Lone working & Personal Safety

Is lone working more dangerous than working in groups or pair’s?
The statisical reasearch show that lone working is no more dangerous than working in pairs or groups.
This may surprice you but more Police officers are assualted in custody suites than anywhere else. How can this be they are surrounded by colleagues the offender as no escape route so why is this?
I remember reading some research many years ago in which it concluded that a lone police officer comming across a potential conflict situation would to walk a way/ ignore offensive comments if he/she was working alone.
But if they encountered the same situation with a collegue or collegues there was a far greater chance they would respond and take up the challenge even if they were still greatly out numbered clearly male ego plays a big part in this.
Going back to the Police custody situation, let’s look at why this could be such a volitile situation
Firstly : the defendant is just in the process of having their libity taken away from them so they are going to be in a very emotional state (emotion as no logic)
Secondly: they clearly have a reason to dislike the arreasting officer
Thirdly: the areasting officer and other officers present feels safe and therefore the attack takes all by complete suprice which impedes the response time ( each officer expecting other collegue to respond ).
Howecer ignoring the statistics there have been numerous examples where workers have been exposed to great risk resulting in tragic consequences over the year.
Undubtably the most famous of these is Susy Lamplugh who disapeared whilst working alone in southwest London. Susy Lamplugh was an estate agent, reported missing after going to an appointment with someone calling himself “Mr. Kipper” in order to show him a house in Fulham.
Susy Lamplugh as long been presumed dead and many attempts have made to find the body but todate all have been unsuccessful for more information on this go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzy_Lamplugh.
There have been other reported instances involving tragic deaths and injuries involving lone workers includng other estate agents, social workers, charity workers and other professions.
Clearly Susy Lamplugh had been set up by Mr Kipper had a proper Risk Assessment been carried out and adhered to she would probably still be alive today.
In my next article to follow this we will look at carrying out a Risk Assessment and in particular a Dynamic Risk Assessments for the protection of lone workers.
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