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Gaia Pope-Sutherland’s family criticise police failures after inquest

Gaia Pope
Gaia Pope

source: Express & Star
published: 15 July 2022

The family of Gaia Pope-Sutherland have criticised the police after an inquest found she had died from hypothermia hours after running away from her home while suffering a mental health crisis.

They said Dorset Police had failed the teenager when she reported she had been raped and also failed her in the first two days after she went missing in Swanage in November 2017.

The 19-year-old’s family blamed a decade of austerity cuts and called for the force to create a specialist unit to investigate rape and serious sexual offences.

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Thames Valley Police apologises over man’s heroin death in cell

Leroy Medford
Leroy Medford

source: BBC News
published: 15 June 2022

A police force has apologised to the family of a man who died in custody after taking heroin in his cell. Officers at a police station in Reading failed to find the drugs Leroy Junior Medford, 43, had hidden.

In a letter to his family, Thames Valley Police’s Deputy Chief Constable Jason Hogg described his death in April 2017 as tragic and avoidable. He also acknowledged the force breached Mr Medford’s human rights and those of his family.

Mr Hogg wrote that Thames Valley Police apologised both for this and the “grief and distress that this has caused Junior’s children and siblings”.

Mr Medford, who was known to his family as Junior, was arrested on suspicion of assault and taken to Loddon Valley police station in Berkshire.

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