Stage 4 Incident Room

Stage 4 Incident Room-

An incident room is a facility which is on the site of the crime and is set up as a base of police who can co-ordinate the operations to just a certain place to make it easier. This base is a place for them to find out information by taking witness statements and receive phone calls. The public can also call in and give information but it makes it harder for the police to try and see if the information is real and helpful or a hoax. The team who work in the base are called the MIT, this means the major incident team. These are staff which are dedicated and trained to help out during incidents like this and know what procedures they need to do. The incident room is very important in cases where people have gone missing such as the Madeline McCain case because they are set up on base and usually the community help the officers by giving them drinks and food. It helps the community get involved and it is a suitable and easy way to find out information. It also offers support for the family who has lost their loved ones and helps let the community know there is help in the area for the missing person. This stage can be significant depending on the case, it is suitable for a missing person or for a murder in the neighborhood. It can have ethical issues involved because it can mean a lot of people in the neighborhood will have to go out of their way to help the officers during this time and if they are helping at night time it could distress other neighbors and they could be annoyed at this. The neighborhood can decide to help or not depending on if they want to.  If the incident room is not set up important information may not be given to the officers and this information could be enough for them to find out where a missing person is. Also they could find out information on a criminal and use the information to figure out if they are held responsible or not. This can make a investigation successful but it depends on what crime has been committed, for example if someone was murdered a incident room wouldn't be most suitable because it is more useful when finding a missing child because the community get involved and give information. For a murder crime wrong information might be given out and this means that using this step in certain crimes will make the investigation unsuccessful as it will be wasting time that they cant waste.

In my case an incident room wasn't used, this is because it was a murder crime and the suspect was being figured out and they didn't need information to find a missing child. The room wouldn't of benefited the crime so they found out by doing the stage investigation plan that it wasn't necessary and came to the conclusion of not setting one up.