The route taken by policemen to McDonald’s instead of answering 999 call

It was all very surreal. My first visit to a Metropolitan Police disciplinary hearing. In the dock two police constables facing potentially instant dismissal. Their error reduced to a misjudgement – was to go to get a cup of tea at McDonald’s before answering a code S alert to a woman at risk of suicide.

The outcome of the misconduct hearing has already been reported on. PC Gavin Bateman and PC Tony Stephenson were given final written warnings after their plea of guilty to misconduct –“a poor decision made in good faith” – was accepted by “the panel” led by an independent chair. But that everyone is only the half of it. The entire process was a farce and an affront to open justice.

I had expected the hearing to be similar to that of a court or a public tribunal. But it was anything but that. The actual proceedings took place on the 14th floor of a large office block in West London. But myself and other journalists were not allowed in.

We were escorted to annex outside the perimeter of the building itself, seated in a room where all the windows were draped with thick black curtains like a small cinema. On the wall were two large flatscreen TVs – one to see court from the back the other from the front.

On one screen I could see nine empty chairs at the back of the room. Why couldn’t we view proceedings from there I thought. There was no one to ask – only an ever present security guard to enforce the rules of no mobile phones and no laptops. There were cameras filming us too, she said.

On the 14th floor the panel and the parties all had microphones only some were muffled so parts of the dialogue were unclear. At one point the picture and sound cut out completely. The ever-present security guard knew the solution presumably from experience. She slammed the door next to the screens and lo and behold we were back online. Who knows what we missed.

I have taken time to set the scene because amid this rather farcical state of affairs a very serious case was unfolding where so much of the detail was omitted. The facts had been agreed. There were no witnesses. The two officers declined to give evidence. There were just submissions by both sides.

On the night of 15 April 2015 the two PCs were in their car when they answered an emergency call. They were told that 22-year-old Fahima Begum was in “significant danger” of harming herself or others and was not answering the front door.

It was not a code I (immediate) but graded S ‘significant’. According to procedures that meant the two had up to 60 minutes to get there.

At no point in the hearing was it stated where they were when they got the call or the route they took. I had to find that out from another source.

The call came in as they were parked near the Travelodge on A13 four minutes away from the woman’s home. But instead they drove past her road and headed away to McDonald’s for a cup of tea.

They then drove back passed her road again and parked at the roundabout again only four minutes away. There they sat drinking tea before eventually arriving at the address 37 minutes after telling control they were on their way.

The woman was dead. She was dead before her friend had even made the 999 call. There was nothing the two officers could have done in the end. But what irks me is that they could not have known that at the time.

One said he thought they’d been asked to carry out a welfare check. The lawyer for the other described the McDonald’s detour as “an ugly detail.”

There was no family present, no one to be outraged at the decision to allow the officers to keep their jobs. So the case slips into the shadows. But what would have happened if she had died during that 37 minute delay? What then would have been the consequences for the two officers?

I am left troubled that the verdict rested to some extent on the outcome. All the details are in the investigation report by the IPCC. But it’s not published yet. So much remains hidden. And that is the worrying part about the whole process of making these hearings public so as to be transparent. In this case everything most certainly was not.