Home Secretary orders inquiry into police custody deaths

An independent review into deaths and serious incidents in police custody will be launched later today by Home Secretary Theresa May.

The investigation will focus on restraint methods used by police, how incidents are investigated and the support provided to bereaved families. It will also examine how to provide alternative places for people with mental health problems and how to prevent suicides in police custody.

The inquiry follows ongoing criticism of the police complaint watchdog for its handling of fatalities in police custody, the BBC reports.

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A 2013 review concluded that the Independent Police Complaints Commission failed to fully investigate the death of Sean Rigg, a mentally ill man detained at Brixton police station in 2008.

His sister Marcia Rigg-Samuel said the review had been "a long time coming". She hoped it would bring real change and improve accountability.

The home secretary says she has been “struck by the pain and suffering of families still looking for answers, who have encountered not compassion and redress from the authorities, but what they feel as evasiveness and obstruction."

But May also spoke of the frustration felt by police officers and staff, "whose mission it is to help people but whose training and procedures can end up causing bureaucracy and delay."

She will insist that the experience of families of those who have died in custody and victims of other serious incidents will be "at the heart of" the review.

However, the family of one man who died in police custody in 2010 expressed their anger at not being involved in the process leading up to the inquiry.

Ajibola Lewis, the mother of Olaseni Lewis, who died after prolonged restraint by police, told The Guardian: "We are surprised that the proposed review, its purpose and its scope is being announced without any prior consultation with us or other families in our position."

Deborah Coles, from the charity Inquest, which provides advice to people bereaved by a death in custody, told the BBC it was "too early to tell" if the inquiry was more of a public relations exercise, or a genuine attempt to bring about change.

"For the review to be effective bereaved families, their lawyers and Inquest will need to play an integral role in the review, and the reviewer will need to take full account of their views and experiences," she said.