Module 13

A Senior Investigating Officer would be appointed in serious incidents such as this, as would a Deputy Senior Investigating Officer. They would be responsible for the management of the enquiry, but the conduct would usually be delegated in accordance with the Major Incident Room (MIR) template described in the Case Management chapter.

The management team would be responsible for budgeting, resource availability, liaison with higher management levels within the organisation, and policy making.

The Office Manager would oversee the MIR (Major Incident Room); the Actions Manager would oversee the majority of the enquiry's conduct, with the assistance and advice of the document readers.

The Action Teams would be responsible for carrying out the tasks allocated through the MIR, but would also be expected to contribute using experience and local knowledge. The motto being - don't just do what I say, do what needs to be done.

• Allocation of responsibilities
  As the management team and the supervisors are identified, each shall be made aware of the work that needs to be done. Each will, in turn, be made aware of who is responsible to them for getting the work done.
  
  The Actions Allocator (in a MIR) will start to allocate tasks to the Action Teams. The Office Manager will begin to organise the researchers, clerk, typist, receivers and document readers. Those who have responsibilities in specific areas, e.g. search team managers, crime scene investigators (formerly scenes of crime officers) will be left to carry on and do what it is they have to do, but only after the order of events has been decided upon.
• Identification of assumptions
  Throughout the process, the management team will be addressing the legal issues - what offences have been or may have been coProgress reports mmitted (murder, attempted murder, one of the grievous bodily harm offences, attempted suicide, and so on), what evidence needs to be sought, how it can be obtained, what obstacles may be presented and how may they be overcome.
  
  At the same time, the management team will also be considering what community issues may arise, what resource implications exist in respect of this, and other investigations.
• Progress reports
  A daily briefing will be arranged, at which the Action Team investigators, crime scene investigators, search team managers and so on will update the rest of the team on progress and updates that are perceived by them to be of relevance, and be expected to have answers to questions that the other specialists may have.
• Changing the plan
  In the middle of the investigation, a similar attack is reported in a nearby part of the same town. Suddenly the scope changes to address the possibility that a serial knife attacker needs to be quickly tracked down.
  
  The management team now needs to assemble every other team member, brief them on this development, and change the plan so that the first enquiry can be progressed while taking on the second investigation.
  
  This may involve calling in new resources from elsewhere. It will certainly have budgetary and logistical implications. New team members will be added to the team, and they will have to be brought up to speed on past enquiries, and the results so far. The new resources may themselves have an input on the first investigation as a consequence of their attendance at the meeting.
  
  Team supervisors will have new team members for whom they are responsible, and may also be faced with merging the documentation from the first enquiry with that from the second.
  
  All of which means that the whole project, from top (overriding objective) to bottom (allocated tasks) has to be reassessed if the project is to succeed.
• Phase reports (sitreps)
  Meanwhile, those high level managers outside the enquiry will still need to be informed periodically as to what is being done to identify and arrest the perpetrator while still addressing the safety of the community in general. And, of course, they will also want to know how much is being spent, whether the resources are being utilised properly, and whether an arrest is imminent.
• Reporting the result
  After the offender is interviewed, he is charged. At that point, a prosecution file has to be prepared. The charge (for the sake of the illustration) is one of attempted murder, which implies that the file will be complicated due to the nature of the case, but will still have to be completed quickly.
  
  The typist will busily type the statements, the transcribers will type the tape transcript of the interview. The officer responsible for the file will want the case summary to be as detailed and as comprehensive as possible, and at the same time will have to compile a report outlining the decisions made during the investigation, why they were made and what the considerations were at the material time. The disclosure officer will have to assemble all of the documents and be prepared to copy and disclose them to the prosecution team.

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