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Archived Transcript for 1 Febuary 2002:
Pages 1 to 50
1
1 Friday, 1st February 2002
2 (9.30 am)
3 THE CHAIRMAN: Morning ladies and gentlemen. Mr Garnham.
4 MR GARNHAM: Good morning sir. You will know that our plans
5 for this morning were firstly to complete the evidence
6 of Anne Bristow; then, sir, we had indicated that we
7 would recall Mr David Duncan to give evidence in
8 relation to matters that have emerged since he was last
9 before us, and then thirdly we return to the evidence of
10 Mr Wheeler.
11 At 9 o'clock this morning my learned friend
12 Miss Lawson came to see us downstairs bringing with her
13 a bundle of further documentation. Accompanying that
14 was a letter to Mr Fitzgerald dated today's date.
15 I think it right if I read that letter so that you and
16 the interested parties can know what is said. Dated
17 today.
18 "Dear Mr Fitzgerald, Further to my discussion with
19 you yesterday evening, I attended the North Tottenham
20 Social Services offices with counsel and Anne Chan
21 yesterday evening, after the meeting with members to
22 which Miss Lawson referred at the end of proceedings on
23 Wednesday.
24 "We have considered the entire contents of the
25 filing cabinet in which the 19th March 2001 note of
2
1 Mr Duncan's discussion with Ms Kozinos was located
2 yesterday afternoon. A number of further documents have
3 emerged. These are set out in the attached schedule."
4 I read that schedule, sir.
5 "1. Memos relating to Carole Baptiste's absence
6 including one referring to supervision and
7 correspondence post Victoria's death.
8 "2. Correspondence relating to the Prince report.
9 "3. Assorted documents relating to case allocation
10 in North Tottenham District Office in December
11 2001/January 2002.
12 "4. Handwritten memos from Rose Kozinos regarding
13 staffing and sickness certificates for June and
14 July 2001.
15 "5. File relating to [social worker B's]
16 disciplinary proceedings.
17 "6. Two memos regarding John Myrie and
18 Roma Raeburn."
19 I return to the letter:
20 "I recognise that this further information comes at
21 a very late stage indeed. With the exception of the
22 documents from December 2001 and January 2002 these date
23 from the period around Victoria's days in Haringey.
24 I apologise unreservedly on behalf of my authority that
25 they have not emerged earlier. Plainly they should be
3
1 supplied to you and they are now enclosed.
2 "In the light of earlier difficulties I know
3 Ms Bristow had personally taken a number of steps to
4 ensure that all documents relevant to the Inquiry's
5 terms of reference have been supplied. In addition to
6 the in involvement over the weekend of 1st and
7 2nd December of many members of staff, you will recall
8 direct written instruction was circulated to all staff,
9 requiring a search for and the production of any
10 documentation. In relation to particular issues there
11 have been a series of further searches, including that
12 which has now brought these documents to light. Without
13 being able to inspect every file personally, the
14 Director has of necessity in these circumstances had to
15 rely on the reports made to her, or the lack of them,
16 from her managers as to the existence of any document.
17 "I am sure that she will be making her own detailed
18 enquiries as to how the situation has emerged,
19 immediately she is released from her oath.
20 "If I personally can assist further then I will do
21 all I can. Yours sincerely, Gerald Lloyd."
22 As will be apparent to you and others, from my
23 reading of the schedule a considerable number of these
24 documents -- and I have the pile in front of me -- are
25 material to a greater or lesser extent to the issues
4
1 that we have been considering, including issues relating
2 to the evidence of Ms Bristow on Wednesday.
3 Sir, in the half an hour before we began we have
4 flicked through these to confirm that they do appear to
5 have some relevance in a number of cases of central
6 relevance. Sir, I do not pretend that we have got even
7 remotely on top of these so as to be in a position to
8 ask questions about them either this morning or
9 thereafter. Reluctantly, in those circumstances I have
10 to ask you if you would temporarily suspend the
11 Inquiry's hearings so that Mr Sheldon and I can look at
12 these. I exclude from that consideration Ms Gibson for
13 the reason that some of these concern Ms Baptiste.
14 The two of us will need to look at them before we
15 decide how we are going to deal with them. It may well
16 be that in those circumstances I indicate to you sir
17 that we will have to take our three witnesses this
18 morning in a rather different order because it is not
19 sensible to try and amass this material instantaneously,
20 particularly if you are dealing with another witness.
21 I am sorry about that sir but I do not see any way
22 around it. I would add only this, that I have already
23 expressed some concern in the past about the way
24 documents have been produced by Haringey. The reference
25 in the letter of apology which we received this morning
5
1 to documents emerging just about sums it up in my
2 submission. If we are dependent on documents emerging
3 by some unidentified process then it may be that we can
4 have very little confidence in the way Haringey have
5 handled the document production in this case.
6 We are now on the penultimate day of evidence in
7 Phase I and we are still being supplied with documents
8 from Haringey. These documents are not coming from some
9 distant office or from some unidentified filing cabinet
10 or filing system. These appear to have come from the
11 top drawer of the filing cabinet in the office that had
12 dealings directly with Victoria. Sir, for myself I can
13 think on my feet of no conceivable explanation of why we
14 should be supplied with these on the 1st February.
15 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Garnham. Miss Lawson is there
16 anything you want to say before I say what I want to
17 say?
18 MISS LAWSON: Sir, I cannot add very much to the letter.
19 I think I can only say that not only the legal team but
20 Ms Bristow as well were astounded to discover that in
21 spite of all that has been said and written and required
22 of staff in terms of production of any documents which
23 could conceivably have been relevant, that documents
24 which were in fact found in the circumstances to which
25 Mr Garnham has alluded had not previously been passed
6
1 over to those dealing with supplying documentation to
2 this Inquiry.
3 Our amazement is as great as anybody's because we
4 would have thought this was -- as I say, what we had
5 been led to believe was always that this sort of
6 material had been searched for and not found, not that
7 it was there and not discovered, and as I say I cannot
8 add to what we have said in the letter. Our
9 embarrassment level about all of this is now off the
10 scale.
11 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Miss Lawson. You said that you
12 were astounded and amazed. I support those words
13 completely. I would like to add my reaction which is
14 that I am absolutely furious. I really am absolutely
15 furious. It shows a blatant and flagrant disregard to
16 the work of this Inquiry. It is a terrible disservice
17 to the other interested parties. It is grossly
18 unreasonable to Counsel to the Inquiry and his staff.
19 I just want to remind everybody of the context of
20 this. I know you all know, but just so that you know
21 why I am feeling the way I am feeling, which is that
22 Victoria died in February 2000. The trial ended
23 in January 2001. Immediately the Secretary of State
24 announced that there was going to be this Inquiry. As
25 Haringey was responsible, along with others, but
7
1 Haringey had a responsibility for Victoria's safety for
2 seven months of the 11 months that she was alive in this
3 country, it seems abundantly obvious to me that if there
4 was going to be an inquiry Haringey was going to be one
5 of the key players in that.
6 We wrote in May, if my memory serves me right, for
7 the documents from Haringey along with other
8 authorities. Because of the unacceptable delays which
9 you are all familiar with, I took the exceptional step
10 of actually summoning the Director of Social Services
11 who I was told had arranged for an absolutely exhaustive
12 search to be undertaken and all documents had been
13 provided. I then had the Chief Executive of Haringey
14 come to the Inquiry, who spoke of his embarrassment that
15 Haringey was in the situation that it was in having not
16 provided the documents, and assured me that now
17 everything was in order. Only the other day we had
18 Mr Meehan, the Leader of the Council, apologising to me
19 and the Inquiry for the failure to produce documents.
20 Had we be able to keep to our timetable Ms Bristow
21 would have finished her evidence on Wednesday, and now
22 I am told that these documents have arrived which have
23 a direct bearing not just on Ms Bristow's evidence but
24 may have a direct bearing on the evidence of other
25 witnesses that have been before us.
8
1 This is totally, totally unacceptable and I will ask
2 Mr Garnham not just to read the material that has been
3 handed over today, but I will ask him to look
4 particularly carefully at whether or not there is
5 anything in this latest batch of documents which in any
6 way contradicts the evidence that has been given to the
7 Inquiry, particularly by senior staff of Haringey and
8 elected members. If so, you should know, I will not
9 take that lightly and I will say no more on that at this
10 stage but I do not want anybody to be under any doubt
11 that I regard this situation as grave and I am trying to
12 express that in reasonable terms.
13 In the circumstances I do not think I have any
14 option but to suspend the proceedings until Mr Garnham
15 and his team have had a chance to look at these
16 documents. I would be grateful if you would not
17 disappear because I hope that the suspension will not
18 necessarily be so long as to disrupt our day's work. If
19 it is disrupted significantly then of course I will
20 consider that also.
21 I really am very upset about this and I hope,
22 Miss Lawson -- and I am sure you will -- I hope that you
23 will convey to Haringey exactly what I feel.
24 Thank you very much. We will suspend the
25 proceedings until such time as Mr Garnham is able to
9
1 tell me what the state of play is. Thank you.
2 (9.45 am)
3 (A short break)
4 (10.15 am)
5 MR GARNHAM: Sir, thank you for the time. Can I do two
6 things, first of all indicate the order in which we now
7 propose to take today's evidence, and secondly to set
8 out what we intend to do about the late disclosure of
9 these documents.
10 First as to order of witnesses, what I propose with
11 your leave to do after finishing this statement is to
12 continue taking the evidence of Mr Wheeler. While we do
13 that Mr Sheldon will continue working through the bundle
14 of documents with the intention of extracting those that
15 we think are material to this Inquiry. We will then
16 interpose when we can Mr Duncan's evidence and it may be
17 that we take him immediately after the lunch break,
18 because we have undertaken to him that we will get him
19 finished today, and I think that reasonable, sir. We
20 will I am afraid have to ask Ms Bristow to wait until
21 the end of today's evidence before we can get to her.
22 Sir, as to what we do about this late disclosure, it
23 has been suggested to me by one of the interested
24 parties that the Inquiry should send in a team to search
25 the relevant offices in Haringey Social Services. Sir,
10
1 I have concern about that for a number of reasons.
2 First, as you will know we have no legal power to send
3 people in to search and seize documents. Secondly, in
4 any event we do not have the expertise or the staff
5 trained in the necessary discipline to do that properly.
6 Thirdly, sir, the responsibility for producing these
7 documents lies fair and square on Haringey. Their
8 Director of Social Services is subject to a summons to
9 produce documents.
10 I propose to do nothing that will remove
11 responsibility for this task from Haringey to Inquiry
12 staff. The fault for late disclosure lies entirely with
13 Haringey. I am not prepared to suggest to you, sir,
14 that the Inquiry takes on any of the burden or any of
15 the ground for criticism. If Haringey's conduct in
16 relation to the disclosure of documents is worthy of
17 censure, sir, that censure should be given and it should
18 not be diluted by the Inquiry seeking to do something
19 for which it neither has the power nor the skills.
20 It does however seem to me, sir, that it would not
21 be right to leave matters as they stand. I would invite
22 you, sir, to ask the Chief Executive of Haringey Council
23 to provide this Inquiry with an affidavit, not a witness
24 statement, an affidavit, setting out first of all how it
25 comes about that the matters we have been addressing
11
1 this morning have come to pass and secondly itemising
2 point by point precisely what Haringey have done to
3 comply with their obligations to provide relevant
4 documents to this Inquiry. Sir, I think that that is
5 the best way to proceed but of course it is a matter for
6 you.
7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Garnham. I am content with the
8 change of the arrangements for taking the witnesses.
9 Thank you for that. I absolutely agree that this
10 Inquiry has no responsibility to get documents from
11 interested parties and interested parties must accept
12 that responsibility and shoulder the responsibility
13 solely and live with the consequences, and as for the
14 third point about the affidavit, that seems to me to be
15 eminently sensible and I am grateful to you for the
16 suggestion and that is what we will do.
17 MR GARNHAM: Perhaps we could require that by noon or by
18 one o'clock on Monday, so that it can be completed or
19 started today and finished on Monday.
20 THE CHAIRMAN: In the circumstances which we find ourselves
21 in at this stage of Phase I of the Inquiry I think that
22 that is absolutely essential.
23 MR GARNHAM: Thank you sir. One other matter that was
24 raised with me while we were breaking by one of the
25 interested parties is that they are quite rightly
12
1 concerned to see this documentation that we have had at
2 9 o'clock this morning. I of course acknowledge that
3 they must see it. Unfortunately a number of the
4 documents that are relevant contain material that will
5 have, in accordance with our previous practice, to be
6 redacted, in particular there are details of Miss B's
7 full name and that will have to come out.
8 We are already starting on that and it is a little
9 tricky to both read and digest the material at the same
10 time as copy it, but we are trying as best we can to do
11 that during the course of the morning. It will be our
12 aim to have that distributed by the time we recall
13 Mr Duncan since it is material to his evidence. It
14 should certainly be available by the time we get to
15 Ms Bristow.
16 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. As I indicated earlier,
17 I am concerned to be as fair to the interested parties
18 as is possible. Also I am concerned about the
19 well-being of the Inquiry team, who as I indicated the
20 other day have been put under pressure of this kind
21 before and who remain incredibly willing and cheerful,
22 but we will clearly have to proceed at the speed that
23 they can do it.
24 MR GARNHAM: Thank you. I think Ms Boye has something to
25 say.
13
1 THE CHAIRMAN: Ms Boye.
2 MS BOYE: Mr and Mrs Climbie just wanted me to say they are
3 incredibly concerned about what they have heard this
4 morning and for them censure is not the only issue. It
5 is clear that London Borough of Haringey does not take
6 this responsibility seriously and that we have no
7 confidence that documents we should have been provided
8 have been or will be in the future.
9 I think it is right to say that clearly the team who
10 are here cannot enjoy coming in front of you every
11 morning and being told off for whatever shed load of
12 documents they have had to produce again. It is
13 obviously right that they are being defeated at some
14 other level but nevertheless defeated they are being,
15 and our concern is that we wish to know all information
16 relating to the circumstances of Victoria's life in
17 Haringey, so we are not going to be content with
18 somebody else appearing, being shouted at, or the
19 responsibility being just left to Haringey, because we
20 do not believe that these documents will be delivered
21 and we think the fact that they have been found in
22 a drawer in the North Tottenham District Office at this
23 stage is quite frankly incredible.
24 MR GARNHAM: I entirely share Ms Boye's concerns. I too
25 have reservations about Haringey's competence or
14
1 willingness to comply with the directions of this
2 Inquiry to produce documents but the remedy is not
3 obvious. It may be were this Inquiry being conducted
4 under other legislation that it would be possible for us
5 to send in teams of expert document searchers when we
6 came across a situation where we simply did not feel we
7 could rely on the relevant party honouring their
8 obligations.
9 That is not the situation we are in, sir. We have
10 to do what we can with the material we can extract. We
11 have to apply what pressure we can to ensure that all
12 that is relevant is extracted but, sir, at the end of
13 the day I think we have to work on the assumption that
14 you may not feel that you are confident that you have
15 obtained everything that is relevant and you must draw
16 your conclusions in those circumstances. It is an
17 imperfect situation. We have to work as best we can
18 with it.
19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Garnham. Ms Boye, I fully
20 understand the point. Sorry Miss Lawson.
21 MISS LAWSON: I just wanted to make one point. Obviously
22 I have only had a very brief opportunity myself to go
23 through the documentation which has been produced today.
24 As far as I can see, it contains nothing which directly
25 relates to Victoria's life and death, so to that extent
15
1 it may be that that can be confirmed in due course,
2 I hope that there is nothing that would directly trouble
3 Mr and Mrs Climbie arising from it.
4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Miss Lawson. Ms Boye I fully
5 understand and accept, and I hope that I have conveyed
6 in as strong a language that I can convey, exactly what
7 I feel about the situation in which we find ourselves.
8 My overwhelming commitment -- and I hope I have
9 displayed this throughout and not just today, and I know
10 that I speak on behalf of my colleagues -- my
11 overwhelming commitment is to do a thorough job on this
12 Inquiry and to produce a report which will command the
13 confidence of everybody.
14 It is a source of great concern that I find myself
15 in this situation. I am not -- I hope I can say this
16 with a degree of modesty -- I am not known to let things
17 slip if I can avoid it and the situation that we find
18 ourselves in today is something that I will continue to
19 give thought to and discuss with the legal team, but do
20 convey to Mr and Mrs Climbie that I fully understand
21 their concerns.
22 There is just one other thing I ought to say,
23 a rather tedious thing, I do apologise. I do not know
24 who I am apologising on behalf of, but at 11 o'clock
25 there will be a fire drill. These buildings must be the
16
1 best fire protected buildings in the world. At
2 11 o'clock there will be a fire drill so I need to warn
3 you Mr Garnham that there will be a slight interruption.
4 I do not mean a drill, I mean an alarm test, sorry. Now
5 Mr Garnham.
6 MR GARNHAM: Mr Wheeler, please.
7 DCI PHILIP WHEELER (continued)
8 MR GARNHAM: Good morning. You are already under oath and
9 we do not need you to take the oath again, so please
10 have a seat.
11 DCI WHEELER: Thank you.
12 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr Wheeler could I just say I am pleased to
13 see you again and I hope that you are feeling well after
14 your experience with us.
15 DCI WHEELER: Thank you sir, I would just like to say thank
16 you to the people who have supported me over the last
17 couple of weeks. It has been a difficult two weeks and
18 I would like to say a heartfelt thanks.
19 MR GARNHAM: I add my thanks Mr Wheeler and particularly
20 gratitude to you personally that you have been willing
21 to return to this Inquiry despite the events of the
22 10th January without us needing to serve a summons on
23 you, but that you have done it voluntarily.
24 DCI WHEELER: You did not need a serve a summons on me.
25 MR GARNHAM: We are grateful for your continued cooperation.
17
1 Mr Wheeler, before the appalling attack on you
2 during the course of your giving evidence on
3 10th January, we were discussing the Child Protection
4 Manual. I want to return to that discussion in a moment
5 but first there are a number of questions arising out of
6 your evidence thus far that I want to put to you and
7 also a number of questions arising out of evidence of
8 the officers who have given evidence to this Inquiry
9 since you were last here.
10 DCI WHEELER: Yes.
11 MR GARNHAM: In regard to the latter issues, I think it is
12 right that you have received some indication from the
13 Inquiry as to the sort of evidence that has been given
14 since you were last here so that your attention was
15 drawn to the relevant passage.
16 DCI WHEELER: That is correct.
17 MR GARNHAM: Have you had the opportunity, in addition, to
18 follow any of the other evidence that has been given on
19 the Internet or otherwise?
20 DCI WHEELER: I have looked at some of the evidence of
21 people that have been relevant to me, sir, as I thought,
22 and as I said it has been a difficult two weeks. I have
23 managed to look at some of it.
24 MR GARNHAM: I am grateful for your efforts in that regard.
25 You agreed with me on 10th January that putting aside
18
1 the informant registrar work and the work with child
2 protection teams, those two major parts of your job,
3 your other duties were ones that could readily be
4 managed by a competent manager without taking up a great
5 deal of his or her time.
6 DCI WHEELER: I cannot recall saying that. They were tasks
7 that needed managing, that if you left them then they
8 were not that onerous, but they were tasks that needed
9 managing. There were staff that needed managing.
10 MR GARNHAM: Can I ask you to look at the statement that we
11 have had a look at from Detective Chief
12 Superintendent Fox in this regard. I wonder if you can
13 have volume 4.
14 DCI WHEELER: Do you mean Mr Cox?
15 MR GARNHAM: I do, it is not the first time the inability to
16 read has caused me difficulties. Do you have
17 page 52.513?
18 DCI WHEELER: I have.
19 MR GARNHAM: Paragraphs 58 to 63, just take a moment to
20 glance through it, and I will direct your answer to the
21 material parts in a moment. You will see in
22 paragraph 58 that Mr Cox says that the Firearms Inquiry
23 Team required very little active supervision. What do
24 you say to that?
25 DCI WHEELER: I would say, sir, that it shows how out of
19
1 touch the Chief Superintendent was. It required a lot
2 of supervision. There were nine staff with welfare
3 problems. There were a great deal of things the
4 Firearms Inquiry Team had to do that year. I had to
5 catch up on a lot of work that had not been done by the
6 manager of the Firearms Inquiry Team previous to me,
7 such as get rid of probably a thousand guns that had
8 been left in the armoury from the buy in.
9 The Firearms Inquiry Team had to be managed to move
10 offices. They were part of the national pilot project
11 for computerising the Firearms Inquiry Teams throughout
12 the country, and as I said to you before teams need to
13 be managed, teams need to be worked with, staff need to
14 be worked with, and if you leave them and do not do APAs
15 and if you do not do the work then they are not onerous
16 tasks, and I am afraid Mr Cox is completely out of touch
17 with the work that was needed to be done there.
18 MR GARNHAM: He says that the quality assurance units
19 required minimal supervision and would often report
20 direct to him, Cox.
21 DCI WHEELER: The Quality Assurance Unit was headed by
22 Peter Sterman. There was a lot of work that came across
23 my desk from the Quality Assurance Unit. They did need
24 supervision. There were three members of staff in that.
25 Again members of staff need to be supervised, they need
20
1 to be -- to have a point of reference for welfare
2 problems, they need to come and talk to you about
3 things. All of these need to be looked at but the
4 volume of work coming across my desk was quite large
5 from the Quality Assurance and from the Firearms Inquiry
6 Team.
7 MR GARNHAM: Paragraph 509 he says the Management Support
8 Unit was not created until October 1999 and you were not
9 their line manager.
10 DCI WHEELER: Well, the Management Support Unit was what we
11 called the secretariat and the sergeant in charge of the
12 secretariat when it was formed was DS McDonagh and it
13 was always taken that I was his line manager and I would
14 be responsible for his APAs.
15 MR GARNHAM: Did you do his APAs?
16 DCI WHEELER: I cannot remember. I presume that I did.
17 I think that I did. Sergeant McDonagh is in the room
18 actually, but I cannot remember, I presume that I did.
19 MR GARNHAM: He says -- that is Cox says, paragraph 60, he
20 is at a loss to understand what supervision a garage man
21 required.
22 DCI WHEELER: Again the garage man was a moot point because
23 there were 90-odd cars that were used on the estate by
24 the Crime OCU and the number of problems that emanated
25 from using 90-odd cars and detectives depositing them
21
1 all over the place were immense and the garage man again
2 was somebody who had problems who needed somebody to
3 talk to and he came and talked to me at length sometimes
4 and again he needed managing and he needed some support.
5 MR GARNHAM: Cox says that the training portfolio was shared
6 with an HEO, was not an arduous responsibility and there
7 was a full-time training officer in post.
8 DCI WHEELER: That is not correct. In May the HEO
9 relinquished all responsibility for training. Mr Cox
10 gave me the responsibility and the reason he gave me the
11 responsibility, he said, because I told him that really
12 it was too arduous a task with all the other things, the
13 reason he gave me the responsibility was that he wanted
14 a police officer to be in charge of training because
15 then officers would turn up to a training, and that is
16 the reason.
17 The HEO relinquished all responsibility for training
18 and I would ask that Rachel Burford, the HEO, be spoken
19 to regarding that. I took over external training and
20 training, and yes there was a sergeant in post to do the
21 training. I took over the management of it. I received
22 e-mails and files on training from all over the place
23 and I continued to receive those until I left the unit.
24 MR GARNHAM: He says that the stores position which you said
25 you managed was vacant for much of 1999.
22
1 DCI WHEELER: It was indeed. Then John Wargrove came and
2 took over the stores position. The management of the
3 stores came through the Secretariat really and any
4 problems that he had, he first of all came to me then
5 Mike McDonagh took over responsibility for it and that
6 was a minor part.
7 MR GARNHAM: In summary, Cox says that your role was not too
8 much for an officer of your rank.
9 DCI WHEELER: It might well have been had I not had the
10 responsibility for the informant system on a full-time
11 basis. If I had had the staff, as I have put in the
12 reports, if I had had the staff to deal with things then
13 I may well have been able to deal with things and manage
14 them but as I gave you the analogy before, I was the
15 mechanic in terms of the informant work and I was the
16 actual garage manager in terms of other things but the
17 number of files that came across my desk from
18 informants, from north west London, was immense.
19 MR GARNHAM: He says, paragraph 45 of his statement -- and
20 I will come back to what he said in oral evidence
21 later -- he says that you clearly understood that your
22 post involved line management of the CPTs. He expected
23 you to have a strategic management role acting as
24 support and mentor and active hands-on S I A role in
25 appropriate cases, did not expect you to have day-to-day
23
1 management supervision of individual CPTs but he
2 certainly denies that you were simply told to provide
3 administrative support.
4 DCI WHEELER: I took over the job from DCI Dave Brown and
5 the only briefing I got in regard to the job was after
6 the nanny case I was involved in I was called up to
7 Hendon and told I was promoted yesterday and you are
8 here tomorrow and you are taking over Dave Brown's job,
9 and that was the briefing I got, and I went to Hendon
10 the very next day and started working as Area DCI and
11 Dave Brown gave me the briefing as to what his job was
12 and I followed on from that.
13 MR GARNHAM: He goes on to say that if you were absent,
14 Detective Inspector Mick Anderson would carry out your
15 job. He could complete the jobs required within
16 a morning and still manage the CPTs he was accountable
17 for.
18 DCI WHEELER: DI Anderson never deputised for me. DI Mick
19 Anderson deputised for Dave Brown when Dave Brown was
20 working. DI Anderson never deputised for me. He is
21 confusing it in terms of the roles. He has got it
22 wrong. He is not misleading anybody, he is confusing
23 the two people that had the job, i.e. Dave Brown and
24 myself.
25 MR GARNHAM: What has emerged from the oral evidence that we
24
1 have heard since you were last here is that there is at
2 least some difference of view about the nature of your
3 responsibilities and I want to ask you about what has
4 been said. Ms Akers told us, Day 45 page 24, that she
5 did not believe that you thought your responsibilities
6 towards the CPTs were limited to purely administrative
7 matters, so let me underline why that is significant.
8 She is saying that she does not believe that you thought
9 your responsibilities were so limited. In other words,
10 she thought you were -- and this is her word -- "lying"
11 when you told us that you understood your role was
12 limited in that way.
13 DCI WHEELER: Well sir, all I can say is that I took over
14 the job, the responsibilities that Dave Brown had and
15 I think I told you at length last time what
16 responsibilities he had and I took over that role. My
17 understanding of the role was that it was
18 administrative, I dealt with the files as they came
19 across the desk and I processed those. In terms of any
20 other responsibilities I did not have any
21 responsibilities and I had no job description, so they
22 told me that I did --
23 MR GARNHAM: You went further before, you said Cox had
24 expressly told you that your responsibility with regard
25 to the CPTs was limited to the administrative --
25
1 DCI WHEELER: He did indeed. I went and spoke to him after
2 one of the reports and he said do your best, do the best
3 you can and it is simply administrative and that is all.
4 MR GARNHAM: Mr Cox said much the same thing as Ms Akers,
5 Day 46 page 91, he says you were taking operational
6 responsibility but that you have decided to tell this
7 Inquiry something different.
8 DCI WHEELER: That is not correct. I was SIO in certain
9 jobs but there was no way that I took operational
10 responsibility or supervision for CPTs. I took over the
11 role that Dave Brown had as Area DCI.
12 MR GARNHAM: Later, page 93 of the same day, he said that it
13 would be impossible to carry out administrative
14 functions in relation to CPTs unless you were taking
15 a degree of operational responsibility. He qualified
16 that by saying that he did not expect you to run each
17 CPT on a daily basis but his point was that you simply
18 could not do the administrative functions unless you had
19 a role in the operational matters.
20 DCI WHEELER: That is not correct. The administrative
21 functions were to sign duty states, sign expenses and
22 that is what I did.
23 MR GARNHAM: Also conduct annual appraisals?
24 DCI WHEELER: Annual appraisals in the Met Police are
25 conducted by officers who sometimes do not see officers
26
1 for six to nine months and they are conducted in the way
2 that officers bring evidence to the appraiser and the
3 officer does the appraisal. I saw the work, the
4 paperwork of the officers. I also saw them at meetings
5 and I also had contact with them on the telephone when
6 they telephoned me at Becke House. So there was
7 evidence that I could -- it is not the best way to do
8 appraisals but that is the way the Met Police does them
9 in many ways.
10 MR GARNHAM: Mr Cox's point I think was that there was
11 simply no way in which you could do a half decent job on
12 appraisals unless you had some feel on the operational
13 tasks which these DIs were doing.
14 DCI WHEELER: Detective Superintendent Akers had worked with
15 me for two months in 1997 when she did my appraisal and
16 she did it for two years, so there was no way she could
17 do my appraisal either, but it was done and it was done
18 in that manner, and that is the way unfortunately the
19 Met Police sometimes have to do appraisals. I have not
20 had an appraisal since 1999 either.
21 MR GARNHAM: DCC Craik told us, Day 49 page 138, that there
22 was absolutely no sense in which your role as Area DCI
23 could be described as administrative only.
24 DCI WHEELER: I do not think I said my role as Area DCI was
25 administrative only. I said that the CPT role was
27
1 administrative only. The Area DCI role, the core role
2 was informants, the role that I took over was to deal
3 with every single informant file that came from north
4 west London boroughs and Operation Welling to deal with
5 every single covert operations file that came from North
6 West London, and those all came across my desk, and if
7 you consider that North West London was probably the
8 fifth largest police force in the country at the time,
9 I think you can imagine the size of the task that I was
10 getting across my desk daily.
11 MR GARNHAM: The context of those remarks by Craik are that
12 he was asserting that in no sense was any part of your
13 role as Area DCI merely administrative.
14 DCI WHEELER: I do not see how he can say that because
15 Mr Craik never spoke to me about the Area DCI's role.
16 The role that I took over was the role that I was given
17 that Dave Brown had and Mr Craik never spoke to me about
18 administrative or operation roles or any other role.
19 MR GARNHAM: It is of obvious concern to this Inquiry that
20 there seem to be a series of senior officers who had
21 a very different understanding of what you were doing
22 than you did. It does, does it not, lead to two
23 possibilities. Either you were not doing what they
24 thought you were doing or, alternatively, that you were
25 and that what you are telling us is not the truth.
28
1 First of all, those are the two possibilities.
2 DCI WHEELER: There may well be other possibilities but at
3 the moment I cannot think of them, but yes I agree with
4 you.
5 MR GARNHAM: But you would refute the last as I take it?
6 DCI WHEELER: I would certainly refute the last, yes.
7 I would explain it by simply saying that by October of
8 that year I had three different line managers for the
9 tasks that I was doing.
10 MR GARNHAM: They were?
11 DCI WHEELER: Mr Copson for the work that I was doing on
12 quality assurance and training and on the Firearms
13 Inquiry Team. Sue Akers for the Child Protection Team
14 and by that time Mr Camilletti had come and he was my
15 line manager for informants, so I had three different
16 line managers and I can well understand how they did not
17 know what I was doing.
18 MR GARNHAM: It must follow from what you have told us, must
19 it not, that if you were not actively managing,
20 operationally managing the CPTs then no one was?
21 DCI WHEELER: I think that is probably a correct statement,
22 yes, and I pointed that out, that I was not able to do
23 that on several occasions.
24 MR GARNHAM: That certainly was the view of Mr Kelleher,
25 Day 53 page 196, and I think you would agree with that
29
1 much at least.
2 DCI WHEELER: I think so, yes.
3 MR GARNHAM: There was also some doubt cast in the evidence
4 we have heard about exactly how busy you were. Ms Akers
5 said, Day 45 page 17, that you were less busy than every
6 other SIO detective superintendent and detective chief
7 superintendent in the area. In other words everyone was
8 busy but you were the least busy of a busy bunch.
9 DCI WHEELER: Well if everyone was busy then I was busy as
10 well.
11 MR GARNHAM: That much I think nobody disagrees with. What
12 they do say is that you were the least busy amongst
13 them.
14 DCI WHEELER: Again it shows the lack of knowledge of what
15 I was actually doing, what I was trying to achieve, the
16 improvements I was trying to bring in on several fronts
17 from jobs that I had taken over that had been left in
18 a malaise through people not doing the job properly
19 before, and I was doing many things, okay I was not as
20 busy as the Commissioner but I do not see what relevance
21 somebody else being busy has got to me being busy.
22 MR GARNHAM: Would you agree that you were the least busy of
23 that rank?
24 DCI WHEELER: No.
25 MR GARNHAM: There were others who were less busy on their
30
1 core responsibility than you?
2 DCI WHEELER: I would not agree with that at all. I worked
3 very long hours in order do the job I was doing. I was
4 working 10, 12, 13 hour days at that time and that was
5 more than some other DCIs.
6 MR GARNHAM: Two of the officers we have heard from, Akers
7 and Cox, said that you had help from a detective
8 sergeant, Mike McDonagh, and that in that respect you
9 were better off than your predecessor. First of all
10 were you better off in that respect than your
11 predecessor?
12 DCI WHEELER: No, I was not, but Mike McDonagh helped in the
13 informants register, in the registration of informants
14 when I was off, when I was on annual leave, and there
15 was a week that I was off on compassionate leave in that
16 time. Mike McDonagh was a kind of deputy person who
17 would come in and do the work but at all other times
18 I was the person who actually did the typing of minutes
19 and actual dealing with the informant files.
20 MR GARNHAM: Akers went on to say that in response to the
21 memos that we looked at last time you were here, in
22 which you set out the pressure you were under, she says
23 that she told you something to this effect, and I put it
24 that way because these were my words that she adopted.
25 She said something to the effect of perhaps if you spent
31
1 less time writing these memos and more time doing your
2 job then there would not be a problem or there would be
3 less of a problem.
4 DCI WHEELER: Sir, those reports probably took me about an
5 hour and we are talking about three reports. I have
6 never written reports like that on any structured job
7 that I have had before. They were professional,
8 structured, argued reports about the difficulty of
9 a senior officer being able to do the job to my senior
10 officers so that something would be done about it.
11 MR GARNHAM: Copson told us that you were hard-working
12 according to your own priorities, that your priorities
13 were not his priorities, nor the priorities you ought to
14 have had. Day 45 page 160 for your note sir.
15 DCI WHEELER: All I can say to that is I turned up at
16 Becke House Hendon and did my job in terms of informants
17 and managing groups of people and I did it thoroughly
18 and properly and I think I am well known for doing
19 a thorough and proper job and I do not really know what
20 he is talking about there sir.
21 MR GARNHAM: I think what he is talking about is something
22 that I had canvassed with you last time you were here.
23 He said that the reason you had difficulty fulfilling
24 your child protection responsibilities was much more to
25 do with your extra curricular interests than with any
32
1 conflicting core business.
2 DCI WHEELER: I read Mr Copson's statement on extra
3 curricular business. What I do in my time is to do with
4 me. The Human Rights Act says that you have a right to
5 privacy and therefore what I do in my own time is to do
6 with me. I did not do any work to do with anything that
7 I do in my own time at work. I worked 10, 12 and 13
8 hour days. I do a lot of extraneous stuff, as you well
9 know from the c.v that you have had put before you, in
10 terms of running attendance centres and all sorts of
11 other things. It does not sap my energy for work. I am
12 a person with extreme levels of energy. I do all sorts
13 of things and it does not alter what I do at work.
14 I worked this time 10, 12 and 13 hours a day.
15 MR GARNHAM: I think his point was a little more subtle.
16 What he was saying as I understood his evidence was that
17 any one of your extra curricular activity would be
18 wholly unobjectionable and in many ways laudable but
19 that because you had so many of them your attention was
20 diverted away from what should have been your core work
21 to these other matters and that that affected your
22 ability to do the job you should have been doing.
23 I think that was his point.
24 DCI WHEELER: It may be his point but it has got nothing do
25 with him what I do in my spare time and if he thought
33
1 that at the time he should have done something about it
2 as one of my line managers.
3 MR GARNHAM: He says he did. He told us, Day 45 page 162,
4 that he wanted you to devote yourself to CP work,
5 amongst other reasons because it would then be easier to
6 identify whether you were doing that work and his
7 understanding was that he had indicated that to you.
8 DCI WHEELER: I could not devote myself to child protection
9 work because the informant work needed to be done and if
10 I had not done the informant work which was the core
11 role then it would not have been done and that needed
12 doing.
13 MR GARNHAM: Was there any conversation that you had with
14 him or any other officer in which it was suggested by
15 the other officer that you should give up some of the
16 other tasks you had on your plate so that you could
17 concentrate on CP work?
18 DCI WHEELER: Mr Copson, by about January, when he was
19 starting to do work for Commander Howlett regarding the
20 formation of SO5, he said --
21 MR GARNHAM: Which year please?
22 DCI WHEELER: In January 2000. He said that the role of
23 Area DCI should be split into Area DCI and a dedicated
24 DCI for child protection. At that time I probably
25 agreed with him but I cannot remember any conversation
34
1 with Mr Copson where he said that I ought to give up
2 roles. It would not have been possible.
3 MR GARNHAM: Thank you. Mr Cox told us, Day 46, page 87,
4 sir, that your job was not substantially larger than the
5 one you took over from your predecessor.
6 DCI WHEELER: Sir, all I can say about that is that
7 Dave Brown's job was much smaller. I was added -- the
8 roles that were added to the job were in charge of
9 training, in charge of the external training budget, in
10 charge of quality assurance and then when the
11 Secretariat came along, in charge of the Secretariat,
12 garage man if you like, Firearms Inquiry Team.
13 MR GARNHAM: These are things you say that are additional to
14 those that your predecessor had?
15 DCI WHEELER: Those were additional to what my predecessor
16 had and they were added on to it and I objected at the
17 time to training in particular because that was
18 a massive addition to the role and the training unit had
19 been scaled down to one sergeant.
20 MR GARNHAM: I imagine you would say the same is true of any
21 comparison between you and your successor. Mr Kelleher
22 told us that you were worse off in terms of the time you
23 could give to child protection than your successor is
24 now because you had these additional responsibilities.
25 DCI WHEELER: I believe that the SO5 numbers of child
35
1 protection teams that a DCI actually supervises is five.
2 When I became a DCI for SO5 I actually had nine but
3 I think it is five now and that is probably a reasonable
4 amount of child protection teams.
5 MR GARNHAM: He also said you were worse off than other DCIs
6 elsewhere in London. I put this to you in order to give
7 you the full range of views on your performance.
8 DCI WHEELER: I appreciate that. I guess in some ways
9 I was, because I was doing the Area DCI's full-time role
10 and other duties as well. As I gave the example last
11 time, I was here on central area, there was an Area DCI
12 and an AO doing the informants job and a separate DCI
13 doing the child protection job.
14 MR GARNHAM: One of the matters we discussed last time you
15 were here was your attendance, or non-attendance to be
16 more exact, at the senior supervisors' meeting and in
17 the light of what you told us I asked Ms Akers about
18 that. She said, Day 45 page 23, that the first time she
19 knew of your wish to attend senior supervisors' meetings
20 was when she heard your evidence to this Inquiry. Is
21 she right about that? Did you not tell her?
22 DCI WHEELER: I do not think I ever did express a wish
23 specifically to attend them. I think in my report I put
24 down the fact that the difficulty was that in terms of
25 progressing the role of child protection there was
36
1 a difficulty in not going to those --
2 MR GARNHAM: Why did you not tell her if it was bothering
3 you? If you thought it was affecting the way you did
4 your job, why did you not tell her?
5 DCI WHEELER: Because she was in charge of child protection.
6 It was not my role to actually supervise child
7 protection teams so therefore I did not say anything
8 about it.
9 MR GARNHAM: Quite. So why do you make the point now?
10 DCI WHEELER: It is a point -- again it is a point that
11 I make about the supervision of child protection teams,
12 about being in the loop, being in the know.
13 MR GARNHAM: But if there is substance in that criticism of
14 the way the Met was using you and managing its CPT,
15 surely it behoved you to tell those senior to you that
16 that was a concern.
17 DCI WHEELER: I told them of my concerns in the three
18 reports that I wrote to them in 1999 and --
19 MR GARNHAM: That this was one of them?
20 DCI WHEELER: Not specifically, no.
21 MR GARNHAM: Why do you raise it now in your evidence to the
22 Inquiry?
23 DCI WHEELER: I have not raised it in new evidence to the
24 Inquiry. It was mentioned in my third report I think.
25 MR GARNHAM: So you say that it was made clear to some of
37
1 those senior to you that you thought this was what
2 should happen?
3 DCI WHEELER: In my third report I mentioned the fact that
4 it was difficult in being a DCI with some responsibility
5 for child protection and not going to those meetings and
6 I was the only DCI in the Met who did not go to those
7 meetings.
8 MR GARNHAM: This is the third one at the beginning of the
9 year 2000?
10 DCI WHEELER: The January report.
11 MR GARNHAM: January 2000?
12 DCI WHEELER: Yes.
13 MR GARNHAM: Ms Akers said that she discussed this with you
14 and in particular she discussed it with other DIs,
15 making it clear that you and she were splitting the task
16 so that she took on what she called the strategic
17 responsibility which would involve attendance at that
18 senior supervisors' meeting and that you dealt with
19 day-to-day and administrative matters.
20 DCI WHEELER: I cannot remember any conversation like that
21 taking place but it may well have done. I cannot
22 remember any conversation.
23 MR GARNHAM: Do you know whether that was relayed to the
24 DIs?
25 DCI WHEELER: I do not know.
38
1 MR GARNHAM: Would you have been content had it been?
2 DCI WHEELER: To say that I had administrative
3 responsibilities, yes.
4 MR GARNHAM: You will have noted that I read the bit so
5 I got it right what she said, namely "day-to-day and
6 administrative responsibilities".
7 DCI WHEELER: Well, I do not know what "day-to-day" would
8 mean.
9 MR GARNHAM: It is a fair point but I understood her in the
10 context in which she was speaking to be referring to
11 operational responsibilities for the teams whereas she
12 was taking a higher level strategic responsibility.
13 DCI WHEELER: All I can say to that is that I took over the
14 roles and I was told to take over the role that
15 Dave Brown took over, and as I understood it there was
16 no responsibility in that respect that Dave Brown had,
17 so I did not take that up.
18 MR GARNHAM: She said that she felt that your wish to be
19 involved in the senior supervisors' meeting was rather
20 more related to your occupation, preoccupation with
21 status and rank than it was with the substantive work of
22 the CP teams.
23 DCI WHEELER: Sir, I do not even know what that means
24 really. I have no preoccupation with status, rank.
25 I turn up for the Met Police, I work hard and that is
39
1 it.
2 MR GARNHAM: I think what she was saying was that these were
3 meetings taking police at New Scotland Yard, that it was
4 the sort of thing you would like to be seen to be going
5 to and that that was your reason for being interested in
6 this rather than any concern as to the way it might
7 affect your job.
8 DCI WHEELER: I think that might apply to other people but
9 it certainly would not apply to me.
10 MR GARNHAM: You would presumably agree with what
11 Mr Kelleher told us, namely that if you were expected to
12 run the CPTs, in other words if you had an operational
13 responsibility, then you should have gone to these
14 meetings?
15 DCI WHEELER: In an ideal world the DCI who was in charge
16 and supervising CPTs should have gone to those meetings,
17 yes, and on every other area, as I understand it, the
18 DCIs in charge of child protection did.
19 MR GARNHAM: That is a bit of a two edged sword from your
20 point of view, is it not, because it proceeds on the
21 assumption that you had some involvement, direct
22 involvement in running the CPTs since that was the
23 premise on which Mr Kelleher made that point. In other
24 words, if you are expected to be involved in the
25 day-to-day running of the teams then you need to be able
40
1 to go the supervisors' meeting; if you are not, you do
2 not.
3 DCI WHEELER: My concentration has gone a bit over the last
4 couple of weeks so you will have to excuse me.
5 MR GARNHAM: Let me try again.
6 DCI WHEELER: Put it again if you can. I do not see the
7 point you are making.
8 MR GARNHAM: What Kelleher was saying was that if you were
9 expected to operationally run the CP teams then you
10 should have reasonably wanted to go to those meetings,
11 the corollary of which is that if you were not
12 responsible for the operation of the CP teams there was
13 no need for you to be at that senior supervisors'
14 meeting.
15 DCI WHEELER: I guess he is right. If you were actually
16 supposed to be in charge of CPTs and supervising then
17 you would have been expected to go to those meetings.
18 MR GARNHAM: But you say you were not so involved, that was
19 not the nature of your involvement, so why was there any
20 need for you to be at these meetings?
21 DCI WHEELER: Well, sir there would have been if we had had
22 an Area DCI, a DCI in charge of child protection and
23 that is what Mr Copson was putting forward in January
24 and that is what I was suggesting by January, that we
25 ought to do that.
41
1 MR GARNHAM: I see. So we should consider your evidence
2 about your need to attend the senior supervisors'
3 meeting on the basis that you had that need only if your
4 role was operational, which you say it was not?
5 DCI WHEELER: I would guess so. My role was not operational
6 in terms of supervising to any degree the child
7 protection teams and therefore I was not expected to go
8 and I did not go to those meetings.
9 MR GARNHAM: You see, Mr Wheeler, is not the reality that
10 your other core work, your other roles that you
11 performed at this time were not so onerous as to prevent
12 you properly performing the task of managing these CPTs
13 on an operational basis?
14 DCI WHEELER: Sir, the tasks that I took over were onerous.
15 They were added to and became more onerous and that is
16 the reason that I put those reports in, to say that the
17 structure of the job that I had taken over and that grew
18 and grew throughout the year was totally wrong.
19 MR GARNHAM: And that the truth is that you simply failed to
20 get a grip on the CPTs and their management?
21 DCI WHEELER: Sir, I am a child protection detective over
22 the last few years and if that would have been my role,
23 I would have liked to have got a grip over the CPTs and
24 done a lot of work with them, but it was not my role, it
25 was not the role that I took over from Dave Brown. My
42
1 core role was informants and it was a 40 hour a week
2 job.
3 MR GARNHAM: And that the consequences of that was that
4 those CPTs scattered around north west London simply did
5 not have the sort of leadership that you should have
6 been providing them with.
7 DCI WHEELER: I dispute that I should have been providing
8 them with leadership at all. I quite agree that in the
9 management structure that we had on North West London
10 there was not a great deal of leadership.
11 MR GARNHAM: Did it not occur to you that if you were not
12 providing that leadership then no one was and that that
13 was manifestly unacceptable?
14 DCI WHEELER: It was unacceptable and I tried to do
15 something about it in terms of the reports that I wrote
16 to say that the structure of the job that I had was
17 untenable really.
18 MR GARNHAM: Should you not have been crying out saying,
19 "There are six or seven CPTs in our area that simply
20 have no direct line manager. They are operating in
21 a vacuum"?
22 DCI WHEELER: My role was to run the informants and I took
23 over that role from Dave Brown and I made sure that that
24 job was done properly. I made sure that all the other
25 jobs that I was given were done properly. I do not see
43
1 that that was my responsibility to say that. I said
2 what the difficulties were that I had.
3 MR GARNHAM: You say that but there was no one else who was
4 in that position of line management responsibility for
5 the CPTs, was there?
6 DCI WHEELER: There was not. Again, as I said, I was
7 administrative line manager and I was not any
8 operational line manager at all.
9 MR GARNHAM: But you knew that therefore there was no
10 operational line manager. Who decides your priorities?
11 Who decides that the informant registrar work takes
12 priority over the child protection work?
13 DCI WHEELER: That was the role that I was given by Mr Cox
14 on the day that I took over the Area DCI's job and that
15 was the main role that the Area DCI always had.
16 MR GARNHAM: Is the truth not that you had both roles and
17 you chose to give more priority to the informant role
18 than to the CP role?
19 DCI WHEELER: That is not the truth at all. My core job was
20 to deal with informants and payments of informants and
21 covert operations and files to do with that.
22 MR GARNHAM: Who was it who said that that was your main job
23 rather than the CP job?
24 DCI WHEELER: Mr Cox gave me the job on the day that I went
25 up to Hendon and told me that my job would be the
44
1 Area DCI's job and taking over from Dave Brown.
2 Dave Brown's core job was running the informant system.
3 MR GARNHAM: So you say you got the clear impression that
4 priority was the informant job because of the way you
5 took over from Brown?
6 DCI WHEELER: Without doubt, yes.
7 MR GARNHAM: On a number of occasions in this context senior
8 officers have called in to question your competence and
9 I need to put that to you. I asked Akers whether she
10 was now, as of today, or as of the day she gave
11 evidence, content that you were doing your job
12 competently.
13 She made two criticisms of you in her answer. She
14 said firstly that she was disappointed that you were not
15 visiting the CPTs except Camden, for the note that is
16 Day 45 page 13. Then, two pages later, she says that
17 she was also disappointed that you were not ensuring the
18 competencies of the CPT DIs.
19 Let us take those in turn. First of all you were
20 not attending, not visiting, being seen on the ground at
21 the CPT offices except Camden.
22 DCI WHEELER: Sir, that was not part of my job, it was never
23 part of my job description, it was not part of the job
24 that I took over from Dave Brown. I was never asked by
25 any senior officer if I was visiting CPTs. I was never
45
1 told to visit CPTs at all.
2 MR GARNHAM: You were telling us about your visits to CPTs.
3 Why were you visiting Camden? Were you visiting Camden,
4 your old base?
5 DCI WHEELER: I have looked at my duty state. I visited
6 Camden once between February and October.
7 MR GARNHAM: 1999?
8 DCI WHEELER: 1999. After October I visited Camden several
9 times and the reason that I visited Camden several times
10 was because I was running several children's homes jobs
11 from that CPT and a new one had come in and therefore
12 I needed to do some work on it. The other ones that
13 were being run there were not progressing as fast as
14 I wanted them to and the DI at Camden was off sick.
15 I had to go down there in my role as SIO and I think it
16 is accepted that I was SIO in certain jobs and really
17 what I am being criticised for there is actually doing
18 my job.
19 If there had been other homes jobs elsewhere then
20 I would have been SIO there as I was at Brent with
21 Operation Welling earlier in the year.
22 MR GARNHAM: Apart from those two instances did you ever
23 visit the CPT offices?
24 DCI WHEELER: Yes, I did, I visited Southall because they
25 requested that I went to visit them because there was
46
1 a problem. Brent I supervised a child murder.
2 MR GARNHAM: From their office?
3 DCI WHEELER: From their office, yes.
4 MR GARNHAM: Haringey, Highgate?
5 DCI WHEELER: Never. Never asked to do and never part of my
6 job.
7 MR GARNHAM: Should you not have assumed that that was
8 something you needed to do, even given the limited
9 supervisory role that you had in respect of CPTs?
10 DCI WHEELER: No, because it was not part of the job that
11 I was handed over to me by Dave Brown. He had not been
12 doing the job and therefore it was not handed over to me
13 by him. I was not expected to -- my core role was to be
14 there at Becke House to pay -- to actually deal with
15 informants.
16 MR GARNHAM: The second criticism as I have said is that you
17 were not ensuring the competencies of the DIs. That is
18 a view that was expressed by both Akers and by Kelleher,
19 that you were expected to ensure their competencies and
20 you did not.
21 DCI WHEELER: I cannot see how I would be expected to do
22 that if there was no supervision role to do with CPT.
23 MR GARNHAM: The factual assertion is correct, is it not,
24 you were not taking steps to ensure their competencies?
25 DCI WHEELER: The only way that I could take steps was
47
1 through the meetings that I had with them through the
2 paperwork that was coming through to me and there was no
3 other way that I could, sir.
4 MR GARNHAM: But factually it is correct you were not, you
5 would say it is not possible or part of your job?
6 DCI WHEELER: It was not part of my job first of all, and
7 secondly it would not have been possible given the
8 number of other tasks that I was given during the year.
9 MR GARNHAM: It must follow from that that you were not
10 ensuring that, you may have a good reason for not doing
11 so.
12 DCI WHEELER: My reason for not ensuring that sir is that it
13 was not my job to do that. Nobody ever said that it was
14 and I did not have a job description that told me it
15 was.
16 MR GARNHAM: I understand you to say that, and the Panel
17 will consider what you say about that, but I want to
18 make sure that we are on common ground that as a matter
19 of fact you did not ensure their competencies for all
20 the reasons you have just told us.
21 DCI WHEELER: Apart from at the meetings and through the
22 paperwork and through actual telephone conversations
23 that they had sometimes when they sought advice from me.
24 MR GARNHAM: But not in a systematic way?
25 DCI WHEELER: Not in a systematic way. It was not part of
48
1 the job that was handed over to me.
2 MR GARNHAM: Nor was anybody else?
3 DCI WHEELER: I do not think so no.
4 MR GARNHAM: Some more specific criticism has been made of
5 you. DCC Craik said you should have had the capacity to
6 dip sample the work of the CPTs, Day 49 page 137.
7 DCI WHEELER: I think again that shows how out of touch
8 Mr Craik was with things because I took over the job
9 from a man who could not dip sample CPT crimes because
10 he had never had a crimes computer course and therefore
11 the job that I took over.
12 MR GARNHAM: But had you?
13 DCI WHEELER: I had, sir.
14 MR GARNHAM: And you were brought into this role, you were
15 recruited to this role amongst other reasons because of
16 your child protection experience?
17 DCI WHEELER: Can you tell me who said that, sir?
18 MR GARNHAM: Off the top of my head, no.
19 DCI WHEELER: Yes, I could operate.
20 MR GARNHAM: Let me come back to you on that because I am
21 confident that that is what we have been told, that one
22 of the reasons for recruiting you was your experience --
23 DCI WHEELER: I was not told that, sir.
24 MR GARNHAM: Nevertheless, you had that experience?
25 DCI WHEELER: I had several years' experience as a child
49
1 protection DI, yes.
2 MR GARNHAM: And you had had the CRIS training?
3 DCI WHEELER: Yes.
4 MR GARNHAM: You were capable of dip sampling in that way?
5 DCI WHEELER: I was capable. It was not part of the job
6 that was given over to me by Dave Brown. Simply he
7 could not do the job, therefore the job did not entail
8 dip sampling.
9 MR GARNHAM: I can see why you say he could not do it
10 because he did not have the skills, but you did, and
11 given the role you had got, why did you not use those
12 skills?
13 DCI WHEELER: Because I was told to take over Dave Brown's
14 job and responsibilities. He did not have that
15 responsibility. Ipso facto neither did I.
16 MR GARNHAM: That is a little short-sighted, is it not,
17 Mr Wheeler?
18 DCI WHEELER: Not really sir.
19 MR GARNHAM: You bring to the job different skills and
20 attributes from Mr Brown. Two of those are ones we have
21 just discussed. Surely in the way you carry out your
22 job you use those to better perform the work?
23 DCI WHEELER: In many ways I hope that I did and --
24 MR GARNHAM: But why not this way?
25 DCI WHEELER: Because it was not part of the role that was
50
1 given over to me.
2 MR GARNHAM: But you are not, especially in the absence of
3 a proper job description which you complain about, you
4 are not limited simply to replicate precisely what
5 Mr Brown did, are you? You can use your own initiative?
6 DCI WHEELER: I was given the job of Area DCI and I was told
7 by Mr Cox to do the same things that Dave Brown did.
8 I did the same things that Dave Brown did and I was
9 added to -- those responsibilities were added to
10 throughout the years sir.
11 MR GARNHAM: If dip sampling the work of CPTs so as to
12 ensure they are going about things in the right way is
13 a good idea and you are capable of it, surely you do not
14 look on the fact that your predecessor did not do it as
15 a reason for you not doing it?
16 DCI WHEELER: None of my predecessors had that role.
17 MR GARNHAM: Even though you have the skills? The role
18 would have benefited from you doing it so why not do it?
19 DCI WHEELER: None of my predecessors had that role. I was
20 not asked to do it. It was not in any job description.
21 I was not told to do it therefore I did not do it. It
22 was not my responsibility.
23 MR GARNHAM: He said you also had the capacity to conduct
24 some form of quality control whether by dip sampling or
25 in some other way. Not part of your role?
|
