Lorna Dennison-Wilkins's blog

Our procedures: Dealing with missing people

Recently we’ve had quite a few missing people so I thought it would be relevant to talk about our Police procedures and how we all work together to find a missing person.

When someone goes missing their absence is usually noted by family or friends and the first thing that happens is that a phone call comes into the police contact centre.  A police officer is then dispatched to take a missing person report and they try to find out as much as possible about the person as this will help us find them.  At this point we usually ask the family members if they agree to media coverage should this become necessary at a later point.

The missing person report goes back to the police station and is put onto the computer system, around this time the person is graded as high, medium or low risk depending on their vulnerability.  Examples of the reasons why a risk may increase are; age (young or elderly), or if the person suffers from illnesses like depression, drug dependancy, alcoholism, alzheimers or other issues. The duty Inspector at the particular police station will be in charge of investigating the missing person report but usually the duty sergeant will run the investigaiton and delegate enquiries so it progresses as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.  

If the person is classed as high risk then the Inspector will call out a police search advisor (PolSA), this could be any time of the day or night.  I am a PolSA so am quite used to getting these calls, we’re usually told the reference number and circumstances and then we’ll check that all initial enquiries have been done (like searching the home address and the place where the person went missing from and checking the hospitals and other lines of enquiry) and make a judgement call of whether or not there is an area for us to physically search.  If there is an identified area that could be searched

 I get myself to a police computer and read all of the report and see what enquiries have been done so far.  I then identify the areas that need searching and what resources I’m going to use.  Big members of our search community are the Neighbourhood Watch Search Volunteers, Sussex Search and Rescue and the Lowland Search Dogs, they are highly trained and regulated and I think they are just wonderful.  They are charitable organisations and good people give up their time for free, all for the sake of others -the missing person and their loved ones.  You can read more about our volunteers and a great example of how we all worked together to find a missing man in my previous blog ‘Serving Sussex’ and see videos with some of the Guys talking about what they do in ‘A search in the night’.  Police search trained officers, police dog units and of course the SSU would also be involved in the search.

As PolSA’s we have access to a data set that gives typical behaviour for certain people when they go missing, for example it will tell us how far people in certain categories usually walk and if a person wants to take their own life how they may do this.  We work from this data but we prefer to have personal information about the individual we are looking for, we call this ‘lifestyle’ information. Such information could be areas where the missing person has had happy times or feels comfortable, or friends that they may have in particlualr places, then we may search the routes to these places and the areas themselves.  You can read more about the practical searching of the places in the above mentioned blogs.

Missing person investigations are a real team effort.  The report stays with the sergeant at the local police station and it gets reviewed (at a minimum) at the change of every shift - at least three times a day to see how it’s progressing.  Over time it will have further in depth reviews by the sergeant, the PolSA and the detective inspector for the division.  Every effort goes into trying to find that person and making sure they are safe.  As a result of the investigation you all get familiar with that person and their life and you speak regularly with their loved ones.  A PolSA or search officer will enter their home and search their personal environment in an attempt to try and understand them and we will then direct our search to where we think they may have gone.  

Last week when I was looking for Alan, a missing man from East Sussex I realised that because you find out as much as possible about the lives of the people you are looking for, you then worry about them even though you don’t know them.  That person becomes personalised to you and I find I feel I know them a little.  I wonder each day if they have been found and inevitably the first thing I find myself doing in the morning before I book on duty is to log onto the missing person database to see if they are still missing or not.

If I feel this anguish without even knowing that person I can only imagine how the families and friends suffer and I will always continue to do my best to minimise the pain that the missing person and their loved ones must feel.

Tue 15 May 11:23PM

International relations...

There was some blog silence last week because I was in Hong Kong on holiday.  I have family there so go out as often as I can.  Each time I have visited I have often wondered how the Hong Kong Police cope with the large areas of water and logistics of the industrialisation if they need to dive.

This time around I was lucky enough to speak to Mark - one of the Guys who used to be on our Unit who put me in touch with Sunny who is on a similar Unit to us in Hong Kong.  Mark had been on the same course as Sunny at our police diving school some years ago and they have kept in touch ever since.

I had a few emails with Sunny and then phone calls when we arrived in Hong Kong.  We went to the ‘Special Duties Unit’ Base on Thursday.  Sunny was so hospitable, he showed us around the Base and all the kit and we talked about all the things we had in common even though we were thousands of miles away from each other.

Sunny has ten times the amount of trained divers as us on his Unit but the area they cover is massive, right up to China with so many islands and huge industrial areas.  The kit they use for SCUBA and Surface supply is similar if not the same as ours and I was most envious of his fleet of boats, the largest of which has a top speed of 60 knots and his ‘dipping sonar’ (a tripod with sonar that you drop into the water and it gives a reading of what’s under the water).

My visit reminded me that although we as police divers are under threat in England and Units are being closed all the time due to budget cuts,  we are not alone because there are teams like ours all over the World with people on who love their job and understand what it’s like to work in our environment.

It was such an excellent experience to meet Sunny and comforting to know that his Unit face the same challenges as us and are as dedicated to their difficult tasks as much as we are. 

Wed 9 May 9:46PM

What can you actually see under the water?!

We are always being asked by people what we can see when we go diving.  It’s hard to explain but I’ll try and describe it to you in this blog.  Last week I dived with an underwater camera, my aim was to try and show you what we see in pictures because a video is better than any way that I may be able to explain it. You can see the short video explaining about the underwater camera here:

What we can see varies depending on where you are but mainly we don’t get to see anything and we call this diving in ‘zero vis’.  Most of our police diving is in inland waters; ponds, lakes and rivers where you bump into traffic cones, shopping trolleys, bins and other stuff.  Because of the fact that Sussex is mainly clay soil the water is quite often black to start with, occasionally we may go somewhere where you can see stuff when you first enter the water but as soon as we land on the bottom to begin our search the silt and sediment gets stirred up and that’s it, the rest is in darkness.  When I first joined the Unit I used to try and keep my eyes open when the clouds of silt were billowing around me, as sometimes I might glimpse the odd thing but it really hurts your eyes doing this so it’s best just to shut them and get on with it.  The worst visibility I ever had was the Military Canal in Rye, it was literally pitch black as soon as you went beneath the surface, I searched for and recovered a body that day.  The best I have had was at a quarry in Surrey, I was searching for and recovering a body that day as well, it was strange seeing the body under water and as I brought it up.  (Having just written that last sentance I think it’s strange that the best and worst visibility examples I have had are body recovery jobs….?!)

Another thing that people say is that it must be eerie searching under the water and then suddenly seeing the face of a dead body right in front of your mask, but honestly, you don’t generally see that, you just bump into the body and have to feel it to check it is what you’re looking for and personally I’d rather have it this way than have the lasting image of it in my head.  Of course I see bodies on the surface when we deal with the recovery but that’s a little different and you get used to all of it in time, as gruesome as it sounds. (To learn about how I felt when I dived for my first body you could read ‘My First Body’).

After making the explanatory video I dived using the underwater camera, you can see what I saw here:

My aim was to keep the camera with me throughout my dive but when I got to the bottom and it all went black I decided it wasn’t worth continuing filming. I didn’t want to lose the camera so I turned it off and sent it back up the shot line to the surface so I could continue with my search.  There is distant audio on the underwater camera, you can hear me talking to Critch on the surface through our communications system.

If you have anything you would like to know more about you can always contact me via our Twitter account, Flickr site or via email.  Sometimes I just have an idea in my head of what to blog about but I’m not always sure if it’s that interesting for you.  I enjoy writing to you through my blog though and if you tune in then thank you and I hope you enjoy it too.

Mon 16 Apr 9:29AM

Days in the dog house....

The on call issue is one that has raised it’s head again lately and without the risk of becoming too political it’s because any payments we were given for call outs have been reviewed.  As I have discussed before we have never had on call payment for our work on the SSU.  If we get called we go, but this is because of the goodwill of us as individuals on the Unit rather than an obligation (see ‘About the Unit’ and ‘A Sunday call out’).  If I am on call as a PolSA there is a payment of around £7.50 of ‘on call allowance’ to take home for each 24 hour period that I do.

I touched on the impact that call outs and our general long hours have on the SSU in previous blogs.  We’ve had people leave the SSU because the work on the Unit has had too much impact on their family life and it’s hard to balance the two things at times (see ‘Valuable Advice’).  My family is the most important thing to me but if I can continue to balance the demands of work with my home life then I will.  We still occasionally have an ‘MSD’ on the SSU, an expression from the ‘old days’.  It stands for ‘Marriage Saving Day’ where things have come to crunch point and you just need to take a day off and spend time with your other half otherwise you won’t have one for long.

So from a personal view point what does it mean?  My husband (Jason) works away a lot so I don’t get to see him much.  In May we will have a three week period where we won’t see each other even for 5 minutes, I’m away on a dive course and when I’m back he’s away and vice versa.  We spend a lot of time knowing that each other has been in the house because the kettle is hot, or the bed looks like it’s been slept in.  When he’s on late shift he wakes me up in the early hours when he comes in and I wake him at 6.30AM when I get up, we have weeks at a time when we exist in tiredness on notes and phone calls.  As a result of the fact that we hardly see each other it’s really hard to explain that on your one night or day off together you’re going to leave him alone at home/ in a restaurant/ on the beach and you’re going in to work - even though you don’t really have to.

I remember Christmas 2010 we had been doing long hours on the SSU leading up to Christmas and I was on call PolSA on Boxing day. I was phoned at 5AM to come to work and worked 14 hour days for the next six days, I wasn’t seen at home before New Year.  Jason said in a tounge-in-cheek way “I just wish everyone would just stop dying so we could see each other!” It sounds terrible in retrospect but I can understand why when you don’t know the circumstances of what had happened you would feel the need to lighten the mood. 

Last Thursday I was on call PolSA, I worked until 4.45PM and went home hoping for the best.  I decided to risk going out with Jason as I thought there would be other PolSA’s on duty on a later shift who could handle any calls rather than me being called out but yes - you guessed it, we had just sat down in a restaurant when I got a series of phone calls and had to leave sharply in a taxi, I wasn’t home until 3.30AM the following morning.  Jason is very understanding these days but it’s really hard to explain that you’re going to leave him eating in a restaurant alone on your only opportunity to see each other for the sake of £7.50.

I answer my work phone at home when I’m not on call and come in to work because I care, I care enough to sometimes fall out with my other half and be in the dog house.  It’s not about the money, it’s about helping people at the worst times of their lives, even though they may not even know you are there.  I’ve missed countless family meals, Christmases, nights out and in and other special occasions through being a police officer.  I know it hurts the feelings of those I should be with but if I’m needed elsewhere, some one else’s family, just that one time needs to have the best service that we can possibly give them and that may mean a sacrifice on my part. 

Tue 10 Apr 12:52PM

Our Skills: Swift Water Operations

During the Lewes and Uckfield flooding in 2000 the SSU (as it was then) joined in the operation to assist the Community alongside the Fire Service and other agencies.  It was the first time that the SSU had attended a large scale operation in support of other agencies which dealt largely with rescue as generally we are a recovery team rather than a rescue unit.

Because it is very hazardous dealing with fast flowing water a decision was made that the SSU should be trained and equipped to deal with these types of environments so just as I joined the team in 2007 we became trained in swift water operations.  The course is the same one that our colleagues in the Fire Service and Ambulance HART (Hazardous Area Response Team) teams do, so we can operate and train with them which makes for a much more joined up way of working.

On the Swift water Technicians Course you learn a lot about the dangers and dynamics of fast flowing water.  This has helped with dive and marine operations because you have a better understanding the way that water works. Where you have a point of entry for a person or an object you can predict more accurately where it may end up and target your search accordingly,  this makes the search much more efficient and safer because we may not deploy divers into every area.

In March we did a joint training exercise at Shoreham with Matt from East Sussex Fire Service and the Ambulance HART team led by Daryl. I took a video talking to Daryl to find out more about HART teams which you can see here:

I sometimes feel that there aren’t many people in my own Organisation who understand exactly what it is like to work in the types of environments we work in, but other agencies do understand as they enter into those environments too.  That’s why it is so valuable to maintain those contacts and good relations so that when we are all truly needed by the Community we can give the best service we can possibly offer and be the safest we can be.

Tue 3 Apr 10:42AM

When things are not always as they seem…

(Warning!: This turned out to be a bit graphic in parts so only read on if you’re not squeamish!)

I was driving home from a friend’s house last night with a big pot of stew in the car (don’t ask) and was reminded of a job I once went to in Brighton.  I was on uniform patrol on Marine Parade when a member of the public told me there had been a car accident some way down the road.  I ran down the road to see a vehicle on its roof which was fairly bashed up.  I clearly remember approaching it and looking in the window only to see a substance that I thought was brain matter smeared all over the windows.  No one was more relieved than me to learn that the man who had been driving the car was uninjured on the footpath and the stuff on the windows was a dhal curry he had been carrying in a slow cooker on the back seat.

This memory got me thinking about how as a police officer and in my role as a police diver I sometimes expect to encounter something that turns out not to be what I thought it was and on the reverse side you are constantly provided with surprises which you weren’t expecting and never thought could be possible.

On my dive course in 2007 just before I started diving in the Tyne Docks in the darkness my tutor told us that when we are diving we should keep an open mind as there were over 20,000 missing people in the UK and they all had to be somewhere.  The thought of accidentally coming across a dead body whilst you’re not expecting it wasn’t one that I relished and when I found wellington boots (there were lots of boots down there for some reason) I would have to check there was no one in them which was weird, I can tell you.

As a diver I have particularly found that the anticipation of what you’re looking for sometimes plays tricks on you.  My first dive on a vehicle was an example of this.  I dived in usual SSU visibility (nil) on a car in Littlehampton Harbour.  Obviously we have to check there is nobody inside the car and remove the bodies if there are, so once I had made sure the car was safe I gained access to the driver side window and put my hand in to feel around.  My hand touched something soft and I had a bit of an adrenalin rush until I realised it was an old style Nissan car and I had been touching the headrest.

Other notable SSU surprises:

• Diving on the bottom of the river to look for a body in nil visibility and bumping into the body which is standing up when you thought it would be lying down.  (Depending on what the person was wearing and the rate of decomposition bodies don’t always lie on the bottom, how strange is that?!).
• Finding a large vehicle hidden in some hay.  On a search of a barn with seemingly ‘normal’ hay bales stacked up a ‘hide’ had been made in the middle containing a car.
• Discovering that brain matter doesn’t seem to freeze that easily.  We went to a search where we had to recover brain matter and body parts after a person shot themselves in the head.  It was snowing and a severe frost and it was some time after the event.  I expected the brains and other body parts to be frozen but they weren’t (I wonder why not?!)
• Finding a hidden sealed off area in a barn containing lots of personal and commercial items but also a body that looked to be partly mummified. (How did that happen?).
• Discovering that bodies are actually really light in water (I’m not sure what I expected but as the human body is 70% water I suppose it’s obvious that they should feel light)
• Having searched a bedroom for some time (for a list of small items) Arf opened a drawer under a divan bed and a bloke jumped out and ran away.  He was half way down the stairs before Arf’s surprise subsided enough to go and catch him!

On the SSU you’re constantly hoping to find what you are looking for which helps keep you focussed.  When you don’t find anything you eliminate the search area from the investigation.  When you find random stuff it makes for a good talking point and when you find what you’re looking for there’s no other feeling like it - either way I don’t think you can lose!

Thu 22 Mar 10:24AM

A Sunday morning call out

I wrote this blog about a recent call out but didn’t manage to publish it.  It’s about a deployment we had a few weeks back:

Although we’re not paid to be on call we get called at home if any diving or other specialist jobs come in when we’re off duty.  If we’re available and can accommodate leaving whatever we’re doing at short notice then we report to work.  In the five years I’ve been on the Unit I have never known a time when we haven’t managed to get enough people together from the SSU to make up a dive team, as I have previously discussed it’s a sense of moral duty that drives us and pride that we can serve the community doing what we’re trained to do.

On Sunday I was lounging around at home having had a few measures of single malt the previous night when my mobile phone rang.  It was ‘Ops 1’ our Operations Inspector in the control room who told me that Surrey Police had requested us to come and dive in a lake after a man had gone missing, it was thought that he had gone into the lake as some clothes had been found on the bank.  I took the details and then rang round the Team to see who I could get to come out.  Jonathan was on a 10k ‘fun’ run and Arf was away visiting relatives but everyone else could get away from what they were doing and when I got to the Base with Paul and Rick, Moomin, Critch, Bret and Darran were already there.

We readied the vehicles and set off straight away, it took less than an hour to get to the scene and we were met by Surrey police officers and search and rescue teams from Surrey Fire Service who had been searching for the man since he had been reported missing and his clothes were found by the side of the lake.

As the dive supervisor I found out as much as I could about the circumstances.  It appeared the man had gone into the water to try and save his dog which had gone onto the ice.  I spoke to his close family member who was waiting at the scene and was desperate to know what we could do to help.  It was tragic, I felt so sad to speaking with his family member and hearing him take phone calls from other members of the family. It’s hard enough dealing with the actual job but when it’s personalised by finding out that the person who you have come to look for is a father, husband, brother and son then it makes it more challenging from a psychological point of view.

I discussed with the Fire Service what they had done and what their capabilities were to work with us.  We have the underwater search capability and work as a search and recovery unit but the fire service specialist units tend to work in the same environments as us so they understand the logistical and physical difficulties we encounter and work with us to support us as much as they can.

I chose Rick as the first diver and as he is new to the Unit and needs the experience of difficult jobs like this. Paul was standby diver and I chose an arch search pattern.  I made sure Rick was feeling alright about the task that he was about to undertake because he had not dived for a body before and I felt really nervous before my first time (see my first body).  Rick started diving and as he searched more and more of the area I felt anticipation that at any time he would call on the radio or signal on his lifeline “Five Bells” which would mean that he had found what he was looking for.

Sure enough after 40 minutes of searching in the water Rick called up over the radio.  You sort of get to a point where you’re in tune with stuff on a dive site and when a radio transmission comes up when it’s not expected (for example at the start or end of the jackstay) everyone goes quiet.  “Five bells” Rick reported and although it was sad because Rick had found the body I was relieved that the search was over.

Once we find a body in the water and are sure that life is extinct we search around it and make sure there are no issues to be aware of, then we await instructions from the supervisor and then when appropriate we bring it to the side and put it in a body bag near the surface.  We then recover it to the bank for the coroner, sometimes we search it to try and ascertain the circumstances of how it got to be there and once it is on dry land, has been given over to a police colleague and we have provided a written statement of the circumstances our search task has ended.

After this incident I went to speak to the family of the man and gave them as much information as they wanted about where he had been in the lake and what we had done.  I felt that it was something that they needed from me and I wanted to do whatever I could to help.  I got back to the van somewhat deflated but I made sure I had little time to mull over the sadness of the whole thing as I busied myself assisting Rick with his statement and make sure everyone was alright.

If you’ve read any of my earlier blogs or the small article I wrote about the SSU you will know some of the feelings that come with doing deployments like this.  I won’t dwell on them here, just as I try not to when I go to the jobs…

Wed 14 Mar 4:17PM

Our new set of wheels.

A little while back a memo came out from HQ requesting that we minimise mileage on our vehicles as part of the cost saving measure and to do our bit for the environment.

We have three vehicles on our Unit.  Our dive lorry which contains all our underwater search equipment, our search van and the Landrover which pulls all or trailers and gets us to hard to reach places.  Sometimes if we split the Team and carry out different tasks simultaneously we end up using all of our vehicles on one day although we always try to minimise using them to save resources.

After the request came out I emailed my Boss Inspector Lewis and asked her if it would be possible for us to get a fold up bike so we could use it in conjunction with public transport or on it’s own to get to appointments, the workshops to collect vehicles or to do planning for search operations.

South Downs Bikes who have stores in Storrington and Worthing kindly offered a reduction on a bike as part of a sponsorship deal so the purchase went ahead and the bike arrived some time after that.

My hope is that everyone on the Unit will ride the bike if they would feel comfortable doing so but it’s been met with a bit of scepticism by a few! Bret went on a maiden voyage round the car park and Darren seemed fairly interested on the day it arrived! Time will tell I think!

As for me, I used it on the first possible day.  We were at a diving search in Mid Sussex so I went with the Team and spent the morning at the dive site.   In the afternoon I had to go to a meeting in Hove so I cycled from the dive site to the train station and caught the train to Hove.  I then cycled to the fire station where I had my meeting and afterwards I cycled to the seafront where I jumped on a bus back to the Base.  It couldn’t have been easier and I was where I had to be in less time than it would have taken to drive with less of a carbon footprint and money saved on fuel.

I’m most grateful to South Downs Bikes for the sponsorship and my Boss Inspector Lewis for authorising the request for the bike, it will get lots of use on the SSU and I look forward to more trips on it in the future.

Tue 6 Mar 3:00PM

Suit repairs in a hotel room...

We’re away this week, training in a quarry in Chepstow. Our police diving school has shut down due to cuts so we have to go and do refresher training to stay in licence so we can continue to dive. We are here for a week and I’m writing this from my room in a local hotel in Chepstow. It’s 2218 hours (1018pm in non police talk) and my room smells of glue because Arf and I have just been trying to mend ny dive suit which is leaking like a sieve.

Today has been interesting. We did our dive drills and each dived to just under 18 meters. It’s important that we practice working as a team and also dive to depth. Lots of police diving is less than 10 meters in grotty ponds and rivers so we have to make sure we can dive deeper if the need arises both in a physiological and operational sense. We have got a plan of what we need to achieve each day and once we achieve our targets we move onto the next task. Tomorrow we are diving to 25 meters using our surface supply equipment and then we will move onto wreck penetration in case we would ever have to dive to enter vehicles or vessels, like planes or boats (for example a deployment like the one we saw recently in the Costa Concordia disaster).

It’s full on but a great opportunity to train to the full extent of our capabilities. When we return to Force we’ll be ready to meet whatever challenges come up. As always.

For now though I need to sleep, I will be dreaming of a dive suit that keeps me dry and doesn’t make me cold and wet but I will only know if the repairs have held up as I descend below the surface in the quarry tomorrow.

Good night…

Mon 27 Feb 10:33PM