Police Watchdog Criticises Norfolk Force After Grieving Family Told to Call a Locksmith

A police watchdog has issued a damning assessment of how one English force handled a family's urgent mental health concerns, revealing that call handlers advised worried parents to contact a locksmith rather than sending officers to check on their son.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said Norfolk Police should have referred the family to mental health services when they phoned on 6 August 2025 to request a welfare check on 30-year-old Hobie Harrison. Instead, the force's 101 call handlers suggested the family consider hiring a locksmith.

Hobie's parents, Mark and Roberta Harrison, had become alarmed after their son failed to respond to them. They had grown accustomed to hearing from him several times a day, and the sudden silence felt deeply out of character. When they went to his flat in Norwich, they found they could not use their own key because his key remained inserted in the lock on the inside of the door.

"We were 100% certain he was in there and he wasn't responding, so we knew there was something seriously wrong," Mark Harrison said. Unable to force entry, the couple contacted Norfolk Police and explained that their son had a history of self-harm and had previously made suicidal threats.

According to the IOPC, the call handler consulted a supervisor before telling the family that the situation did not meet the threshold for a police response. The suggestion that they contact a locksmith left the couple uncertain about what to do next. "We didn't know how to make a decision at that point or what to do quite frankly," Roberta Harrison said.

The family made a second request for a welfare check the following day. On that occasion, officers did attend and discovered Hobie dead in his flat. His parents believe they will never know whether he was still alive when they first called. "We'll never know whether he was still alive when we first called and whether something could have been done," Mark Harrison said. "He might already have been dead, but we'll never know."

Hobie had schizophrenia and developmental trauma and was under the care of the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust Community Mental Health Team. His parents, who adopted him as a child, said he also had a history of drug use. They described him as funny and mischievous, a young man who loved music and enjoyed gardening. They said he had been in good spirits the last time they saw him before his death.

The case has thrown a spotlight on Norfolk Police's use of the Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) policy, which restricts when officers are sent to welfare calls. Under the approach, police attendance is generally limited to cases involving an immediate risk to life, with other concerns redirected to health and social care partners.

Norfolk Police said it had been following the policy when its call handlers dealt with the Harrisons' request. The force said it was reviewing the IOPC's findings but could not comment further because an inquest is due to take place in November.

The IOPC concluded that the call handlers should have asked more probing questions to properly assess the level of risk to Hobie. It also found that the family deserved a clearer explanation of why officers were not being dispatched under the RCRP guidelines, rather than being left to interpret a threshold decision on their own.

In October 2025, the family lodged a formal complaint with Norfolk Police about how their call had been handled. The IOPC was sharply critical of the force's response to that complaint, after Norfolk Police told the parents that officers should not have attended either call, including the second one that led to the discovery of Hobie's body. The watchdog described that reply as "unnecessary and insensitive."

David Ford, the IOPC's director of oversight and casework, said the watchdog had raised concerns with the force about how it interprets RCRP and monitors the initiative. "We have raised our concerns with the force around its interpretation of RCRP and monitoring of the initiative," he said. "As a result... the force has said it will undertake a review to examine whether there are any organisational learnings."

The IOPC said it was worried that Norfolk Police may not fully understand the risks associated with the policy. The findings raise broader questions about how police forces across England and Wales balance their public protection duties with a national push to shift mental health-related calls towards health services.

For families, the practical consequences can be severe. When call handlers do not ask detailed questions about a person's history, the level of immediate danger can be misjudged, and relatives may be left without a clear route to help. In Hobie's case, his parents had already told police about his self-harm and suicidal threats, yet they were still directed away from a police response.

The Harrisons' experience also highlights the difficulty families face when they cannot access a property and believe a loved one is inside and in danger. With no forced-entry option available to them, their only realistic route was through the police or other emergency services.

Norfolk Police has said it is examining the IOPC's conclusions, while the forthcoming inquest is expected to examine the circumstances of Hobie's death in more detail. The force's RCRP policy remains publicly available and sets out its position that officer attendance at welfare calls should be reserved for cases involving an immediate risk to life.

For the Harrison family, the wait for answers continues. They remember their son as a sociable and creative man whose regular contact with them made the sudden silence on that August day all the more alarming. Their complaint, and the watchdog's findings, now form part of a wider debate about whether vulnerable people are being failed at the very moment they need help most.