Cumbria ‘did not have the opportunity’ to stop Derrick Bird shootings sooner

A Peer Review into the response of Cumbria Constabulary following the Derrick Bird shootings last year has concluded that the force had no opportunity to intervene in the incident, but identified significant national issues relating to police interoperability and the ambulance service.

Details of the independent review, led by Assistant Chief Constable Simon Chesterman, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) lead on the Armed Policing Working Group, were published on March 28 and made a number of observations, including nine recommendations.

Mr Chesterman was called in to carry out the inquiry by Cumbria Chief Constable Craig Mackey.
The report concluded that events of the magnitude of Bird’s shootings are rare and would challenge any police force, regardless of size, and that on this occasion, geography was a major factor.

Bird went on a shooting rampage in which he shot dead 12 people before killing himself on June 2 last year.

It was found that Cumbria Constabulary was able to deploy sufficient resources to deal with the threat posed by the taxi driver and that the overall response was reasonable under the circumstances and police officers did not have the opportunity to stop the gunman any sooner.
However, improvements in interoperability between the police and ambulance services was called for after it was found that the ambulance service felt unable to dispatch ambulances to the scenes in the absence of police protection. This is despite the fact that unarmed police officers and members of the public were at all scenes.

It also reported that it is unlikely any circumstances under which a post-incident review of this size would not expose areas of weakness in the police response and result in recommendations.

A number of weaknesses did come to light including a lack of clarity of command in the early stages of the response and the immediate availability of armed police officers in West Cumbria, but added it was unable to conclude that had these areas of weakness not been present, Bird would have been stopped any sooner.

There were a number of positives to come out of the review including strengths in the response and examples of bravery, innovation and dedication to duty.

The Peer Review team also observed that the local Airwave radio channel was overwhelmed by the radio traffic caused by this incident. This became more acute when armed officers from neighbouring forces deployed to Cumbria as they were unable to access the local channel.

The report called on the force to consider options to ensure that the tactical firearms commander can communicate directly with armed police officers under their command while minimising interference with the incident command channel during more complex incidents.

Mr Chesterman said: “Any review into incidents of this scale is likely to expose lessons to learn and this report provides an opportunity for the police forces and our partner emergency services to review procedures and command structures and learn from the experience of Cumbria Constabulary.

“Through this review, I have highlighted issues which are of national significance such as the national policy of the ambulance service in these circumstances and the way that some forces have implemented and utilised the airwave radio system. These are matters of national importance and this review is an opportunity to improve our collective response to such large scale critical incidents.”

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said the detailed review addressed important issues and agreed with the force’s decision that there was no evidence which would warrant a referral in relation to the police response to the murders.

Deborah Glass, IPCC deputy chair and lead on police use of firearms, said: “This was a comprehensive and wide-ranging review of the police response to a murderous spree on an almost unprecedented scale.

“Cumbria Constabulary’s response has been thor