Police could be missing homicides – watchdogon April 27, 2023 at 9:00 pm

Metropolitan Police officers could be missing homicides because the force has failed to learn from mistakes in the case of serial killer Stephen Port, a watchdog says.

The force has not learned from a “calamitous litany of failures” in the case and “history could repeat itself”, His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire Services (HMICFRS) warned.

Port, 48, is serving a whole-life term for murdering four men in east London.

The Met has pledged to improve.

Between June 2014 and September 2015, Port killed Anthony Walgate, 23, originally from Hull; Gabriel Kovari, 22, from Lewisham; Daniel Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend, Kent; and Jack Taylor, 25, from Dagenham, east London, by giving them overdoses of the “date rape” drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) at his Barking home.

HMICFRS looked at learning and future risks for unexplained death cases following the murders.

It identified five key failings at the Met in a report: a lack of training, poor supervision, “unacceptable” record-keeping, confusing policies and “inadequate” intelligence procedures.

HMICFRS’s Matt Parr said: “It seems to me likely, if not certain, that among the deaths they do not classify as homicides, there are some that are homicides.

“The risk of a homicide being missed is way higher than it should be.”

Solicitor Neil Hudgell, who represents the families of the four victims, said: “This report highlights that the most basic requirements of policing are still not being met.”

He added that, “possibly most concerning” is that “inexperienced officers are making crucial decisions when responding to reports of deaths which could impact on everything that then follows in the investigation, with mistakes potentially preventing specialist homicide detectives becoming involved”.

Failures by the Met Police meant the deaths of Port’s murder victims were not regarded as suspicious until weeks after the fourth victim, Mr Taylor, was killed, and contributed to the deaths of the final three victims, an inquest jury ruled in 2021.

These included not carrying out basic checks, not sending evidence to be forensically examined, and not exercising professional curiosity while Port was embarking on his killing spree.

Mr Parr said it was “difficult to be reassured” mistakes would not “happen again”.

“Issues with the Met’s culture and officers’ behaviour have been widely recognised,” he said, referring to findings last month that the force is institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic.

“However, the Met’s problems with competence and professionalism run even deeper: too often, they don’t get the basics right,” he said.

“Several officers told us that linking deaths at a local level relied frankly on luck, there was no formal process to spot the similarities, to link deaths, and it relied on officers maybe talking to each other about the deaths that they’ve dealt with. We find that extraordinary,” Mr Parr added.

Elsewhere, the report identified poor scene management and a lack of “professional curiosity”, saying the majority of records “had basic omissions”.

“Written witness statements, if taken at all, tended to be too brief and lacked important details,” the report said.

“There was little evidence that officers completed house-to-house inquiries, took steps to establish the time of death or tried to find out who may have had access to the premises where the deceased person was found.”

The report even described “occasions when money and drugs were found in a deceased person’s possession at the mortuary, when officers had supposedly searched them at the scene of death”.

There were also notably poor practices in the supervision of unexplained death procedures, including senior officers not turning up to supervise cases despite this being Met policy, and some having less experience than the officers who were asking for their guidance.

Mr Parr said: “Our inspection has shown that history could repeat itself. That is why the Met must learn from its mistakes and act now on our recommendations, to keep all Londoners safe.”

HMICFRS made 20 recommendations to the Met in six areas, including to:

The Met Police’s Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said the force was “sincere in our desire to make real change to minimise the chance of a case like this ever happening again”.

She said: “We know we fell short in this case and the families did not get the service they needed or deserved.

“It is important we look again at this area to see what more we need to do to support families through such difficult times.”

Solicitor for the families, Mr Hudgell, added: “It has become abundantly clear that this force cannot be trusted to make changes and improvements itself and the government must step in and oversee proper change across this force.

“If that doesn’t happen, more serious offenders will slip through the net, and more innocent lives will be lost due to the most basic of policing failures.”

Additional reporting by Daniel De Simone

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