But Inquest, a charity that campaigns on behalf of the families of people who die in state custody, said that it could become “another review that fails to produce practical recommendations and whose report gathers dust”.
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The probe will involve an “evaluation” of the use of restraint by officers, suicides that take place within 48 hours of being detained in custody, availability of mental healthcare facilities and police awareness of mental health issues.
Home Secretary Theresa May at Brixton Recreation Centre in south London today where she delivered a speech on relationships between the police and the public.
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As in previous years, the IPCC noted, mental health issues and links to drugs or alcohol were “common factors” among many of those who died.
Home Secretary Theresa May, Britain’s interior minister, announced an independent review into the deaths, which she said could destroy the “unwritten contract” between citizens and police. Last year’s total of 11 was the lowest since recording began in 2004/5.
Fourteen of those who died were men and three were women and they were aged between 22 and 57.
Simon Woolley. director of Operation Black Vote, said: “One of the greatest challenges for policing a multicultural society is trust”.
Assistant Chief Constable Jo Farrell said: “This death within our custody is a tragic incident”. This death comes on the same day the IPCC released their annual statistics on deaths during or following police contact.
She confirmed the review will not reopen and reinvestigate past cases.
It will also look at the lead-up to and aftermath of fatalities and serious incidents including support given to bereaved families.
In a speech in 2014 at the conference of the Police Federation which represents rank-and-file officers, May had said that abuses by police officers had damaged the bedrock of British law enforcement – policing by public consent.
She will add that police custody “is the place where risky and hard criminals are rightly locked-up, where officers and staff regularly face violent, threatening and abusive behaviour, and where the police use a few of their most sensitive and coercive powers”.
Ajibola Lewis, whose 23-year-old son Olaseni Lewis died in September 2010 after he was restrained in a southeast London psychiatric hospital, accused authorities of “deep-seated and repeated failures”.
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“There is a clear need for a radical overhaul of how the whole system works following a death in police custody, and I hope that the independent review will address this, as well as the root causes of these avoidable deaths and ensuring accountability for those who fail in their duties to members of the public”.
