Man, 68, jumped to his death from phone booth inside Hackney police station

The entrance to Stoke Newington police station. Image: Google

A 68-year-old man jumped to his death from the hood of a phone booth inside Stoke Newington police station, an inquest has found.

Peter Jones had spent 18 hours in the public waiting area before his death on 5 November 2022.

During that time, CCTV showed him previously attempting to climb on to the phone booth, as well as writing a suicide note, rocking back and forth, and talking to himself.

Mary Hassell, senior coroner for inner north London, said Jones had displayed “sufficient behaviours to indicate that he was an immediate danger to himself which, if seen by police staff, would have resulted in action that probably would have prevented his death”.

An inquest jury ruled that officers had failed to provide “sufficient oversight” of the waiting area.

They highlighted the “position of CCTV monitors out of the immediate line of sight of office staff”, along with “inadequate” staff numbers on the ground floor and in “the box” – the area facing the public lobby.

The official cause of Jones’s death was traumatic brain and spinal injury, with jurors finding that he died by suicide.

Hassell has sent a prevention of future deaths report to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

In it, she wrote: “The jury noted that without the presence of a flat topped telephone hood, there would have been no means for Mr Jones to take his life in this manner.

“However, I heard at inquest that the telephone hoods in Stoke Newington Police Station have been replaced since Mr Jones’s death, and the flat kind are nowhere else in the MPS estate.”

Following the jury’s findings about the lack of oversight of the public waiting area, Hassell added: “I heard that every police station has a different geographical layout, and that some of these are old buildings.

“However, a senior police officer giving evidence did accept that station officers could be positioned in the box facing out towards the public area, rather than further into the office facing each other.”

Hassell concluded: “In my opinion, action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe that you have the power to take such action.”

The force has until 7 April 2025 to respond to the report.