| The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry | |||
CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE INCIDENT ROOM, AND 16.1 Detective Sergeant Peter Flook joined the MPS in 1962, and after a short period he transferred to CID. He retired in July 1993. For four years before his retirement he had been a Detective Sergeant with 3 Area Major Investigation Pool (AMIP). Probably in about 1989, DS Flook did a week's training at Hendon in the use of the HOLMES system. He was never trained as a HOLMES supervisor, and it appears that he had been involved in investigations using the HOLMES system only on two occasions before the Stephen Lawrence murder. 16.2 In April 1993 DS Flook was attached or assigned to DS Weeden. In common terms he was Mr Weeden's "bag carrier". That is a term expressly used in the MPS job description for a "Detective Sergeant assisting Detective Superintendent". This job description, together with all the others, sets out in comprehensive and indeed almost overfull term the tasks which it is expected that the person doing the relevant job will perform. 16.3 It is at the outset remarkable to record that DS Flook had never seen his own job description. For example that document requires a bag carrier to "attend the SIO's briefing ensuring attendance by any office staff that can be spared. Take notes and make appropriate entries in action logs. Attend the meetings held by the Detective Chief Superintendent with AMIP personnel". When asked about this paragraph DS Flook said that it seemed to accord with his general experience, but that the taking of notes was normally done by the SIO or his deputy. In this investigation it is clear that no-one was formally delegated to take notes of such meetings and it is simply a matter of good fortune that the personal notes taken by Mr Bullock have survived. 16.4 On 23 April DS Flook was summoned to the newly set up investigation room. We have heard that DS Phillip Sheridan was the first office manager on the scene, but it was known by then that Mr Weeden would be taking over on Monday from Mr Crampton, so that DS Flook was to work in tandem at the very start of this investigation with DS Sheridan. 16.5 There is some mystery about the actual setting up of the office, since DS Sheridan indicated that at the beginning there had been a card index system for a very short time which was converted by the Saturday morning into HOLMES. The memory of DS Flook and others is that the HOLMES system was in fact set up on Friday, 23 April. By Saturday morning the system was up and running, in a comparatively small conference room at the top of the police station which was allocated as the Incident Office. 16.6 The AMIP guidelines set out certain minimum requirements which are recommended for various types of inquiry. This murder qualified as a Category B investigation although it was never formally classified as such. The recommendation in the guidelines is that there should be three Detective Sergeants to fulfil the relevant inside tasks in connection with the management of HOLMES in such a case. DS Flook fulfilled four specific and fully described roles, namely those of Office Manager, Receiver, Action Allocator and Statement Reader. 16.7 In addition to that he was Mr Weeden's personal assistant. On this Area DS Flook said that the manning levels had always been a problem. There was really no hope in 3 Area of obtaining or being given the kind of staffing level which ought to be available. Later, on 9 May, DS Flook said that an experienced Detective Constable named Sparrowhawk came in expressly to assist with the action allocating. But from the start and for 16 days DS Flook wore at least five hats as he sat at the hub of the investigation in the Incident Room. He has been described as the lynch pin of the investigation in connection with the processing of information. It is also of significance that when DS Flook took two days leave on 3 and 4 May, a crucial period prior to the arrests, his absence was not covered by any other officer, and the system was therefore left without anyone fulfilling the five roles. 16.8 It was his task in his varied and combined capacities, for example, to "read the documents generated through the Incident Room to assess the information, inform the SIO and keep him informed of the efficiency of the inquiry team and Incident Room staff". The combination of the material set out in the job descriptions for the five roles to be occupied by DS Flook is voluminous. He had no knowledge of any of the prescribed tasks which are set out in those job descriptions, except as a result of previous experience. 16.9 DS Flook was an experienced Detective Sergeant, but it is apparent that he was performing his job or jobs simply on the basis of his past knowledge and by the light of a measure of common sense. In his capacity as Receiver DS Flook was required to notify the Office Manager of any important development or evidence coming to his attention. Thus in this case he had to inform himself. Similarly, under the job description for the Receiver DS Flook was required to perform "liaison with the Action Allocator". The Receiver is also described as "acting as a sieve for the Office Manager". It can at once be seen, and is of vital importance, that the appointment of one man to these tasks made cross-checking of information coming into the investigation, which should have been a matter of standard routine, in fact impossible. 16.10 During the first vital weeks, when the sorting and actioning of information is of paramount importance, DS Flook was absent from the office from 17:00 on Saturday 2 May until 07:30 on Tuesday 5 May. 4 May was a Bank Holiday. During that time there was no Detective Sergeant in the office. DS Flook said that one of the Indexers would have been able to perform his roles. Fortunately the Indexers do appear to have been efficient and experienced in their own field, but it is ludicrous to suggest that they could perform the essential supervisory roles. 16.11 It is thus palpable that the HOLMES system was wholly inadequately serviced by responsible and trained and experienced officers. This may well account for the extraordinary lapses in time in connection with the processing of the large amount of information which came into the investigation room in the early days. There must be serious criticism of senior officers who allowed the system to operate in this way. Equally it must be of major concern that such ineffective operation was apparently the norm throughout the force. DS Flook was working under Mr Crampton until Monday 26 April when Mr Weeden took over. DS Flook has no memory whatsoever of any discussion or of any positive decision being made not to effect any arrests under either regime. 16.12 DS Flook regularly indicated during his questioning that he could not remember things because "it was all so long ago". To some extent he sheltered behind the passage of time. But it is right to indicate that he accepted at once that there were reasonable grounds for suspicion of the suspects and that they certainly could in his opinion have been arrested as soon as the Stacey Benefield statement was received on Sunday night or Monday morning. 16.13 As to surveillance it appeared that DS Flook had virtually no knowledge of that operation. He said that there was "surveillance done later on". But he had no recollection whatsoever of any documentation coming into the Incident Room. There is of course no formal record, as there should have been, of the instructions and orders given, nor of the arrival in the Incident Room of the photographs themselves. 16.14 DS Flook did say in a further statement prepared for this Inquiry that the subject of arrests was discussed at office meetings. He accepted that there was no record of any decision in this regard. In his statement he indicated that "finally I personally felt that outside pressure from other interested parties had an influence on the final decision". When asked about this statement DS Flook indicated that if he had been asked about this matter five years before he might have been able to give more precise answers. 16.15 DS Flook had no positive memory of the arrival of James Grant at the Incident Room on Friday 23 April. He agrees that he signed the relevant message and "actioned" it, so that he must have handled it, but he had no memory of the matter at all. He did indicate that he had done some research in connection with the registration of James Grant as an informant. The long and the short of it is that he found nothing to assist the Inquiry in this respect. 16.16 When asked about the obvious and palpable delay in dealing with messages DS Flook was singularly unhelpful. Simply for example message 138, which deals with the DD family, was received at 17:30 on Saturday 24 April. Two actions were raised by DS Flook, namely actions 166 and 186, but these actions were not raised until 28 April and 30 April respectively. DS Flook could give no explanation for the delay in processing these matters. Plainly this showed that DS Flook was either incapable of giving proper priority to vital messages of this kind, or alternatively that he was simply going through the motions and not bothering to assess relevant priorities or to ask others for help in this important respect. 16.17 The impression gained by this Inquiry is that DS Flook went through the motions and performed his task to the best of his inadequate ability, but that he was simply not capable of dealing with the information coming through his hands in a satisfactory manner. Provided he processed the information reasonably well in a mechanical sense he seemed satisfied to leave things to others. 16.18 A classic example of the inefficiency of the system concerns the processing of the information in connection with the red Astra. We know that the first investigation of the partial registration number of that car resulted on 29 April in a downgrading of the inquiry to "non-priority" by Mr Weeden. On 30 April the car was coincidentally stopped by PSgt Clement, and the driver and a passenger were identified. That information was relayed on to the HOLMES system, but the relevant action to trace interview and eliminate the occupants of the car, number 460, was not raised until 7 June. That matter is dealt with more fully elsewhere in our report, (see Chapter 20) but DS Flook was wholly unable to account for the delay, or to deal satisfactorily with any of the actions taken or not taken in respect of that car and its occupants later on. 16.19 When Mr Weeden gave evidence, in connection with the red Astra message, he said that the five week delay could have been accounted for by that message being stuck behind another piece of paper, so that it was simply missed. Mr Weeden said that that suggestion came from DS Flook. When he was asked about this DS Flook said that this was "probably a throw away remark". He accepted in the end that the delay had been inexcusable and that in truth it simply could not be explained. 16.20 Mr Kamlish's questioning of DS Flook was devastating, particularly in connection with positive and damaging statements made by DS Flook about the family and Mr Khan. The result was that DS Flook was forced to withdraw a series of assertions made in his statement to Kent, which plainly had no basis in fact. For example, DS Flook had recorded that "It was whilst the team were attempting to carry out the inquiries and keep information confidential that the same information had been passed to the victim's family. Subsequently they appeared to be discussing it freely within the community" When asked what was the basis of that statement DS Flook was readily compelled to say that it was his "recollection" and "If I am in error I am in error". Thereafter the statement indicated that the Lawrence family were hindering the police in their investigations and preventing the police from targeting suspects. As soon as these sentences were quoted to DS Flook he said that he withdrew them and apologised. 16.21 In effect DS Flook appears to have put into his statement to Kent an amalgam or collection of gossip that may have been reaching his ears in the Incident Room. He had, as he accepted, a pivotal role in the AMIP team. It may well be that the worst aspects of the reactions of some of the junior officers are reflected in DS Flook's statement. He withdrew most of the allegations made, and there is plainly no substance in any of the matters to which he was referred. In answer to Mr Kamlish he said that officers were "coming and reporting conversations with people following inquiries, general things. You form an opinion. It is no more than that". 16.22 Furthermore DS Flook's strictures in respect of Mr Khan were plainly wrong. He said that he was in a position to observe what was going on and that Mr Khan seemed to be "pestering the office continually, not me personally but the SIOs with messages and 'phone calls". When questioned about this he accepted that there were in fact only four letters written by Mr Khan, and he accepted readily that what Mr Khan was doing was justifiably seeking information that Mr & Mrs Lawrence themselves were not getting from the Family Liaison Officers. 16.23 How this statement to Kent came to be made is difficult to imagine. DS Flook said that he made a statement with a Detective Constable and a Detective Inspector from Kent:- "They talked me through what I recalled of the incident, what I did, how the inquiry went. The high spots and low spots of the inquiry, and then it was turned into a statement". This suggests that the wording of the statement may not have been entirely that of DS Flook. Whatever may be the truth it is both revealing and unprofessional that DS Flook allowed himself to make the statements that he did. 16.24 Mr Kamlish continued to challenge DS Flook in respect of other deficiencies, such as the failure to obtain a photograph of David Norris by checking relevant information at Orpington Police Station. DS Flook confirmed again that he had seen no documentation in respect of the surveillance. He even seemed doubtful whether he had himself seen the photographs taken during the surveillance, and said that if the photographs had come to him they would have gone into the system either as an exhibit or as a document. In fact we know that the photographs were not documented or processed as they should have been at the time. Whether this is the responsibility of DS Flook or not is uncertain. The fact is however that he was in charge of the HOLMES system, and was palpably an important part of the organisation of this aspect of the investigation which was both inefficient and ineffective. 16.26 Questions from those representing the police officers in this case did little or nothing to reinstate our firm impression that the management of the HOLMES system and the control and command exercised by those senior to DS Flook in this regard were woefully unsatisfactory. Nobody seems to have been giving any proper supervisory attention to what was going on under DS Flook. This is yet another condemnation of the supervision and control and initiative exercised by more senior officers. 16.27 As to the racial aspect of this case again it is wholly apparent that DS Flook was untrained in this regard. He said that to his knowledge everybody accepted that this was a racist murder. He was undoubtedly unaware of the impact that this should have upon the investigation which was to follow. 16.28 No wonder Mr & Mrs Lawrence and the community perceive, with justification, that the management of the case was deficient. DS Flook's attitude to Mr & Mrs Lawrence and to their solicitor, so vividly illustrated by DS Flook's critical remarks, must result in the conclusion that racist prejudice, stereotyping and insensitivity played its part in the lack of bite and energy devoted to the activities of the Incident Room. Unwitting racism was at work.
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