Mark Rowe asks what is it about investigations that corporate and police forces alike keep botching them.
The disgraced BBC broadcaster Sir Jimmy Savile whose sexual crimes only became a scandal after his death; years before, he was interviewed by Surrey Police. The murder of Stephen Lawrence that led to the Macpherson review; the unsolved murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan; how the police took seriously and at length the unfounded accusations of sexual abuse by Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and the Conservative politician Sir Edward Heath. Another Conservative politician, William now Lord Waldegrave, told the House of Lords during a debate in January on the accusations against Heath that
a young contract researcher for the police, not a member of any police force, came to see me at Eton, where I was working. They were not a policeman and, without unkindness, I am afraid that I would have to say that the person in question had not the least idea what to ask me about, how number Ten ([Downing Street] or the office of the leader of the Opposition worked, what police close protection was, or what life was like for the Prime Minister or leader of the Opposition. I remember having to explain what a private office was and the most basic facts. It struck me then, and strikes me still, as an example of the extreme amateurishness of the whole exercise that a political secretary at number Ten and then head of the leader of the Opposition’s office was not at any point questioned by a professional about the circumstances of Heath’s life.
Time and again police’s failures may have numerous causes, some deep and common across institutions – whether the quailing of a relatively junior interviewer in front of the powerful; or the ‘we know best’ attitude inside a police force, and defensiveness about ‘one of our own’ – as the now one-year-old Baroness Casey review into the Metropolitan Police’s standards and culture set out. But the thread between them all is shortcomings in investigations. Nor are the Met or police in general the only ones falling short. The BBC’s investigation of its journalist Martin Bashir who faked documents so as to gain a 1995 interview with Princess Diana; and indeed over Savile, or other disgraced ‘talent’.
Just as in the military the driving of a tank and the firing of its gun at the same time requires manual movements, and tactical assessment, so an investigation calls for knowledge and its application. An investigator has to know how to gather evidence and retain it so that it will not be thrown out of court, or indeed land the investigator in court; but investigators won’t see the evidence in front of them without a curious mind and an ability to make connections. If a police officer arrests someone, and finds a thumb drive, for example, might there be crypto assets stored on that? Because money laundering is not just about someone walking around with wads of cash in their pockets.
Nor are police only falling short investigating ‘old’ crimes such as murder, or fraud. Police set up a Stalking Threat Assessment Centre (STAC) in 2018; the law on stalking dates from 1997, the Protection from Harassment Act. The former cop now a consultant, Philip Grindell, of Defuse Global, recently stated:
“My own personal experience of investigating stalking cases as a Metropolitan Police officer and now as an advisor working with prominent people who have been subject to stalking investigations by the police has been extremely poor, at times bordering on being amateurish.
“There are failures at multiple layers. The lack of training for the initial response officers, investigators, and supervisors, including those on the STAC is a critical factor …. In my experience, victims have been left unimpressed when the officer investigating fails to make contact, is changed without notice and repeatedly, causing a lack of continuity or when the officer is simply not competent to investigate and recognise or record the risks in such a potentially dangerous offence.”
These shortcomings have consequences. The murderer of Sarah Everard; before carrying out that crime in 2021, carried out numerous indecent exposure offences, which were not properly investigated and, if they were, he would likely never have had the chance to abuse his power, as London Assembly member Unmesh Desai noted in a recent Assembly Police and Crime Committee meeting, covering one year on from the Baroness Casey review into Met Police standards and culture.
Grotesquely, even, shortcomings in investigations run to the watchdog who investigates police complaints, the IOPC. The Fairfield review for the Home Office noted that after each investigation, the IOPC is meant to carry out a debrief, whether for potential learning for that investigator, investigation or the IOPC, but the reviewers heard that such a learning cycle is ‘not really done’. The reviewers found it ‘concerning’ that this was only one example of how ‘very senior IOPC operational staff do not appear to understand, follow or encourage their teams to follow formal IOPC guidance’.
It goes on. The London Assembly Police and Crime Committee recently looked into police investigation of serious injury collisions in London. As a report stated, without a good collision investigation, criminal prosecution is harder, and victims struggle to get injury compensation; and may have, as Caroline Russell, chair of the committee, put it, ‘to advocate for themselves rather than focusing on recovery or mourning’.
Caroline Russell said: “We heard that while the hundred most serious collisions get a forensic investigation many serious collisions do not. This has shaped our recommendations calling for improved training for officers, better information sharing, and access to a dedicated family liaison officer for victims and their families.”
How to explain such a widespread failing; would it be easier to seek an aspect of policing where the police (who at least partly feed corporate security and private security generally with investigators, including regulators such as the IOPC) do an consistently outstanding job?! Is it the ever more complicated nature of modern economic and other life, that has outstripped the equipment and training curricula? Is it a shortage of money, and departmental breakdown as too few and too inexperienced staff have far too many cases they could take on? Arrogance of those at the top, holding the complacent self-belief that British police (and other institutions) are world leaders?
That the private sector poaches investigators (and military pilots, and others trained by the state) may have a bearing. The Met Police’s Economic Crime Command has around 416 posts and about 303 of these are filled. As the London Assembly police and crime committee heard last year, that under-staffing is partly because staff are ‘headhunted by the private sector for very big salaries’. Hence police are ‘looking at apprenticeships with universities, internships, work with industry partners around secondments, and bringing back retired police officers to train and mentor new staff’.
