Police officers told a vulnerable man who was harassed to death by local youths to change his own behaviour rather than tackle them

Police officers told a vulnerable man who was harassed to death by local youths to change his own behaviour rather than tackle them, an independent investigation has found.David Askew, 64, collapsed and died outside his home in Manchester in March last year. He had been harassed by local teenagers for more than a decade in what neighbours described as “bear baiting”.

The Daily Telegraph understands that a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), due to be published later today, has found fault with the way Mr Askew was treated by Greater Manchester Police before his death.

Specifically, the report is damning of officers who advised Mr Askew, who was disabled, to change his own behaviour rather than deal with the youths who were harassing him daily.

Mr Askew would regularly give local children cigarettes and attempt to converse with them. The report says that officers had told him to stop doing this when they should have been following up his complaints.

Mr Askew’s elderly mother Rose frequently complained to police about the harassment of her son. In the year leading to his death officers had been called at least 10 times.

The report criticises the force for failing to categorise the harassment as “hate crime” when Mr Askew’s disability meant that his complaints should have been classed this way.

And the report will say that the prolonged abuse should have been dealt with at a higher level within the force. Instead it was dealt with solely by neighbourhood policing teams.

However, despite being critical of the force as a whole, the report praises individual officers who went out of their way to help him. At the time of his death, it was reported that one officer had regularly visited Mr Askew, even on her days off.

The report concludes that while there are lessons for Greater Manchester Police to learn, no individual officers should be disciplined.