Inquest into the death of NW

Contributing factors

• inadequate police response to domestic violence incident
• failure to adequately question initial witness about victim's whereabouts
• diversion of attending officers to higher priority task before locating victim
• failure of supervisor to brief attending officers on task details
• failure of subsequent attending officers to review full CAD task text before attending
• failure to respond to second call from witness describing possible incident in progress
• OneForce communication system failures in regional area
• heavy workload at Kununurra police station
• premature closure of CAD task without locating or speaking to either party
• victim reluctance to accept help despite prior serious assault and FVRO

Coroner's recommendations

1. The Western Australian Police Force should consider making it mandatory for officers supervising Computer Aided Despatch tasks involving domestic and family violence to use the Supervisor Review Checklist developed by the Family Violence Division.
2. The Western Australian Police Force should consider making the face-to-face training developed by the Family Violence Division (The Family Violence Learning Event) mandatory for all front line duty police officers, with ongoing funding secured whether through internal allocations or external agencies and Treasury.