Ken Clarke: An apology

I should declare at the outset that I like Ken Clarke. A genuine political heavyweight of the old school, his gravitas and class bring me a welcome sense of comfort whenever he appears on Question Time, always outshining the manufactured young Party people propped up against him.

So I felt quite sad that, at his age and with his record, he was hounded yesterday into a very 21st century PC apology.

What did he have to apologise for? He stated, publicly, that there are different degrees of crime - a concept which the learned judges have regard to every day when sentencing in the criminal courts. What is the difference between him saying in a radio interview that there are varying degrees of severity in offences of rape, and a judge explaining that he has based his sentencing decision on the very same principles?

We are familiar with sliding scales of 'badness' in non-sexual assaults, where the law actually defines different offences dependent upon the outcome. There is a possibility of such a framework being introduced for murder offences, like the American degrees. Indeed, if one considers homicide then we already have this distinction with the offences of manslaughter and murder. So if we are happy with the principle for the most serious of all offences, and for numerous lesser crimes, why should rape be any different?

Could the answer be that rape is still viewed as an offence victimising women only (which it isn't)? Is the knee-jerk, leftist, PC view that, therefore, we must somehow treat it differently? How indignant would yesterday's critics be if we decided that all assaults, or abuse, or criminal damage should be treated the same, and removed the rider that these offences can be 'racially aggravated'? The law ought, as far as is possible within our over-sophisticated, defendant-slanted system, be consistent.

Please don't get me wrong, rape is a very serious offence, whatever the circumstances. It ruins lives, degrades, humiliates and scars minds as well as bodies. That is why we treat it so seriously, why the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. But remember that word maximum; the sentences available to judges effectively encompass the entire range. The final disposal will always depend on other factors, peculiar to the offence and the offender. We are, I think, happy to let the judges apply the sentencing rules in these cases; why are we so agitated by their boss talking about them on the radio?

I was dreamin' when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray

Sean O'Neill of The Times has written an interesting piece today (which you can read HERE if you are a Times subscriber; if you are not then it is worth a Pound), having had exclusive access to a copy of the IPCC report into the Met failures in the Night Stalker case. Or, to be absolutely accurate, the IPCC's report into one failing which occurred in 1999 in the Night Stalker case.

I am not going to rehearse my views on the other, later, Night Stalker failures in this post. If you wish to read them, simply click on the 'March' posts over on the right. But I am still mystified that no journalist, no MP, no Councillor or no victim has asked the question as to why the IPCC were so narrow in their approach. It is a question I asked last year both of my bosses in the Met and the IPCC investigator. I was not given any sort of answer, let alone a compelling one. My experience of IPCC investigations (in a completely different but equally flawed investigation which I took over in 2005) is that, notwithstanding their original terms of reference, they will allow a large degree of mission creep if they feel there are skeletons to be found. And so they should. But in the Night Stalker case 1999 was the beginning and the end; if it didn't happen that year then it might as well not have happened at all.

The Met's line on this still seems to be that 1999 is all we need worry about. Perhaps they are all just avid Prince fans? They also replied to an enquiry to their Press Bureau about the 'learning' review that it was being conducted by NPIA. Which is interesting - I wasn't aware that the NPIA did reviews; their business plan, website and publicity material certainly make no mention of this function. Perhaps they are diversifying in light of the threat to their very existence? Or perhaps the Met meant there is a debrief planned which will be held or even facilitated by NPIA at their Bramshill site. I know that DSU Simon Morgan organised such a day some time ago, in his role of heading the learning exercise. I don't know when it will take place, or even if it already has, because I wasn't invited, even before I retired - though I would gladly contribute to such an event now, free of charge. Indeed, I'd probably even pay to be there. It feels somehow wrong, perhaps even (immodestly) a waste of what I can offer, that neither the Met nor the IPCC have asked for my input. I was asked, in May 2009, to look at the Night Stalker investigation and make suggestions to resolve it. I looked, reported, was given the authority to change and we were successful pretty quickly. I have therefore studied the case, its strategies and tactics, and its leadership very carefully. Understandably as a result I have many, many views on how it was led and progressed before May 2009, which I am sure would assist the 'learning', but nobody is asking for them.

If things are still as I think they are, the Met's answer citing the NPIA was clever, was not untrue, but neatly sidestepped the issue of who exactly in the Met is leading the review. Which, I still maintain, is an area which needs to be explored alongside the question of the extent of the IPCC investigation.

The difficulty I continue to encounter is that I want to answer questions which nobody seems prepared to ask.

Will the Night Stalker lessons be taken seriously?

Outside Woolwich Crown Court last week Commander Simon Foy rightly apologised for the Met failing to catch Delroy Grant earlier, and promised the lessons from the case would be learnt. My knowledge of the case leads me to believe a new and independent inquiry into the failings over seventeen years must be launched.

As soon as Delroy Grant was arrested in November 2009 the bosses in SCD1, the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command, which had been responsible for the investigation for the past eleven years, wanted to know if he could have been captured earlier. They acted quickly, and appointed a Detective Superintendent to oversee what they described as ‘a search for learning’.

This review began in November 2009 and very quickly uncovered what we are now calling the 1999 mistake – where false assumptions and slack work by a couple of junior officers led to the name Delroy Grant being shown as eliminated on the investigation’s database. The error was reported quickly, officers were spoken to and the matter promptly referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The IPCC mounted an investigation, and as a result recommended ‘Words of Advice’ as the appropriate disciplinary punishment for the officers. This sorry episode featured highly in Commander Foy’s apology and the media coverage of the case after Grant’s conviction.

However, as we continued to prepare the case for trial, and were disclosing documents for the defence, another serious error came to light which began in March 2003 and was effectively repeated several times, even as late as February 2008. This related to a burglary on 8^th March 2003 in Sydenham, when the 78 year-old lady victim bravely grappled with Grant as he burgled her home. After she told police what had happened, they called a doctor, and that evening he took scrapings from under her fingernails – a standard practice where there has been contact between victim and offender. For reasons I could not determine, the result of the analysis of these swabs was not acted upon by the team until more than 2½ years later, in October 2005. DNA matching the then-unknown profile of the Night Stalker had been found; the victim must have scratched him and unknowingly collected some of his skin cells.

Now knowing that this was definitely a linked offence, the then-SIO, Detective Superintendent Simon Morgan, with the family liaison officer went to tell the victim in person. While they were there she commented that she didn’t know many black men, but that the only ones she could think of who might be worth looking at were those drivers at the local mini-cab firm, Palace Cars, who used to take her to hospital and the doctors. She gave the officers details of the firm, and her comments were paraphrased and recorded in the Family Liaison log book. Some 3½ months later, in January 2006, this comment was read in the incident room, and an action created to research all black men driving cabs for that firm in 2003. However this action was repeatedly put off as not being a priority – in April, July and December 2006, until in June 2007 it was again put off but some reasoning was given,

“This action remains outside the current priority lines of enquiry as deemed by the SIO of (1) Motor-cyclists SE London, (2) Motor-cyclists Brighton, (3) Single Suggestions from media appeals and Crimewatch , and (4) Refusals.”

So rather than look at 20 or so men who were all working at the same place the team continued to try to get DNA swabs from a list of thousands. And the suggestion of a victim who had actually seen and touched the suspect was not acted upon, while the word of one - possibly unknown - person who had phoned the Crimewatch studio or the incident room would have been.

We now know Delroy Grant did indeed drive for the mini-cab firm in 2003, and had the action been taken then he could and should have been identified. Of course, by the time the DNA result was actually acknowledged by the team 2½ years had passed, which might have made a difference, but the regulation of mini-cabs ought to mean that former drivers remained traceable. In 2003 a DNA result could be obtained in a matter of days; however the practice on the team of putting all forensic result reports into a cardboard box without typing or indexing them on to the database may have had an effect on this and caused the delay – another lesson to be learnt? However there has been no apology, no referral to the IPCC. Nothing, almost as if it never happened.

Delroy Grant of course has now been convicted, and there is still time for this and other errors to be reported and acted upon. We can be happy of course that a Detective Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police will be a man of integrity, and will do his duty diligently. But I maintain - as I did back in Novemeber 2009 - that it is daft that the Detective Superintendent in question is Simon Morgan. He is responsible for reporting the learning from the whole SCD1 investigation, for which he alone was responsible for eight of its eleven years. How difficult must it be for a person objectively and critically to review his own decisions, and for such a public and important purpose? It is not fair to him personally, and neither in the interests of the Met nor the Police Service generally, for any ‘learning’ report to have even a suggestion of bias or lack of openness. Irrespective of the thoroughness of his work, it probably means any report will always be so tainted, and it really is crucial for the Met to get it done properly – independently - if they are to start to rebuild the public trust and confidence that the Night Stalker case has so badly damaged.

Sorry, again? For what, exactly?

[Pic: mirror.co.uk]


The two presumably deluded jurors who thought Delroy Grant had a point have made their stand; fortunately they served just to delay his conviction by 24 hours.

Tomorrow one hopes he will be weighed off with more porridge than even a City wholefood eaterie can sell in one breakfast, and we will never see him again. Which is, obviously, a good thing.

It meant though that, once more we have a Met Commander apologising live on all news channels, repeated in case you missed it at 6, 6.30 and 10. At least Simon Foy ventured away from the revolving sign and down to Woolwich to meet real people, real victims, and say sorry in person. But I imagine I am not alone in asking, in these circumstances - "What for? What went wrong? Who messed up?"

For possibly the last time, I am on this occasion in an excellent position to answer those questions for you, to expand on the Commander's words and explain what I think the Met, absolutely correctly in my view, might have apologised for.

The second Minstead offence, in 1998, was linked to one six years earlier by DNA left at both scenes by the suspect. The investigation was then given to what was probably then called the Area Crime OCU and is now known as the Homicide & Serious Crime Command, but which for simplicity we will call HSCC. HSCC deals almost exclusively in murder; the occasional serial rape or similar might be taken on but murders are their staple diet. And very good at investigating murder they are too - detection rates are invariably above 90%, often higher. Having led a murder team in London for 8 years, I think I know why this is. I had a skilled, experienced team of around 30 people to throw at each new offence, backed up by as much expert and scientific help as I wanted. Since most murders were unplanned, even spontaneous, the killer had given no thought to DNA, to fingerprints, to fibres and trace evidence, to CCTV or to telecoms data. So, in most cases it was simply a matter of turning up, doing our usual stuff and arresting the murderer a few days or weeks later. This was the principle which was applied to Minstead, for 11 years from 1998 to 2009. We had a DNA profile, and although we didn't know who it belonged to if we threw enough experience, enough detective savvy and enough science at it we would catch him.

Well we didn't did we. And in May 2009 when I first went across to Lewisham to 'have a look, see if there is a way of solving it' (as was my brief) it was pretty obvious that we never would. As I later learned from the decision logs, virtually everything for the past 11 years had been based on DNA. Even when on occasion some creativity or lateral-thinking was employed, it was getting scientists to try to discern ancestry or physical characteristics from the DNA profile. It was all about the DNA.

Essentially, the theory was that we knew some things about our man - gender, race, approximate age - and some other facts might be assumed from witness testimony - rides a motor bike (which Grant didn't), has a connection with Brighton (which Grant did), had his mother die in 2000 (which Grant didn't). Add to that detective nous - he must be able to be 'unseen' in the street, must do reconnaissance during the day, and a little behavioural psychologist profiling - will have previous convictions for burglary (Grant didn't), won't be married (he was, 3 times), will be a loner with few friends (he certainly wasn't) and it would be easy. From the overall pool of suspects, all the black men in south-east London born between 1945 and 1976, apply the above criteria and then you'll have a list of people you need to get DNA from, one of whom will be your suspect.

But the practice was very different. First, the unfiltered pool was populated by many whose experience of contact with the Met Police was less than satisfactory. That is just a fact of history - they were not treated very well by the Police in the 60s, 70s & early 80s. [Perhaps the Met shpould apologise for that?] Which meant that many refused as a matter of principle, or out of mistrust. Every time this happened a decision had to be made - arrest or not? On the basis the real suspect might well also have declined, this was a tricky choice which had to be justified in every case, but also one which sapped the energy and time of the team.

The task of getting a DNA sample from each of more than 20,000 men was made more difficult, more hopeless, by two other crucial factors. First, the prioritisation of who to swab first was, it seemed, ever-changing. Imagine a deck of cards, dealt out one by one until the King of Hearts was turned up. Only this deck had 21,000 cards, and the King of Hearts was missing, I don't know, perhaps lost down the back of the sofa. Every few months whoever was in charge at that time would see a new possibility - perhaps from a recent offence, perhaps from some other wise old Detective's suggestion - and call all the cards back, shuffle them again and begin once more to deal. In my first week 'looking at' Minstead all the supervisors on the team were again led through this by the Senior Investigating Officer. Except all the time Delroy Grant wasn't just hiding down the back of the sofa, he was burgling, raping, assaulting and robbing the elderly.

The second thing which appalled me in May 2009 was the size of the team. Or, more precisely, the lack of size of the team. MInstead had been culled in 2004 when officers had to be plundered from HSCC to bolster Safer Neighbourhood Teams. Having already cut 3 murder teams, when Sir Ian came calling again Minstead felt the knife and was halved in size. Effectively in May 2009 there were 8 people trying to get all these DNA swabs. In my first week they returned with one solitary swab. As we then had 5,200 men on the priority list the arithmetic was striking - at that rate it was 100 years of work.

Added to this, every time there was a new offence the same handful of officers had to respond, to do the initial enquiries, the house to house, the CCTV retrieval - everything that a murder team would do, with not even a third of the staff. And a murder team would usually take one investigation at a time and then not be given another for 6 weeks or so; Minstead sometimes had 3 a night, often 2 and once even 5. They simply could not cope, and thus a fiction had evolved, whereby offences which were plainly part of the series were discounted on pernickety and often spurious grounds, left to be investigated by the Borough. Which also meant they were not part of the official Minstead statistics, not part of the crime pattern analysis and most crucially not available to be cited as a reason for increasing resources. So the circle continued.

I reported these things upwards pretty quickly; why it took so long for them to be changed is another question and one I cannot answer. It was not, though, through lack of trying on my part. (The same goes for some individual instances of malpractice and inappropriate behaviour I found and reported - that is a related but different story.) What is undeniable though is that once we acted less like a murder squad and more like a burglary squad, once we forgot DNA and remembered observations, once we were looking for the Nightstalker on the streets at night and not in a database during the day time, we got him. The tragedy is that it took so long.

I haven't yet mentioned the missed opportunities being spoken of all over the media, so I must do briefly. The 1999 event is headlining because it was referred to the IPCC, and it is shocking because not only did a Minstead officer fail to do his job correctly but so did the Borough. Minstead or not there was a burglary with a registration number and a therefore a named suspect which was never properly investigated. Am I alone in thinking that a mistake which has the wholly unforeseen but wholly unacceptable consequences of letting Delroy Grant escape and offend for a further decade is deserving of a sanction more serious than 'Words of advice'? Unless those words advise the location of the local Jobcentre perhaps.

The 2001 opportunity is discounted by some, but for the wrong reasons. It may well be that the suspect suggested by a member of the public in 2001 was not the Nightstalker Delroy Grant, nor the 'wrong' one concerned in the 1999 error, but a third man of that name. It really doesn't matter. The point is that the research on that occasion was conducted by the ever-reliable PC Tony Briggs, whom I name because he did the right thing, as usual. He reported that he could not be certain that the Delroy Grant named in the phone call was the same man as the one in the 1999 incident. I should have thought that sufficient to alert the decision-makers to the need for a review of the 1999 action, and that is the missed opportunity.

In 2003, quite simply, a victim of Delroy Grant told officers that she thought her assailant might be a mini-cab driver from the local office she used. At that time Delroy Grant did indeed work at that firm. This was written up for action, to research the drivers at the firm, but a decision made not to proceed with the line of enquiry because officers were, and I paraphrase, too busy trying to get DNA swabs from black men with licences to ride motor cycles. This is not 20:20 hindsight, but a simple matter of investigative acumen. What was more likely to return a result, and quickly - looking to swab many hundreds if not thousands of men, one of which may or may not be the suspect, or looking at 20 or 30 men who work at a firm, where a victim who has actually seen the suspect at close quarters, thinks he might work? I believe it was a missed opportunity every bit as shameful as the 1999 episode.

Where do we go from here? What is important is that this is all never to happen again. For me, top of the list is that those who are the decision-makers in major investigations realise that an unknown DNA profile is conclusive evidence of presence, and so often of guilt, but that it is a very blunt, unsophisticated and ultimately unsuccessful means of identifying a suspect from a large population. Mass screenings seldom work, often deflect focus and always cost the earth.

I hope the Met learns other lessons, there are many, many things within Operation Minstead to consider, and which would make this already lengthy blog post intolerably hard work for all of us. However, I worry that the credibility of their internal search for enlightenment will be hard-won. Unless they have changed things since I left in November 2010, the officer in charge of reporting on the learning from Minstead is the officer who was its Senior Investigating officer from 2001 until I took over in October 2009. I don't think that is healthy either for him or the Met, but my observations fell on deaf ears. I really don't want to see them apologising again.

Police don't criminalise people, people do

Many years, indeed a whole career ago, I made an important decision. Despite my choice of A-levels, university and degree all being aimed at a career in the law, I chose instead to join the Police. Instrumental in this decision was my experience in working for a firm of solicitors, and the strange, illogical and almost perverse pleasure I encountered in some lawyers when they used their undoubted skill, training and experience to engineer acquittals when even an 18 year-old view of the world thought it obvious that the community would be far better off with someone locked away. It was a side of the line where I knew I could not in all conscience have been happy.

Every now and then a member of the Bar or a solicitor does me the favour of reminding me how that decision was so correct. The latest, according to the Guardian website, is Ruth Hamann of Hodge,Jones & Allen - a firm which evidently specialises in the law of protest. Essentially, the firm are claiming that the Metropolitan Police are criminalising students by issuing an 'excessive number' of cautions for aggravated trespass, arising from the recent tuition fee protests. It has always been my perhaps simplistic view that Police don't criminalise people, people do (with apologies to Goldie Lookin Chain). The law is there, you choose to break it, you're a criminal. The police just clear up the mess - or at least a percentage of the mess, I suppose.

But more than this, I am shocked and a little disappointed that Ms. Hamann is quoted thus:

"This may dissuade some young people from attending subsequent protests for fear that they might be charged with an offence and required to attend court".

Now, if we start on the premise that cautions can only be administered where the cautionee admits the offence, then we must presume mustn't we that each caution results from a committed offence. In which case the excessive number of cautions might be two or more per offence, but just the one would seem to me to be about right - and certainly not excessive.

Adult cautions for offences were introduced in the 1980s not only to take cases out of the over-burdened courts system, but also to give first-time offenders the chance to appreciate the advantages of mending their ways without going to court and getting a proper conviction. If, as Ms. Hamann observes, students who find themselves cautioned then refrain from committing further offences, or indeed find themselves dissuaded from attending events such as these marches where the likelihood of offending seems to be increased, then is this a Bad Thing? Or is it just the cautioning system working as it was designed to? And therefore a reason for a solictor - 'An Officer of the Court' - to celebrate a feature of our creaky, over-sophisticated, under-resourced criminal justice system that actually works as it was meant to, rather than carp about it.

"Congratulations! You win the keys to an Austin Allegro."

A very unusual title, but let me explain. In the early 1980s there was a very large, very loud and very brusque DCI. And that was the phrase he uttered when a detective had messed up, though I don't think he actually said 'messed'. He was true to his word; within days if not hours the unfortunate officer would don a dusted-off uniform and be patrolling the (then not so mean) streets of north London in one of British Leyland's finest Panda cars.

Somehow over the last 30 years the Police Service lost that ability, that preparedness to judge and then to act upon it. Following the thinking that saw competitive sport replaced by trampolining in our schools and our educational qualifications being watered down so as to be almost meaningless, nobody could be labelled a loser. Blame became a dirty word, followed quickly by responsibility. While Police Officers would rightly be sacked for corruption, dishonesty or criminal acts, making mistakes was forgivable, almost acceptable.

However, lest we appeared arrogant, a way had to be invented to show our acceptance of failings but without picking on the individuals and their errors which had caused them. A lead was given by the Macpherson report, with its now almost infamous construction of the concept of 'institutional racism'. Here was the answer - the organisation can blame itself, take the criticism, promise to change and to do better, but leave the individuals alone, irrespective of what they had done. This was obviously the correct stance where some feature of the organisation's methods were to blame, but it was realised it could also be used even in those cases where the organisation wasn't really at fault - where the processes and protocols were sound, it was just that they weren't followed.

The Met, or at least certain sections of it, have invented a buzz-phrase for this - 'organisational contrition'. And in most cases now, that is as far as it will go. We have seen it already in relation to demonstrations and some investigations - the ACPO officer saying sorry in front of the revolving sign is now a common sight.

There is a high-profile case currently sub-judice where I am pretty certain these issues will become very public, but that of course must wait. However, as the resurrected phone-hacking investigations gets underway, the line is that there will be a new strategy, new tactics - but woe betide anyone who concludes from this that the original investigation was flawed. The new one is different, that's all, not better.

DAC Sue Akers who is heading it is an experienced, smart and practical officer, whom I admire and respect. We can have every confidence that the investigation will now be progressed thoroughly. But although there might appear to have been a reluctance to act in the past, a lack of progress despite information being available and so the possibility of errors having been made, we shouldn't expect finger-pointing. I doubt any detective will have won the keys to a Vauxhall Astra.

Blair was right shock!

No of course not Tony, but Lord, formerly Sir Ian, of that ilk. Of the seven Commissioners I served he was my least favourite, since I believe he caused damage to the structure, the culture, the aims and the reputation of the Force. But when he drew attention to how the media treated murder victims differently according to their background, I felt at the time he was probably correct - even if he expressed it a little too controversially.

In the last eight weeks we have witnessed what he meant. Two tragic murders - those of Joanna Yeates in Bristol and Nikitta Grender in Newport have it seems been separated by much more than the Bristol Channel, and illustrated his point perfectly.

If one were to compare the basic facts of these two murders there are certain similarities. Two young women, attractive, unmarried, murdered in their own homes. If anything, Nikitta being about to bear a child (which, of course, was also a victim of the murder) and the callousness of the attempt to burn her and her home after the murder ought, one might think, to make her crime slightly the more outrageous, the more newsworthy.

But while Joanna's murder was at the top of the news for many days, coverage of Nikitta has been very low key. So what are the differences in their cases which might have influenced this? Yes, the Christmas period during which the investigation into Joanna's disappearance and death was largely played out might have been quieter for other news; the very fact that such a tragedy occurred over the most important Christian religious period may have added a poignancy to the tragedy too. But isn't the real difference exactly what Lord Blair was alluding to? Put simply, using a perhaps old-fashioned concept, it was their class.

Joanna was 25, had studied, got qualifications - she was an Architect, so we were repeatedly told. (In fact she was a landscape architect, a very different occupation and one which wouldn't perhaps have had the same cachet and therefore impact?) She came from a middle-class family, rented in a nice part of town, had a middle-class boyfriend and eloquent friends and family willing to speak to the media.

Nikitta was 19, eight months pregnant (though unmarried, as we were reminded on a few occasions) and lived on a council estate. Her mother spoke via a statement read by police; her friend was interviewed on national news wearing a dressing gown. In daytime. The coverage was scant given the gravity of the crime; what there was did everything to promote an image of a typical (?) sink-estate unmarried teenage mother-to-be. A stark contrast to the features of Joanna's life and background which had been accentuated.

Murder detectives, to a man and woman, strive to solve their cases completely irrespective of the nature of the victim. It would be impossible to do otherwise - the reality of murders, especially in London, is that victims are all too often involved in drugs, gangs, prostitution or other lawful but 'alternative' lifestyles. Were value judgments made on the victim's worthiness then very little would get done. I find it a pity that the media are not as inclusive in the way they deal with these tragedies. I am genuinely interested - is it merely a commercial thing? Do murders of middle-class women sell more papers?