Complex Decision Making Within Policing.

On 15 April 1989, David Duckenfield went to work. He was a recently promoted Chief Superintendent, one of the highest ranks in British policing. Attainment of that sort of position takes many years, and throughout the journey, many different experiences are had, and are learned from. One experience Duckenfield hadn’t had, was that of modern training on how to command a sell-out football match.

By the end of that day, 94 people had died and 766 had been injured at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Another three would later succumb to their injuries. It was an unimaginable tragedy, played out live on the nation’s television sets and remains the worst disaster in the British sporting calendar. What followed was thirty years of inquests, inquiries and eventually a trial of Duckenfield for Manslaughter. Duckenfield retired from the service in 1991 but spent the next 28 years under intense scrutiny. It wasn’t until he was found ‘not guilty’ at a second trial after the first jury failed to reach a verdict, that the now 74-year-old could be reasonably sure he wasn’t going to be imprisoned for what happened on that day.

On 22 July 2005, Cressida Dick went to work. She held the rank of Commander in the Metropolitan Police Service. Commander is a rank unique to ‘The Met’, reflecting its scope and scale of over 30,000 police officers. It is a rank above Chief Superintendent, and those that hold it are often set for promotion to Chief Officer positions. On 22 July, Dick was operating as Gold Commander in the aftermath of the London Bombings of 7 July 2005, which claimed the lives of 56 people. She was leading the operation to track down further suspects at a time of huge national tensions. The scope and scale of the attacks had caught the United Kingdom on the back foot, having experienced nothing of this magnitude even during the protracted ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, which had brought overt terrorism directly to the streets of England as part of the IRA campaign. Part of that operation involved the deployment of armed surveillance teams.

Police operations of this type are complex, fast-moving and multi-dimensional. The flow of information and intelligence is relentless, and critical decisions must be made rapidly. On this day, the operation directly under Dick’s command resulted in the death of Jean Charles De Menenez. He was shot by specialist armed officers, in the carriage of a train at Stockwell Tube Station. Within just a few hours, it was apparent that De Menenez was in fact just a Brazilian national who had overstayed his visa. He was a totally innocent, unconnected victim. 

It will come as no surprise that the incident has been the subject of thousands of column inches, inquiries, inquests and debates – just like Hillsborough. Both incidents were a consequence of decisions taken in rapidly developing situations. But that is where the similarities end. David Duckenfield spent nearly as long as he had served in the police awaiting an outcome. In stark contrast, Cressida Dick’s life took a very different direction. She was exonerated of any personal blame within a short period of time. Soon after she was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner and completed her service as an Assistant Commissioner in 2015. Then, in 2017, she re-joined policing as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – the highest office in the UK police service.

In both these tragic cases, lives were lost as agents of the state did their jobs. Subsequent investigations – the gift of hindsight we all have, identified errors and omissions in both the operations on the day and the subsequent actions. But why should there be two very different outcomes for those where the buck stopped well and truly outside their door? The answer lies in two discrete areas; practice at the time, and writing things down. In 1989, policing was a much less sophisticated animal. Decisions would be made, with little recorded by way of deep rationale. Things just tended to happen, with very little evidence base. There was also a general acceptance that if you wore rank, you knew what you were doing. This was despite a service which in reality provided very little in the way of effective command and leadership development.

 Record-keeping was also ‘sketchy’. It was a starkly different control room in which Cressida Dick operated sixteen years later. A loggist diligently wrote down every decision that was being made and the commanders would make their decisions against a cyclical model, setting out a clear rationale for each action taken. The difference is clear; Dick was, by submission of her command logs, and being able to refer to them at subsequent hearings, able to recall and articulate what led her to a particular decision. Only by the lack of sophistication at the time, was Duckenfield denied that safety net.

 There is, of course, one other differentiator; Dick was trained to command. Duckenfield wasn’t. Operational competence is a significant factor in freeing up cerebral capacity. Had there been a trained match commander in place at Hillsborough, the outcome that day may well have been different. Conversely, training and competence still led to a loss of life at Stockwell. The difference was the depth to which the decision-making that led to it could be fleshed out with detail. That only comes with training and competence.

Both of these brief case studies tease out some important key points within decision-making;

 Competence /Practice/Stuff can go “wrong” even if it isn’t “wrong/ If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen 

The content as above is an extract from my book, “The Decision Paradigm”, published by Austin Macauley. Quality decision making is a critically important skill, and one I developed over a long career, lately as a senior investigator, and armed policing commander. It’s a skill many of us can be better at, and my book shows you how.

Derek Flint: Eyes on Crime Contributor.