*Trigger Warning*
Chanelle Sasha Jones was stabbed to death by her father, Gary Fisher*, in the passenger seat of his car on August 2nd 2009. Quite rightly Fisher is now serving a life sentence for Sasha’s murder.
On Monday of this week however, the IPCC reported the results of its investigation into Dyfed-Powys Police’s handling of the case. And while the police were found to have “acted correctly in how it searched for 17-year-old Chanelle SASHA Jones after she was reported missing on 2 August 2009”, the IPCC press release also has this to say:
“The IPCC investigation also looked into previous contact the force had with Fisher as Sasha’s mother had previously contacted the police on 102 occasions. The investigation found that four officers had not taken appropriate action in dealing with some of her numerous reports of concerns to the force.
The four police constables will be subject of management intervention for the way they dealt with some of these reports.”
The press release goes on:
“IPCC Commissioner for Wales Tom Davies said: I would like to offer my condolences to Sasha’s family and friends for their tragic loss. Our investigation found that the police acted correctly in how they responded to the report from Sasha’s mother that she was missing. As the apparent threat grew the police acted accordingly and managed to trace and stop Fisher’s car.
Unfortunately, Sasha was already dead and it is likely that she had already been murdered when her mother called the police.
The many times that the force dealt with Sasha’s mother with previous interactions were not all carried out in accordance with best practice and policy for dealing with reports of possible domestic abuse.
This is one of those cases where the force was called out on numerous occasions and there was a tendency for some officers to characterise some of Sasha’s mother’s concerns and allegations as her ‘tending to over-react.’”
Yep, you read that right. A mother contacted the police on 102 separate occasions to raise concerns about her daughter’s safety while in her ex-husband’s care, and the police dismissed her because they decided in their infinite wisdom that her calls were nothing more than an indication of her “tending to over-react.”
And now Jane Jones’s daughter is dead. The daughter whose safety she was so concerned about she rang the police 102 different times.
I wonder what “management intervention” the four constables are going to be subjected to…
*For those not familiar with this case – when Fisher was arrested he claimed he had killed Sasha “to end her suffering,” following her rape by a local man a few years previously. Fisher tried to make out that he brutally murdered his daughter as an act of compassion, but thankfully the jury saw straight through that heartless, unmitigated shite.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Sadly this is not an isolated incident. Time and time again the IPCC are brought in after the “tragic and unpredictable death” of a DV victim. In fact, if the Police had intervened properly (ie believed the victim) in the many prior call-outs, then the death(s) could have been avoided. Just as in this case.
102 complaints – FFS.
And with each dismissed complaint, the perp just gets bolder and more confident. Chances are very high that the situation will end in death or very serious injury.
More than just four officers need “management intervention” in this. Every single officer that attended or dismissed all of the 102 complaints is obviously in dire need of DV training.
Yet more male excuses and denials because of course women are all innate liars are we not? Or else we ‘over react when a violent male threatens our life or the life of a female relative/friend.’
The issue of misogyny is what caused this young woman’s death because men refuse to accept so-called ‘respectable men’ do commit violence in all its forms against women and girls and that the most common form of male violence against women and girls is perpetrated by men who are known to the female victims.
This is why we all live in a male supremacist system because only men are accorded rights and women have to rely on one or two male police officers actually listening to the female caller and acting – instead of dismissing her as ‘hysterical!’ Remember Jane Jones, mother of Sasha, contacted the police not once, not twice but 102 times concerning woman murderer Gary Fisher.
The police and Gary Fisher are jointly accountable for yet another femicide and no excuses, no management intervention will bring back another female victim of men’s violence. Not until such time as there is a huge change in male behaviour and male beliefs that women are unreliable and non-credible will we even begin to tackle the global issue of everyday, mundane male violence and male domination over all women and girls.
No doubt some of the officers made mistakes, and I don’t want to be seen as defending them, but it must be massively difficult being a frontline officer in such a case. Not excusing them at all, but, given the prevalence of domestic violence, what’s desperately needed, aside from after the fact “management intervention” (an awfully depressing term in this context) is a strategy on intervention that works, an acknowledgement of the seriousness of DV as a crime, and, most importantly of all, a shitload more resources to deal with it.
Oh FFS. Not anything more articulate I can think of to say really.
I guess that you’ve been spared the humiliation of being a survivor in a ‘frontline’ Domestic Violence situation then damage Door? Where some of us here have actually experienced the glaringly obvious inadequacy of attending officers in DV situations.
Alice –
My point is just that, due to DV not being taken as seriously as it should be, being as widespread as it is, and a lack of resources to deal with it, it might sometimes be difficult for attending officers to do much more than be ‘obviously inadequate’. And that’s wrong and needs addressing. It’s not just a case of educating officers, is it? It needs strategies, and it needs money.
And look, you have no idea about me or what I might have gone through. It’s not relevant anyway.
I think what’s being objected to here though damagedoor is the stereotyping of ‘hysterical woman’ that’s being implied by ‘tendency to over react’. I realise resources are limited, but making snap (and sexist) judgements is the problem, not the limitations of the service.
Things have improved a lot in my neck of the woods recently WRT to DV,
There is however still clearly some way to go. And the rest of us have to do our jobs competently with stretched resources, so the police should shape up.
From the report
This is one of those cases where the force was called out on numerous occasions and there was a tendency for some officers to characterise some of Sasha’s mother’s concerns and allegations as her ‘tending to over-react.’
In fact one of the police constables dealing with these reports did act but even though Fisher’s police national computer record showed he was wanted for an serious assault elsewhere the officer did fail to act on that information.
There is no suggestion that these individual errors had any impact on Fisher’s later actions when he murdered Sasha. However, domestic abuse is a difficult area for the police service and it is imperative that officers take allegations seriously and properly record and act on intelligence reports.
Now obviously they didn’t make him murder her, but if she’d been found earlier she could have still been alive. And even if they did think the mother was ‘over reacting’ shouldn’t the fact he was already wanted for a serious assault elsewhere have led to action?
“And look, you have no idea about me or what I might have gone through. It’s not relevant anyway.”
Then why mention it? in a passive aggressive sort of way – that is.
Polly – absolutely, the ‘wanted for assault’ aspect seemed an especially glaring error when I read the report, and I can see the ‘hysterical woman’ stereotype is present and objectionable. I’m just thinking that, as things stand, maybe there was a limited amount (many of) the attending officers were capable of doing. You know better than me, but how many DV calls do the police take? It must be more than, as things stand, they can afford to pay the necessary attention to? It almost necessitates snap judgements.
Alice – maybe I just imagined it would make you think for a moment about how you say unpleasant things to some people you wouldn’t dream of saying to others.
When it comes to male on female violence, I don’t need to think for even one moment – within the context of this post.
And: stop patronising me.
Where some of us here have actually experienced the glaringly obvious inadequacy of attending officers in DV situations.
Seconded!
when this happens in south asian communities, it gets called an “honour “killing.
Actually, the police generally have a lot (or at least a reasonable amount) of resources and training for DV.
They are actually quite good at the roaring to the scene with sirens blaring, aggressively demanding entry to the building – that part they have down pat.
Then all the DV training in the world seems to evaporate from their heads, as their inherent sexism kicks back in. They start to make stuff up in their heads like “they are abusing each other” or “hysterical woman over-reacting”. And their reports of the scene reflect that, but translated into police-speak. It’s only when confronted with the dead body of a woman they cannot default to these sexist excuses, and might actually have to admit that the dude was an abusive asshole. (I will mention at this point that not all of the police are sexist, but the majority really are.)
You see, the police have the same problem as potential rape victims – it is very hard to tell who are the rapists or abusers because the majority of them look like “normal guys”.
As soon as you get the “looks like a normal guy” out of your head, and focus on behaviours and attitudes, then it is actually relatively easy to “see” who are the abusers and rapists, most of them anyway. “Hysterical” usually indicates a very scared victim btw, it is quite hard to fake “hysterical”. Unfortunately, “hysterical” women are rarely listened to, even in these situations. They are usually deemed to be “over-reacting”.
If I recall this case correctly, this dude after murdering his daughter drove past her mother’s house with her dead body in the car.
The mother obviously knew that this guy was very dangerous and most certainly was not over-reacting. 102 calls of “over-reacting”? I maintain my stance that each and every single officer that attended those 102 calls contributed to the death of this young woman, even if they personally did not kill her themselves, they certainly did nothing to stop it escalating. They did help it along in fact.
FAB Libber
I agree.
FAB Libber
I maintain my stance that each and every single officer that attended those 102 calls contributed to the death of this young woman, even if they personally did not kill her themselves, they certainly did nothing to stop it escalating. They did help it along in fact.
I agree
I agree too.
What should those 102 officers have each done differently that the law as it stands would allow them to? Beyond the obvious errors in 4 cases, what could they have each individually done when faced with two conflicting witnesses?
Hi Damagedoor
I think the fact that Fisher had a violent past which went back to the age of 17.
It included a knife attack, a hammer attack and the killing of a cat and the removal of its head to intimidate a female victim was clearly ignored by police. Surely they should, at the very least, checked his record and seen his previous convictions. Those convictions should have at least have made police take the mothers concerns more seriously, realised that Fisher had the capacity to be violent and interventions were needed.
Hi Msvirago –
I totally agree in principle, but I’m still not sure how much difference it would make to the officers dealing with the enquiries in terms of what they were able to do. Clearly, errors were made – the one Polly mentions, most obviously. But in the other cases, if you were an officer, called to a domestic situation where you have Fisher’s wife saying one thing and him saying the opposite, then, in the absence of additional witnesses/evidence, there might be nothing you’re capable of doing, no matter where your sympathies might lie and no matter how many times the situation repeats. Could you remove Fisher from his home? (Legally, I mean, not morally). Why not her instead, if he claimed she was making it up and wasting police time? I’m not sure spent convictions would be enough. If it couldn’t be proved he’d committed a crime or was a danger, what could the police have done as the law stands?
If the answer is you should believe women, then I totally agree with you in principle. But the law isn’t set up that way, is it? So all I’m saying is it’s not necessarily fair to blame the officers in question – there might have been nothing they could have done, however much they wanted to.
Hi damagedoor
My understanding is that Fisher and Jones had split up years before, and that Fisher had only become reacquainted with his children 5 years ago.
The family home wasn’t his home. The mother’s (numerous) contacts with the police were in reference to her concerns for the children’s welfare when they were in their father’s care.
Perhaps he should only have been permitted supervised access…..
“The family home wasn’t his home. The mother’s (numerous) contacts with the police were in reference to her concerns for the children’s welfare when they were in their father’s care.
Perhaps he should only have been permitted supervised access…..”
This has nothing to do with child contact. She was 17. They were both adults. There would have been no order in place and they would only have been in touch due to mutual consent.
Hi Cath
I’m sorry, you’re quite right: my comments were more generic, in reply to others. And I totally agree about access (in hindsight, perhaps there should have been none at all, but, given his previous crimes, it should certainly have been supervised). Isn’t it a bit unfair to blame the police for that, though? The 102 officers in the calls, I mean. There’s not much they could do to stop Fisher seeing his children without the existence of a court order, which would presumably require corroborating evidence for Jones’s concerns.
He’s responsible – the absolute bastard – and, while the police made mistakes, it seems a bit harsh to say all the officers who took the calls are partly responsible for her murder.
Thanks for the clarification james.
damagedoor – You’re right, there’s only one person responsible for Sasha’s murder, and that’s Fisher. The police however were negligent. Had they acted appropriately and responded to Jane Jones instead of writing her off as yet another hysterical woman with a tendency to over-react they could have prevented this from happenening. They have to bear some responsibility for the role they played (or failed to play) in this.
The IPCC release ends with:
I’ll keep an eye out for the report and post something about it when it’s made public.
In some (admittedly exceptional) cases though James, residency orders can be extended to the age of 18. Though they usually expire at 16.
http://www.sfla.co.uk/ageandresidence.htm
Also it depends what you mean by ‘responsible’. The police, if they WERE sufficiently negligent, may have a civil action taken against them (not in this case, but in others). So they are legally responsible.
http://www.communitylegaladvice.org.uk/bn/legalhelp/leaflet11_5.jsp
Could you remove Fisher from his home? (Legally, I mean, not morally).
Well ignoring the fact that it wasn’t in fact his home, yes you can. First of all, if he is under suspicion of committing an arrestable offence, he can be arrested (which removes him immediately). And then you can get an injunction excluding him fairly quickly.
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-survivors-handbook.asp?section=000100010008000100330002
After arrest, the police can attach bail conditions which are similar to the non-molestation injunction (no contact with victim etc) and the conditions usually have the power of arrest attached to them. The bail conditions are rendered finished at the court appearance, and to continue to get non-molestation protection, the victim would probably need to get the separate injuction if the perpetrator was not incarcerated (they usually aren’t incarcerated).
To clarify, as damagedoor seems to have a bit of difficulty with mathematics, 102 complaints does not mean 102 officers involved. It was probably something like 30-40 officers from the same regional police station directly and perhaps indirectly involved on numerous times over many years. I am guessing at the number of police involved, and use the figure only for illustrative purposes.
I am not sure what the situation is in Wales, but in England, I believe that most police forces are now expected to reason or justify why they did NOT make an arrest at a DV callout. The “he says, she says, omg it is sooo hard to figure out what happened with conflicting stories” is not an excuse – after all, the cops are used to dealing with conflicting stories in other situations, and they usually manage to figure it out and arrest someone.
This situation is particularly bad, because it was the mother who was worried about her children (not primarily her as the victim). The safety of children is supposed to be very high on the police responsibility list, so to keep dismissing this woman’s concerns, and not recommend or work with other agencies, seems quite amiss. Given the perp’s history of violence, it was surely not too far fetched to organise supervised visitation? Particularly as these days, children are becoming the main target of abusive partners, and are getting murdered more often in the ultimate power play to punish the victim.
FAB Libber –
You’re right, of course. It’s not a problem with my maths, just my semantics, but cheers for the dig.
The thing I’m getting at is that we don’t know what options were open to the officers attending the calls, because we don’t know the nature and content of the calls (yet). You’re totally right with everything you say, so thanks, honestly, for the information (and also to Polly). But I’m still unsure, not least because most of what you cite is applicable to partners rather than dependents.
It really does depend on the content of the calls, the evidence for additional crimes, and so on. To stop Fisher seeing his kids would have required an injunction. If the police were negligent (and in at least one case cited they clearly were), then that’s one thing. But without an actual conviction, provable in a court of law, could the police answering those calls have done anything themselves to prevent Fisher seeing his children? We don’t know what Jones was reporting – concerns, crimes that should have been investigated but weren’t – so we don’t know.
What I’m saying is that “every single officer that attended those 102 calls contributed to the death of this young woman” is, in the circumstances, enormously harsh. That’s a massive accusation to make. Each of those officers might personally have wanted to lock Fisher in a safe and sink him to the bottom of the ocean, but just had no obvious options open. The police, in and of themselves, off their own bat, can’t stop a man seeing his kids.
The IPCC is hopeless, I wonder why people bother. I’m surprised more people don’t sue, I thought they had some kind of public body immunity but if not, it’d be more productive than the IPCC. Cost would stop most but ‘no win no fee’ deals are allowed with lawyers now for a lot of claims. The courts would cut the police a lot of slack, I bet, but they couldnt be as bad as the IPCC.
Cath, I was talking to you the other day on that moderation thread on CiF about the small number of women posting there. I sent the readers editor the data I put together on it. Do you want to see it? The contact email you give here seems to be bust so if you do, you’d better let me know another one.
Hi Angie. Yes I’d love to see the data you put together. The contact email isn’t bust, you just need to remove the square brackets round the @ and get rid of the gaps. I was advised to do that because I was getting so much automated spam sent to it.
Cath, I was talking to you the other day on that moderation thread on CiF about the small number of women posting there. I sent the readers editor the data I put together on it. Do you want to see it?
One reason that women comment in such a minority over at CiF is that for every woman commenting, there are 20 misogynists that pile on top. Most of the misogynist comments are allowed to stand. I gave up commenting there years ago. I hate discussing anything with males now, sick of their tactics like exceptionalism, wilful misunderstanding (aka playing dumb), and the list goes on.
FAB Libber
That is exactly the point I am trying to make to them. The Guardian isn’t the Daily Mail, they shouldn’t be tolerating it if it drives women from CiF, which, as you say, it does.
Particularly on the feminism-related articles, it’s as if the MRAs are on 24-7 defcon-1 full alert as soon as any female posts anything.
Not only myself, but many other females that I know do not bother to comment there any more due to the hostility. Even if the MRA posts are civil, they use every dishonest tactic in the book to try to discredit female comments. It just gets old.
Yes, that’s my view entirely. When you get behind the anonymity, and you can so far as to establish gender, usually, men outnumber women by 3 to 1 and those that are hostile to women use their strength in numbers to set the tone and ensure the problem just keeps getting worse. I sent the analysis I did to the Guardian but I’m not confident they’ll do anything about it. It’s not been exactly a hidden problem. I think they need to be made accountable for it. All the time opposition manifests as absence they can and have ignored it.
I was not really sure where to post this article, because it does relate to several of the threads – police dismissing (then potential) victim as fantasy, police then wanted to charge the victim with smashing a window, which she did in order to escape the first murder attempt. A few weeks after this she was murdered by several male members of her family in a so-called ‘honour’ killing, because they disapproved of her boyfriend.
Time and time again the police dismiss women as ‘over reacting’ when they report that they fear for their lives, and most of the time they end up dead. It’s not like these are rare occurances, with an average of at least two women per week being murdered by partners, ex-partners or other male family members.
Miss Mahmod had learned of the plot after a phone call by her uncle to her mother, and told police she feared for her life in December 2005.
But when the officer she sent the letter to called her, Miss Mahmod said she did not want any further action to be taken but that it should be recorded “in case anything happened to her”.
On New Year’s Eve 2006 her father took her to her grandmother’s house and tried to make her drink a bottle of brandy but, realising he was going to try to kill her, she smashed a window and escaped.
In hospital, she recorded her fears on video – later used to convict her murderers.
But the officer who interviewed Miss Mahmod about what happened dismissed her account as fantasy and wanted to charge her with criminal damage for breaking the window.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11716272
Hi FAB Libber. I wrote about this case for CiF back in 2007 after I’d heard Banaz Mahmod’s sister, Bekhal, speak at a conference on forced marriage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/29/nohonourinmurder
I was so pleased to see that these two men were finally caught, and this week sentenced for their heinous crime.
But yes, you’re right about the police’s dismissal of Banaz – I also wrote about that:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/22/police-angela-cornes-banaz-mahmod
and in particular about the Met’s decision to promote PC Angela Cornes to Sergeant, despite the IPCC recommending disciplinary action against her for her failings during the Mahmod case.
It continues to enrage me that no lessons ever appear to be learned from cases like this, and that, as we’ve seen with Dyfed-Powys Police, they continue to fuck up big time when it comes to crimes perpetrated against women.
It continues to enrage me that no lessons ever appear to be learned from cases like this, and that, as we’ve seen with Dyfed-Powys Police, they continue to fuck up big time when it comes to crimes perpetrated against women.
Yes, this is the part that outrages me too, it still goes on, women are not believed when they say they are in danger. And shame on PC Cornes, a female officer should know better. That time it was The Met, supposedly the best-trained in DV and ‘honour’ killings. Does not inspire confidence about the rest of the country’s forces.
Another woman has gone missing last week, her children were found abandoned in the street, she was separated from her husband and was known to have suffered DA. Yet the article in the Daily Mail does not indicate any real urgency to find her, concerns for her safety are not mentioned in the headline, and half insinuates she abandoned the children on purpose. The local force appear not to have this woman’s safety as a priority. The situation does not look good for this woman, and I wonder if we will find subsequent reports of mis-handling of yet another case?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1329358/Crying-toddler-10-month-old-baby-abandoned-city-street.html
I just came across this discussion..sasha was a very close friend of mine I unfortunatlly helped her at 12 write her first letter to her long lost dad..something I will regret for the rest of my life.I agree that the police should have done more a hell of a lot more although they did not do what he did they didn’t take her life for no reason.
Thank you for commenting on this thread Rather not say. And you’re absolutely right, ultimately Gary Fisher is the one responsible for Sasha’s murder, and while police failings in the case must and should be examined to help prevent this kind of thing happening again, that must never be forgotten.
It sounds as though you did what any good friend would have done. I’m sure Sasha knew she was lucky to have you as her friend. Take care x