Eliminating duplicates in Access Query results - ms-access

Question

I have an access database with records exported from our incident management system. I’m trying to resolve a duplicate counting issue we have due to the way we count incidents. Counting is fine as long as we have a single Operator for each incident. I’m having an issue with the use case where the operation of a vehicle involves two Operators or the other use case where we have an incident where two Operators collide with one another. For any incident an Operator is given a charge, Avoidable or Unavoidable. For an incident for either of the duplicate cases, Operator A can be charged with an Avoidable and Operator B can be charged an Unavoidable. However at the macro level we view this as one incident even though we have two records in the database with charges for both Operators.
Sample data
Incident_Number EmpName IncType Charge_1
1A Joe Collision Avoidable
1B Tom Collision Avoidable
1B Sue Collision Unavoidable
1C Harry Collision Avoidable
1C John Collision Unavoidable
1C Kathi Collision Unavoidable
1D Larry Collision Unavoidable
Sample of how I would like the query results
Incident_Number EmpName IncType Charge_1
1A Joe Collision Avoidable
1B Tom Collision Avoidable
1C Harry Collision Avoidable
1D Larry Collision Unavoidable
In trying to get this to work I tried this test, but it didn't prevent the duplicates. Is our problem just the way we store our data? Should I be trying a DISTINCT on the Charge_1 column?
SELECT *
FROM tst2019 as c1
WHERE Incident_Number <>
(SELECT MAX(Incident_Number) FROM tst2019 as c2
WHERE c2.charge_1=c1.charge_1);

Answer 1

Gustav,
Here's how I used your solution:
SELECT
Incident_Number,
Date_of_Incident,
Mode,
Incident_Type,
charge_1,
First(employee_name) AS empname,
Division
FROM
tst2019
GROUP BY
Incident_Number,
Date_of_Incident,
Mode,
Incident_Type,
Charge_1,
Division;
I did have one anomaly though, for the Cable Car case where operation of the vehicle requires two employees. For the same Incident Number the query results had a 1 row for Avoidable and 1 row for Unavoidable. Other than that this works exactly the way I would like, so thank you for the help.
Worst case, I could always do a manual check for the Cable Car incidents. Question, would it make sense to run a sql query, specific to the "Avoidables" then do a second append query specific to the "Unavoidables" but having the query omit any result where the incident number already exists in the initial "Avoidable" query results. If this is possible could you provide some guidance on how this could be done? Thanks again for your assistance in solving this duplicates issue.
You must group by Incident_Number:
SELECT
Incident_Number,
First(EmpName) As Operator,
IncType,
Min(Avoidable) As Status
FROM
tst2019
GROUP BY
Incident_Number,
IncType
Note please, that FIRST just picks "a" operator, not necessarily the "first", as nothing in your table defines who/what is first.