombudsman investigator said: “We will never know what decision the PPS might have reached if the investigating officer had conducted a full and prompt investigation.”

The girl’s mother, who lodged a complaint with the Police Ombudsman’s Office, headed by Dr Michael Maguire, about the officer’s handling of the case, said the incident had a profound impact on her daughter.

She added that the officer had failed to obtain all relevant evidence and had not responded to her calls or her pleas for him to move the case on.

The woman claimed that at one stage she had arranged for a witness to be at her house so that the officer could take a statement when he was due to call to take a DNA sample from her daughter.

The officer failed to turn up and the girl’s mother claimed she never heard from him.

A Police Ombudsman investigator who examined police records and interviewed the officer identified a number of issues in the handling of the case.

She found the policeman had not applied for the girl’s medical records until 11 months after the alleged incident.

When there was a delay in obtaining them, he had to be reminded by supervisors on three occasions over the next seven months to chase up the query.

Although he tried to submit the golf club for forensic examination within two weeks of the incident, he was asked to provide further information and resubmit the exhibit. He did not do this until a year later.

He also failed to take a statement from the witness identified by the girl’s mother.

The investigator pointed out that forensic tests on the golf club and the independent witness evidence were both vital in the case, given conflicting witness evidence as to whether the golf club had been used during the incident.

She also stressed that the PPS had remarked upon the poor quality of the file submitted by the officer and his slow response to their requests for additional information.

The PSNI has since disciplined the policeman for the failings highlighted by the ombudsman.