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Archived Transcript for 14 January 2002: Pages
1 to 50
1
1 Monday, 14th January 2002
2 (10.00 am)
3 THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
4 MR GARNHAM: Good morning. Mr Sheldon will take the first
5 witness sir.
6 MR SHELDON: Thank you sir. Detective Chief Superintendent
7 Cox please.
8 DETECTIVE CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT DAVID COX (sworn)
9 MR SHELDON: Please have a seat Mr Cox. Good morning.
10 MR COX: Morning.
11 MR SHELDON: Could you confirm your full name and
12 professional address please.
13 MR COX: David Martin Cox, Detective Chief Superintendent in
14 the Metropolitan Police. Jubilee House is at Putney.
15 MR SHELDON: You have made two statements for use by this
16 Inquiry, copies of which I hope are in front of you.
17 Sir, for your note they are both in volume 4 of the
18 green files, the first at page 52.501, the second at
19 page 52.513. Would you have a look at the last page of
20 both those statements please. Have you signed them
21 both?
22 MR COX: I have.
23 MR SHELDON: And are you happy that the facts and matters in
24 them are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
25 MR COX: They are. There is one mistake I am sad to admit.
2
1 MR SHELDON: Perhaps we can deal with that now. Which
2 statement is it in?
3 MR COX: In the second statement, it is the papers that were
4 disclosed to the Inquiry. Unfortunately there has been
5 an error between myself and my solicitors. The
6 documents attached to the second statement, G,H and I,
7 are in fact three other reports which I had given the
8 solicitor but are not the ones referred to in my
9 statement.
10 MR SHELDON: So you have three documents which you would
11 like to substitute as G,H and I?
12 MR COX: You are most welcome to them. They are in fact
13 copies of staffing lists from 1998 and similar forms
14 from 2000 which show the strength of the North West
15 Crime OCU and I refer to them in my statement where
16 I talk about the number of detectives and the number of
17 PCs.
18 MR SHELDON: Perhaps the best way to deal with that would be
19 this. When we get to a convenient time for a break
20 during the morning, I and the interested parties can
21 have a look at those documents to see if there are any
22 matters arising from them, and if so we can put the
23 questions then. Obviously afterwards we will make the
24 necessary steps to copy them and circulate them round
25 interested parties.
3
1 THE CHAIRMAN: I am grateful to you.
2 MR COX: Sorry about that.
3 MR SHELDON: That is all right Mr Cox. Between January 1998
4 and April 2000, the period with which we are primarily
5 concerned, you were the head of the North West London
6 Crime OCU; is that right?
7 MR COX: I was, yes.
8 MR SHELDON: And by that stage and indeed now you were
9 a Detective Chief Superintendent?
10 MR COX: That is right.
11 MR SHELDON: Can we begin by clarifying the management
12 structure within which you were working at that time.
13 As I understand it, at that stage the MPS was divided
14 into five geographical areas. Is that correct?
15 MR COX: It was.
16 MR SHELDON: And each of those geographical areas was headed
17 up by an assistant commissioner?
18 MR COX: Yes, below whom was a deputy assistant commissioner
19 and below whom were two commanders, and the crime
20 command team also had a civilian area accountant who was
21 part of that team. One of those two commanders would be
22 responsible for crime and the other would be responsible
23 for operations?
24 MR COX: That is right.
25 MR SHELDON: And the crime commander in your OCU was
4
1 Commander Campbell?
2 MR COX: In 1998 it was Commander Campbell, yes.
3 MR SHELDON: He was your line manager?
4 MR COX: He was.
5 MR SHELDON: When did he cease to become the commander for
6 crime in the North West OCU?
7 MR COX: 1999, around January, the Met restructured and went
8 down to three areas, the North West and North East
9 merged. Shortly after that Commander Campbell retired
10 I think but in any event Commander Craik took over the
11 crime portfolio for the North area from January 1999.
12 MR SHELDON: And for most of 1999 you were the line manager
13 of two superintendents, is that right? Mr Copson came
14 towards the back end of 1999?
15 MR COX: Yes, in 1999 I started off the year with three,
16 I had David Niccol, Chris Brightmore and Sue Akers, but
17 within a short matter of weeks firstly Chris Brightmore
18 retired, then Dave Niccol got another job. Sue Akers
19 was the only superintendent for a few weeks and then we
20 were joined by Peter Camilletti.
21 MR SHELDON: Some time later in 1999 those two were joined
22 by Mr Copson.
23 MR COX: I think around September Gary Copson was posted but
24 he had a number of commitments in respect of the degree
25 course and things he was doing and did not actually join
5
1 us in person to take a role until about
2 October/November.
3 MR SHELDON: In relation to CPTs in particular, and in terms
4 of who had responsibility for them, it was Ms Akers who
5 took over the Child Protection Team portfolio in early
6 1999, is that right?
7 MR COX: Yes.
8 MR SHELDON: And then that was taken over by Mr Copson in
9 late 1999?
10 MR COX: November 1999, yes.
11 MR SHELDON: You say in your second statement that you would
12 have liked to have kept Ms Akers in that post but there
13 were other things that demanded her attention so she had
14 to hand it over.
15 MR COX: Yes.
16 MR SHELDON: Would it be right to get the impression from
17 that evidence and indeed the various movements of
18 superintendents that you describe in your statements
19 that you were juggling an insufficient number of
20 superintendents between different jobs to fire fight as
21 and when necessary?
22 MR COX: I think the situation was when I took over in 1998
23 I had two superintendents -- three superintendents,
24 beg pardon: John Yates, Chris Brightmore and
25 David Niccol. The structure that I inherited in 1998
6
1 was a split between reactive and proactive units as they
2 were described. Dave Niccol, the third superintendent,
3 was just performing an SIO role which on all the other
4 teams was done by the chief inspector. When John Yates
5 left shortly after my arrival in 1998, he was not
6 replaced and David Niccol moved to take the reactive
7 units and he was replaced by a chief inspector, so we
8 essentially lost a superintendent.
9 At the time I thought that would be all right but as
10 we became busier and busier it became apparent that we
11 did actually need three superintendents, and whilst
12 I was supported in this desire by my Area Command Team,
13 Commander and Assistant Commissioner, there were not in
14 fact superintendents available to give me an extra one.
15 MR SHELDON: So a reasonable summary of the position would
16 be this, would it, that you needed three superintendents
17 but for the majority of 1999 you had two and so you had
18 to make do as best you could?
19 MR COX: We did, yes.
20 MR SHELDON: One point relating to that which is raised in
21 paragraph 6 of your second statement, you say the
22 following:
23 "I had Sue Akers join me as the third superintendent
24 on the OCU. I was very pleased with this appointment.
25 However, within weeks we lost two superintendent posts,
7
1 later to be replaced by one, and this substantially
2 undermined our intended strategy."
3 MR COX: Yes.
4 MR SHELDON: What I want to ask you is this. What was the
5 intended strategy and how was it undermined?
6 MR COX: Sue Akers I was very pleased to get as a third
7 superintendent. Aside from being a very good detective
8 she was extremely experienced in the child protection
9 field. Our strategy, it was Sue and my strategy, was
10 that she would take over Child Protection and give it
11 the attention that we felt it deserved, i.e. the
12 full-time attention of the superintendent. When she had
13 to take on other posts -- sorry other roles, that
14 strategy was undermined simply because she could not
15 give it her undivided attention.
16 MR SHELDON: So the strategy was to give more attention to
17 CPTs. Was that in reaction to the belief you had that
18 they had previously been neglected?
19 MR COX: In 1998 on taking over the Crime OCU I did a review
20 which I did refer to in my first statement. That for
21 various reasons was never completed but it was overtaken
22 by a Met inspection. I felt, and I refer to it in some
23 documents, discussions at the Senior Management Team
24 meetings, that child protection was an area of
25 vulnerability for the Met and I wanted if I could
8
1 possibly get it an officer of superintendent rank to be
2 more or less exclusively devoted to managing that
3 portfolio.
4 MR SHELDON: I want to deal in detail with that review and
5 what followed it and perhaps then we can explore exactly
6 what you mean by vulnerability. For the moment let me
7 make sure I have understood the balance of the structure
8 within which you were working. Below these
9 superintendents there was a Detective Chief Inspector
10 who for the period with which we are concerned was
11 DCI Wheeler?
12 MR COX: Through most of 1999, yes.
13 MR SHELDON: He has already explained his line management
14 responsibilities to us and I will not trouble you with
15 them, but as I understand it from your statement, the
16 DCI in post when you took over in 1998 was DCI Rutland?
17 MR COX: That is right.
18 MR SHELDON: You say in your statement that his job was not
19 just looking after the child protection teams, it was
20 also managing informants?
21 MR COX: That is correct.
22 MR SHELDON: Is that the role that DCI Wheeler subsequently
23 took over?
24 MR COX: Yes.
25 MR SHELDON: Were DCI Wheeler's responsibilities when he
9
1 took over broadly the same as DCI Rutland's, who was one
2 of his predecessors?
3 MR COX: Yes, broadly. There were some additions to the
4 portfolio in terms of the line management of quality
5 assurance and staff such as Firearms Inquiry Team, and
6 I think DCI Wheeler referred to those in his statement.
7 They were not an onerous responsibility, but essentially
8 when I looked at it they were not reporting to anybody
9 and he was the officer I felt that could provide an
10 oversight for them and a first port of call.
11 MR SHELDON: We will come on to the extent of those
12 responsibilities later but the basic position is that
13 the role was slightly expanded?
14 MR COX: Yes.
15 MR SHELDON: And there were one or two extra jobs added into
16 it when DCI Wheeler took over?
17 MR COX: I think it was before he took over. I think it was
18 actually between DCI Rutland and DCI Wheeler there was
19 DCI Brown who had it for a while and I believe those
20 posts were added when he was there.
21 MR SHELDON: Paragraph 1.4 of your first statement you tell
22 us that the North West Crime OCU was set up in 1995 and
23 then you go on to say something that I do not fully
24 understand, which is that it was a top slice of
25 resources from 14 territorial divisions. What does that
10
1 mean?
2 MR COX: To set it up, each of the territorial divisions on
3 the North West Area lost resources. They regarded that
4 as a top slice. It was essentially when the budget for
5 the area was given to the Area Command Team to divide
6 up, they took a substantial part of it away from the
7 territorial divisions and used it to establish
8 a Crime OCU.
9 MR SHELDON: Let us turn to attempts to identify what you
10 perceived the problems for child protection teams in
11 particular to be during the time that you were in
12 charge. As I understand it, when you first took up the
13 post in 1998, one of your first jobs was to review the
14 role, operating practices and the structure of the
15 Crime OCU. Is that right?
16 MR COX: It was, yes.
17 MR SHELDON: Was that in response to concerns that the
18 current situation was unsatisfactory?
19 MR COX: I think it was. The Assistant Commissioner and
20 Command Team at the time were getting a lot of
21 complaints from the territorial unit commanders. They
22 viewed us as a loss of resources because the resources
23 were diverted away from them to channel into the
24 Crime OCU to fund it and establish it.
25 Having lost those resources, there was a feeling
11
1 that the Crime OCU was not delivering everything that
2 they had hoped. For example, they were still dealing
3 with what were classed as divisional murders or
4 colloquially termed domestics, a murder which did not
5 appear to have any too complicated factors, such as
6 a husband and wife dispute which ended in murder, which
7 they felt could be adequately dealt with by Divisional
8 CID. They viewed this, and I think they probably had
9 a point, as unfair. Having been top sliced for teams to
10 deal with murders, for them to still have to deal with
11 murders seemed to them a bit of a nonsense. So there
12 was a lot of complaints about that.
13 The other side of the coin was that the Crime OCU
14 had very quickly become very busy and to cope with the
15 workload they did not want to deal with these domestic
16 murders. So that was the other side of the argument and
17 I think when I first took over Mr Manning thought it had
18 been running for a couple of years and it was a good
19 time to do a review of it, and especially as I had just
20 come from the Inspectorate of Constabulary he thought
21 I would be able to have a new and impartial look at the
22 structure.
23 MR SHELDON: In the context of that review you decided it
24 would be appropriate to look at child protection teams
25 separately?
12
1 MR COX: I did because two reasons. Firstly a previous
2 force I had served in in Leicestershire had suffered
3 from a major case, the Frank Beck institutional abuse
4 case, and I had seen the damage at first hand that
5 a force endured when child protection issues went wrong.
6 I could see that the child protection teams on the North
7 West Area that I inherited were remote in terms of
8 geographical location. I knew from Leicestershire that
9 the response to the inquiry had been to centralise those
10 units to provide better support for them and I wanted
11 the review to look at whether there was any means of
12 providing a central system of management or self
13 support.
14 The issue that I was primarily concerned with was
15 how referrals to the child protection teams were
16 handled. I knew that in Leicestershire they had been
17 very successful in setting up a central referral desk
18 which screened all such referrals and I set up a team to
19 look at, as I thought they had the expertise to look at
20 child protection and also to go to Leicestershire and
21 Nottinghamshire who were running that system.
22 MR SHELDON: It was the centrally based referral system that
23 you floated in your discussion paper at the beginning of
24 that process which perhaps we can look at now in
25 volume 34, page 47.107. This is your memo, is it not?
13
1 MR COX: It is. It is not the whole memo. It is the only
2 bit of this that I had left. I think there is a fuller
3 version of it in the response that -- perhaps not
4 a fuller version but I think Mr Wheeler who actually
5 sent a reply, a consolidated reply from the Camden
6 branch actually answered all the points that were in the
7 memo, so we may be able to get the missing bits.
8 MR SHELDON: We will look at that in a moment but at this
9 stage I want to identify what you saw to be the problems
10 with the CPTs that you were seeking to address, and if
11 we look at the second paragraph of this memo towards the
12 bottom, last three lines, you say that one of the
13 principal aims of the final report will be to raise the
14 status of child protection work and improve the
15 recognition of its importance amongst senior police
16 managers. That was one of your principal aims?
17 MR COX: Yes.
18 MR SHELDON: If we look further down we see also that you
19 were concerned with the issue of workloads as well and
20 in particular the management of them.
21 MR COX: In terms of the single agency response issue.
22 MR SHELDON: This is in particular in relation to
23 paragraph 5 where you say the rationale behind this is
24 to reduce if possible the workload for individual
25 officers, or at least to ensure that it is managed in
14
1 a more controlled fashion than the current fire brigade
2 response pattern, which seems to indicate that you were
3 worried if not about the number of cases or the extent
4 of the workload that officers had, but certainly the way
5 in which that workload was managed?
6 MR COX: Yes.
7 MR SHELDON: The possible solution to those difficulties
8 that you float in this memo -- I realise it is only
9 a fragment of it -- is the sort of central based
10 referral desk that you have been describing to us this
11 morning.
12 MR COX: Yes.
13 MR SHELDON: But this would indicate, would it not, to us
14 that almost from the time or from the moment that you
15 took over the OCU and directed your attention towards
16 child protection teams in particular, you were aware of
17 the twin problems of poorly managed workloads and lack
18 of status of child protection work within senior
19 management circles?
20 MR COX: I think it was to reduce the workload. I am not
21 sure I agree with poorly managed but what I was trying
22 to do was I was aware that they had a high case load.
23 MR SHELDON: Let us deal with them in order and take the
24 status point first. What was the problem as far as that
25 was concerned?
15
1 MR COX: The problem that I was referring to was the
2 national perception, and I think this is borne out in
3 the later HMIC thematic. Across the country and
4 certainly in my previous forces child protection work
5 for some reason is not viewed as, or not viewed with the
6 status that it deserves. I consider that child
7 protection work is amongst the most traumatic and
8 complex work that the police get involved in. We have
9 heard, and I have seen the transcripts from evidence to
10 the Inquiry, of people referring to the "cardigan squad"
11 and other such nonsense. I think that was an attitude
12 that was prevalent amongst forces, and I do not just
13 mean the Met, in years gone by.
14 I am pleased to say I do not think it is prevalent
15 any more. However, there is an issue around the status
16 in that if a unit has poor status then it is difficult
17 to attract recruits to it and it is difficult to -- it
18 is not difficult to keep the staff motivated but it does
19 not help with maintaining the morale of staff if they
20 feel they are constantly undervalued or criticised.
21 MR SHELDON: I got the impression for example from your
22 second statement, paragraph 32 in particular, that you
23 did not regard that denigration of the child protection
24 officer status as being a particular problem within the
25 North West OCU.
16
1 MR COX: Within the North West Crime OCU certainly not.
2 MR SHELDON: You say that on the contrary you thought that
3 many of those staff were quietly grateful that somebody
4 else did this difficult and traumatic work.
5 MR COX: I am very conscious of that but unfortunately the
6 teams were not based with the rest of the Crime OCU,
7 they were based on territorial divisions.
8 MR SHELDON: Were you here on Friday?
9 MR COX: Yes.
10 MR SHELDON: When you heard witnesses such as Ms Akers and
11 Mr Copson agreeing with Mr Garnham when he put to them
12 the "macho nonsense", as he called it, of calling these
13 officers the "cardigan squad" or "babysitters", when
14 they agreed with that perception you would say yes, they
15 were right to do so, but you would add the proviso that
16 that was not a situation that existed in the Crime OCU
17 of which you were head?
18 MR COX: It did not, because many of the staff on the murder
19 teams had dealt with other tragic cases involving baby
20 deaths and they knew the extent of difficulties and
21 complexities involved in child protection work. They
22 had been to the commendation ceremonies and listened to
23 the citations for officers from child protection teams.
24 There was a fair realisation of the work these people
25 undertook.
17
1 MR SHELDON: Where was this nonsense coming from?
2 MR COX: I think it is what is popularly described as the
3 canteen culture. I am not sure it is as prevalent as it
4 was. I like to think it is not. I know territorial
5 units -- the officers themselves, firstly by virtue of
6 the fact that they worked for a unit which was not part
7 of the police station where they were working, felt
8 isolated to some degree; and secondly, I am sure that if
9 there were instances of this disrespect then that is
10 where it was.
11 MR SHELDON: I see. And that is what you are suggesting
12 needs to be addressed in the consultation document that
13 we have looked at?
14 MR COX: Yes, what I am trying to do there is something
15 I think that has perplexed managers for some time. How
16 do you go about raising the status? How do you attract
17 people into this type of work?
18 MR SHELDON: Would it be correct to assume in light of your
19 answers to those last questions and in particular the
20 view of the child protection teams within the OCU that
21 it would not have been or should not have been difficult
22 to have persuaded officers within the Crime OCU to
23 transfer into child protection teams should that have
24 been necessary?
25 MR COX: Conversely, I think it may have been more
18
1 difficult. I think they were well cited on the
2 difficulties and complexities and the traumatic nature
3 of the work. There was no eagerness to transfer from
4 murder teams into child protection teams. If you are
5 suggesting that it was viewed as either a more easy role
6 or --
7 MR SHELDON: It seems that paradoxically the problem was
8 precisely the opposite for those officers clued up
9 enough about child protection work. Not that it was
10 a soft option, that it was an unattractively hard
11 option.
12 MR COX: Unattractively hard and complex, yes.
13 MR SHELDON: Did that situation improve whilst you were in
14 post?
15 MR COX: No.
16 MR SHELDON: Are you aware as to whether or not it has
17 improved now?
18 MR COX: To be fair I am not particularly well cited.
19 I personally doubt that it has terrifically. I think
20 the establishment of the dedicated OCU will assist but
21 I think there is a major hearts and minds bit of
22 publicity propaganda, advertising process, whatever,
23 that has to be devised and introduced.
24 MR SHELDON: But it has not been devised and introduced yet?
25 MR COX: Not to my knowledge.
19
1 MR SHELDON: The other problem that you identify in that
2 consultation document is the workload issue. There
3 would seem to be two possibilities as far as the cause
4 of that kind of problem is concerned. Either there are
5 just too many cases and not enough officers or the
6 workload is not being managed effectively so that they
7 are being properly and efficiently distributed. Did you
8 come to a view as to which it was?
9 MR COX: I do not know that I actually split it like that.
10 What I did when I first took up post, bearing in mind
11 that I had come from another force, my deputy John Yates
12 actually took me around all the child protection teams
13 and we met with the staff and chatted. Everybody told
14 me how busy they were. They were all talking that they
15 had a high case load, and when I talked about that later
16 back at the OCU with my managers in the Senior
17 Management Team meeting, John Yates who then had
18 responsibility said yes they are very busy.
19 Unfortunately everybody was very busy.
20 But certainly it was an acknowledgment that when
21 I made my visits everybody had told me that they were
22 busy. I had checked and the manager with responsibility
23 for them said yes they are. So I do not think it was
24 ever suggested to me that they were being poorly
25 managed.
20
1 MR SHELDON: As you have indicated DCI Wheeler put in
2 a response, a fairly detailed response to the proposals
3 that you set out in your consultation document.
4 MR COX: DI Wheeler.
5 MR SHELDON: DI as he then was. He was at Camden.
6 MR COX: He was.
7 MR SHELDON: Perhaps it is more appropriate if we ask him
8 about the detail of that but you can confirm, could you,
9 that broadly he was not particularly enamoured of your
10 proposal?
11 MR COX: He was not, no.
12 MR SHELDON: Did he come up with alternative ways of
13 addressing the problems that you had identified and were
14 trying to address by this centrally based referral desk?
15 MR COX: It is a while since I have looked at his response.
16 MR SHELDON: You had better have a look at volume 34
17 page 47.101. You will correct me if I am wrong, and
18 I am sure that DCI Wheeler will have the opportunity to
19 do so when he comes back to give evidence, but there did
20 not seem to me to be anything in that report which
21 indicated an alternative approach to the problems that
22 you had identified. It was restricted, it seems to me,
23 to simply saying that your idea would not be
24 particularly popular.
25 MR COX: Yes, I remember certainly that he was not in favour
21
1 of any sort of central liaison and to be fair he comes
2 up with some difficulties that it would cause in terms
3 of relationship with other agencies.
4 MR SHELDON: How persuasive did you find his response?
5 MR COX: I just viewed it as one of the responses that
6 I got. I believe there were others but in the meantime
7 I progressed the review process anyway. DCI Rutland and
8 some other officers including DI Sweeney I think had
9 been to Leicestershire and been to Nottinghamshire.
10 Their response to me was that we were not really
11 comparing like with like. For example, Leicestershire
12 and Nottinghamshire have one ACPC whereas on North West
13 Area alone I think there were some seven, and what they
14 were explaining was that it may be very well to sort of
15 set up a central control system if you have just one
16 ACPC, but if you were bringing it in pan areas so to
17 speak then it was going to be a very major task, which
18 is why essentially by the time I had to submit my review
19 report we had not made very much progress with the child
20 protection past the review, other than that, and I made
21 a recommendation in the review that it really needed to
22 be a bespoke piece of work.
23 MR SHELDON: DCI Rutland did produce at least an interim
24 report on this question.
25 MR COX: Yes.
22
1 MR SHELDON: Perhaps for our purposes it is sufficient to go
2 to the summary of your views on that report as contained
3 in the document that we have at volume 30 page 209.
4 Could you have a look at that. Again, this would seem
5 to be an edited version of a longer document but it is
6 paragraph 4.46 on page 211 which I would like you to
7 look at.
8 You there say that the resulting report raised more
9 questions than it answered. It considered five options
10 and made eight recommendations. You then go on to say
11 child protection is an issue of such importance and
12 sensitivity that decisions to change procedures must be
13 taken only after careful consideration, and as you say,
14 a further report or a further look at the problem ought
15 to be undertaken with a broadened portfolio for a review
16 team. Is that fair?
17 MR COX: Yes.
18 MR SHELDON: You are basically making the point, are you
19 not, that a wider review is necessary and that review
20 needs to involve the partner agencies with which child
21 protection teams have to work?
22 MR COX: Yes.
23 MR SHELDON: It was decided though, and I take this from
24 paragraph 1.18 of your first statement, that there would
25 not be such a wider review involving partner agencies;
23
1 is that right?
2 MR COX: Yes.
3 MR SHELDON: We can see that decision recorded in
4 a memorandum you wrote which is in volume 34 at
5 page 345. I wonder if you could have volume 34 back to
6 have a look at it. Could you tell us what that document
7 is, first of all.
8 MR COX: It is a document I circulated having been to the
9 Senior Management Team meeting. The Senior Management
10 Team on the North West comprised a monthly meeting
11 between all the chief superintendents and that would be
12 those in charge of territorial units, the Crime OCU and
13 the Operations OCU, with the Senior Command Team for the
14 area which comprised the, as we have heard before, the
15 Assistant Commissioner, Deputy Assistant Commissioner
16 and commanders.
17 MR SHELDON: And as you say in paragraph 1, the review
18 received a mixed response.
19 MR COX: It did. In my second statement I submitted
20 a second report that I had found. The meeting to which
21 the paper we are currently looking at refers discussed
22 my review paper. Before I went to that meeting I had
23 circulated it to all the other chief superintendents and
24 that is when I got my first part of the mixed response.
25 The paper that I produced with my second statement
24
1 highlighted a number of the issues that had been raised
2 about the paper and I produced that to take to this
3 meeting because time was always at a premium at such
4 meetings and I felt it might steer the discussion if
5 I logged the reception I had received and my response to
6 that reception.
7 MR SHELDON: One of the problems was, was it not, that it
8 was envisaged that child protection teams would revert
9 to borough based divisions and that it was thought that
10 there was no real point in doing the sort of review you
11 were talking about until that had been done?
12 MR COX: That was the major understanding, firstly that the
13 Met was embarking on a restructuring which would see all
14 territorial boundaries redefined on borough lines, and
15 it was in response to the Crime and Disorder Act there
16 were the local arrangements being set up for working
17 with other agencies, that a popularly expressed view was
18 that child protection work was the original interagency
19 work forum and it would be a nonsense for child
20 protection to sit anywhere other than at borough in the
21 future.
22 MR SHELDON: Just to bring us up-to-date with where we have
23 got to so far, you have come into post at the beginning
24 of 1998, you realised that child protection teams needed
25 to be looked at because of the problems that we have
25
1 already spoken about. You have initiated an initial
2 review of the situation, which has produced an interim
3 report. That report has indicated to you that you need
4 do more work on this subject, in particular to involve
5 partner agencies. But when you have suggested that that
6 should be done you have met with the response that there
7 is no point doing that yet because we are still trying
8 to sort out this borough based control of CPT issue. Is
9 that a fair summary?
10 MR COX: It is largely accurate, indeed, but the only other
11 issue is almost at that exact time the Metropolitan
12 Police Inspectorate announced they were going to do
13 a review of child protection pan London.
14 MR SHELDON: So your suggestion is effectively kicked into
15 the long grass until --
16 MR COX: Subsumed into the other one I think.
17 MR SHELDON: That was a decision that you say in your second
18 statement paragraph 2 that you had reservations about.
19 MR COX: Yes, I think that is fair.
20 MR SHELDON: What were the reservations that you had?
21 MR COX: Firstly, I would say with some sort of 29 years' or
22 28 years' experience of the Police Service, sir, the
23 review processes can be lengthy. I was not sure that
24 the process that we were going to embark on was going to
25 be swift enough. That is the first point, shall we say?
26
1 Secondly, there was a view, and I think it is
2 addressed in my response to the replies I received which
3 I produced in my second statement, which was to guide
4 the discussion at that meeting, there was an impression
5 that I had from the responses that child protection was
6 being over-egged as an important issue and that worried
7 me.
8 There seemed to be the impression I felt amongst the
9 borough commanders that, "Look, we will take it, they
10 will be part of us". Some borough commanders were
11 openly talking of mixing child protection teams with
12 other units such as community safety units and I was
13 worried that their specialisms may get lost and I was
14 concerned that there was not an appreciation of what the
15 boroughs were going to inherit.
16 MR SHELDON: Is that symptomatic of the general
17 underappreciation within the boroughs of child
18 protection work?
19 MR COX: Within the police service child protection, and
20 there was another issue.
21 MR SHELDON: It may come back to you.
22 MR COX: I have lost it for the minute but there was another
23 issue.
24 MR SHELDON: The basic point is this, is it not: you have
25 come into post, identified some problems and some
27
1 pressing problems, you have spent a couple of months
2 looking into it and the net effect of that process,
3 which is summarised in that memo we have looked at, is
4 that nothing at least in the short term is going to be
5 done about it?
6 MR COX: Well, I will deal with that first and then I have
7 remembered the other issue.
8 MR SHELDON: Excellent.
9 MR COX: In fact I will deal with that first in case
10 I forget it again.
11 MR SHELDON: Very sensible.
12 MR COX: The other issue was amongst those replies there was
13 a challenge to the staffing ratios amongst supervisors
14 in the CPTs, there was an impression from the borough
15 commanders that they were overstaffed with supervisors,
16 which again I felt reflected a certainly naivety because
17 I always thought that child protection teams needed
18 those ratios of supervision.
19 MR SHELDON: They are higher though, are they not?
20 MR COX: They are higher.
21 MR SHELDON: Normally one would not expect six constables to
22 be supervised by two sergeants and an inspector.
23 MR COX: They are substantially higher and that was
24 a challenge but again it demonstrated to me that the
25 borough commanders were at some danger of saying,
28
1 "Right, that has given me another two sergeants and
2 inspector. I will leave one sergeant looking after the
3 team and redeploy the staff". So that was the type of
4 concern that I had. Now I have lost the thread of your
5 question.
6 MR SHELDON: I will put it again. The net effect of this
7 decision to subsume the review of CPTs that you were
8 suggesting within the broader centrally administered
9 reviews is that in the short term at least nothing was
10 going to be done about the problems you had identified
11 in relation to status and workloads?
12 MR COX: I think that is fair. I think it is perhaps not
13 accurate to say nothing was going to be done because the
14 review process was going to be undertaken by the
15 Metropolitan Police Inspectorate who were a very good
16 unit, and we could anticipate them being very thorough
17 and actually airing those issues and hopefully bringing
18 them up to a forum where, having been raised at
19 a service-wide level they would be addressed, but as
20 I say I did feel that such processes can be lengthy.
21 MR SHELDON: Let us turn to that London-wide review and the
22 one I think it is right to say that was done by
23 Commander Kendrick; is that right?
24 MR COX: He commissioned it. He did not actually do it.
25 MR SHELDON: Do I understand from your statement that the
29
1 way in which that review was to proceed was to set up
2 a monthly meeting to be attended by detective
3 superintendents who were in charge of child protection
4 teams where the problems they had identified locally
5 could be discussed?
6 MR COX: The senior supervisors' meeting, I think that was
7 the group that actually commissioned the inspection.
8 That pre-existed.
9 MR SHELDON: Did you go along to those meetings?
10 MR COX: I did not. It was the superintendent with the
11 portfolio which in 1999 was Sue Akers and in 1998
12 I think was Chris Brightmore.
13 MR SHELDON: Were you aware of what problems and issues they
14 discussed at those meetings?
15 MR COX: Certainly when Sue Akers was doing it, yes. Sue
16 was a very dynamic individual and she would come into
17 the office where I was working and we would discuss CPTs
18 amongst all the other work she was doing and I was aware
19 that the issues that have surfaced in the Met inspection
20 in relation to some of the macro issues of training and
21 IT difficulties were being addressed by the central
22 supervisors' meeting.
23 MR SHELDON: You list those macro issues in your statement
24 at paragraph 1.21 and they are, as you say, things like
25 IT, support, future strategy and training. Does that
30
1 mean that the review that was commissioned by that
2 senior supervisors group was similarly concerned with
3 those macro issues rather than the sort of local issues
4 like resources such as vehicles, accommodation, staffing
5 levels and case loads within individual teams?
6 MR COX: I rather think that review looked at those issues
7 as well. I am not -- again it is a long time since
8 I have seen it but I think they certainly touched on
9 vehicles.
10 MR SHELDON: But those were not the sort of issues that were
11 commonly discussed at the senior supervisors' meetings
12 which dealt with things on a higher level?
13 MR COX: I think that is fair. I think there was
14 substantive issues of Met-wide IT, Met level training,
15 were issues that the organisation had to take forward at
16 that level.
17 MR SHELDON: Would they talk about the lack, for example, of
18 detectives on child protection teams?
19 MR COX: I know that Sue Akers raised it there. I think
20 there is a danger of confusing the lack of detectives
21 with what is needed, which is the lack of detective not
22 needed with -- what was lacking was the lack of
23 detective skills and I think there is a difference
24 there, in as much as it is all very well being
25 a detective. What was needed was to have officers with
31
1 child protection skills who were given detective
2 training.
3 MR SHELDON: Yes, although one would hope that a detective
4 had detective skills and so that would be one way to
5 address the problem --
6 MR COX: I think you would have to do it the other way
7 around then, you would have to have the detective with
8 his skills go on child protection courses to learn the
9 child protection skills so it would not be resolved just
10 by putting detectives from borough into a CPT.
11 MR SHELDON: That is a larger issue which we will come to in
12 a moment, but before leaving this senior supervisors'
13 meeting, did you regard that to be a useful forum for
14 dealing with the problems faced by child protection
15 teams?
16 MR COX: I thought it was a good forum. I had the utmost
17 respect for Mr Kendrick, having met him. He was a very
18 conscientious, committed individual and I knew that
19 child protection issues were close to his heart and
20 I felt he would drive them thoroughly. When he retired
21 it was taken over by Mr Griffiths who has sufficient
22 energy for several of us and I was confident that that
23 would be driven relentlessly as well.
24 MR SHELDON: Did you feel that they were able sufficiently
25 to gain an understanding of what exactly was going on on
32
1 the ground within child protection teams in North West
2 Area?
3 MR COX: In the North West Area, yes I did because Sue Akers
4 attended the meeting. She was very well cited I felt on
5 what was happening, very knowledgeable on child
6 protection issues both on a local basis and on national
7 developments.
8 MR SHELDON: I wonder what the basis for your confidence in
9 that is, given that we have heard from DCI Wheeler that
10 the size of his portfolio of responsibilities was such
11 that he was unable to get down to visit individual child
12 protection teams within his area, from which one might
13 assume that if he could not do it Sue Akers could not
14 have done it either. So how would they know what is
15 going on in individual child protection teams?
16 MR COX: Firstly, I would challenge DCI Wheeler on that.
17 I do not think he was too busy to go round and visit --
18 MR SHELDON: For whatever reason he did not go.
19 MR COX: Okay, but I was not aware of that. I know
20 Sue Akers did go round. She visited the teams where
21 when she took over, she went on informal visits
22 afterwards on a case basis as I understand it. She went
23 to the ACPC meetings and I think at command level within
24 the OCU we would rely on conversations between myself
25 and Sue, which reassured me that she had a good grasp of
33
1 what was happening.
2 There were the monthly meetings of DIs from the
3 child protection teams, which were fully documented and
4 which seemed to me to be surfacing all the correct
5 issues, and there was DCI Wheeler's role which he would
6 no doubt dispute, but I felt the child protection teams
7 were well catered for, and to my knowledge at that time
8 I thought they were being well supervised and I thought
9 the issues that were floated at the Management Team
10 meetings were then taken to the senior supervisors'
11 meeting by Sue Akers.
12 MR SHELDON: So you have been surprised to hear evidence, if
13 you have had the chance to hear or look at it, to the
14 effect that the child protection teams with which we are
15 concerned felt isolated, semi-detached, uncared for by
16 their senior managers who they very rarely saw? That is
17 news to you, is it?
18 MR COX: Let us have a look at that. If they were saying
19 they did not see a great deal of me, I think that would
20 be fair.
21 MR SHELDON: They were saying I think that they did not see
22 a great deal of anybody.
23 MR COX: Right. I saw Sue Akers answer that and she did not
24 get around as often as she would have liked and, as you
25 say, Phil Wheeler says that he was too busy. So
34
1 disappointed to learn that, yes, but at the time I can
2 only say what I thought and at the time I felt that they
3 did have that -- I must be careful because I would also
4 agree with the fact that they felt isolated because that
5 is what they were. They were not within the rest of the
6 structure of the Crime OCU, they were located at remote
7 sites away, and that is a great problem, there is no
8 doubt about it, because the overall context of what
9 happened to the Crime OCU in 1999 meant that child
10 protection issues did not come to the top of the agenda,
11 so I can see that that criticism that they feel is of me
12 for not going to see them is probably justified, because
13 I do not think I did get there in 1999.
14 MR SHELDON: Regardless of whether you managed to get round
15 individual child protection teams, and one can well
16 appreciate the rest of your responsibilities may have
17 made that difficult, one of the criticisms levelled at
18 senior managers in other agencies with which this
19 Inquiry is concerned is that it is not enough simply to
20 expect, hope or believe that their front line teams are
21 being adequately supervised and managed. It is up to
22 the senior manager to take such steps as necessary to
23 ensure that that is being done and to satisfy themselves
24 that that is being done.
25 Now, in the light of evidence on this subject you
35
1 have just given, do you think that that is a criticism
2 that might equally be levelled at you?
3 MR COX: I am sure it will be levelled at me, yes.
4 MR SHELDON: With justification?
5 MR COX: The justification -- I believed that Sue Akers and
6 Phil Wheeler had a good grip of child protection issues.
7 I perhaps should have asked them how often they visited
8 and I did not. I anticipated that they were visiting,
9 certainly Phil Wheeler. I certainly saw the DIs from
10 the teams and I was impressed with the calibre of them.
11 They would come up to Becke House on occasions, where
12 the rest of the Crime OCU was working from, and I would
13 see them from time to time. Certain of them put in for
14 promotion, and I saw officers around that, about doing
15 their reports for promotion processes.
16 I generally thought they were a very good bunch and
17 whenever I would discuss child protection issues I was
18 impressed with the grasp that both Sue Akers had and
19 also that DCI Wheeler seemed to have. So I felt that
20 the child protection teams in 1999 were better
21 supervised by specialist trained officers than they had
22 ever been.
23 MR SHELDON: If it is the conclusion of the Inquiry that
24 that is not right or at least that the child protection
25 teams were inadequately supervised, then your faith
36
1 would seem to have been misplaced first of all, and
2 secondly one might say that it was faith which should
3 have been based upon active steps to appraise yourself
4 of the actual position.
5 MR COX: I am not sure what active steps I could have taken
6 apart from --
7 MR SHELDON: You could have asked DCI Wheeler if he was
8 going around to see the child protection teams, or
9 Superintendent Akers whether or not he was.
10 MR COX: Whilst I did not phrase the question exactly like
11 that, I was talking to them on a daily basis. I was
12 well aware that they were talking regularly to their DIs
13 and child protection was always a topic which Sue had on
14 her lips, so I felt that she was doing that and she had
15 a good grasp. So yes, if you say to me, "Did you ever
16 say to her, 'Right, give me a log of how many times you
17 have been to so and so'", then I did not, and if that is
18 a fault then it is mine.
19 MR SHELDON: One matter raised in your first statement which
20 I did not fully understand and I wonder if I could get
21 your help on is paragraph 1.22, which is in the section
22 with which you deal with the senior supervisors'
23 meeting, superintendents' meeting that we were
24 discussing a moment ago.
25 You make the point that that group brought the CPT
37
1 policy-making forum under the same roof as the rest of
2 serious crime and seemed a sensible development to you,
3 but whilst issues of IT support, interagency policy,
4 training and future strategy moved to central direction,
5 problems of resourcing individual CPTs such as staffing
6 remained with the Crime OCUs. Then you explain that
7 this duality of command was expected to be temporary.
8 What I want to understand is what that means in
9 practice. You have the superintendents discussing
10 issues like training but the Crime OCUs dealing with
11 issues like staffing, is that right?
12 MR COX: Yes.
13 MR SHELDON: Would it not be right to say though that
14 staffing is the sort of issue that can only be properly
15 addressed at a central level or at least a sufficiently
16 high level in order to be able to take decisions about
17 resources?
18 MR COX: Right. Firstly, I think it is important to
19 understand how the Met was operating at that time. The
20 senior CPT supervisors' meeting was a policy forum.
21 There was no line command function that emanated from
22 that meeting for CPTs. That rested within areas, and on
23 the five areas the CPTs were managed within the
24 Crime OCU.
25 So it would not have been within the gift, say, of
38
1 either Mr Kendrick or Mr Griffiths to say put more staff
2 on this CPT or take staff off this CPT, or the issues
3 that that forum was trying to address with issues that
4 involved organisational level decisions and policy,
5 I think, such as expenditure on a Met-wide IT system,
6 such as issues of CPT training and detective training
7 for all officers. They did not have the remit to say to
8 either Mr Manning, Assistant Commissioner, or
9 Commander Campbell or me: "Move staff from here" or "put
10 them there".
11 MR SHELDON: So they could not have given Detective
12 Inspector Howard for example the extra officers that he
13 said he needed on his Child Protection Team, but as
14 I understood from your evidence you were saying you
15 could not have given them to him either. Who could have
16 given them to him?
17 MR COX: I think perhaps on a short-term basis I could have
18 moved staff across. Had I felt at any time that there
19 was an emergency and I needed to put extra staff in
20 there I could have taken them off a murder team, off
21 a surveillance team or proactive team and put staff in
22 there.
23 MR SHELDON: That is reshuffling.
24 MR COX: Existing resources.
25 MR SHELDON: Something will suffer as a result.
39
1 MR COX: If I wanted additional staff I have two hurdles to
2 get over. Firstly I have to come up with a business
3 case for the extra staff, i.e. show a need for these
4 extra staff is fully demonstrated, and then I would have
5 to convince those that held the budgets that my OCU
6 should get the extra budget to pay for those extra
7 staff.
8 MR SHELDON: I see. I get the impression from your
9 statement, and in particular your second statement,
10 paragraph 3, that you were expecting the review that was
11 commissioned by Commander Kendrick and this
12 superintendents' forum to address the problems that you
13 had identified in your mini review at the front end of
14 1998 in relation to child protection teams. Is that
15 right?
16 MR COX: Yes, I think I did expect that and I think it did
17 largely. I think I also say later in that statement
18 that it is perhaps not fair to expect recognition of
19 problems and resolution of them to be contemporaneous.
20 I think you have to accept that issues such as
21 accommodation plans and plans for roll-out of IT systems
22 can take a while to introduce.
23 MR SHELDON: Certainly, and you say at paragraph 5 of your
24 second statement that by late 1998 work had started on
25 some of those issues with which you were concerned.
40
1 What I was wondering was how much progress had been made
2 by the time that Victoria's case came to be dealt with
3 by North West child protection teams in the second half
4 of 1999.
5 MR COX: By the time of little Victoria's death I think the
6 issues had been recognised, they had been researched.
7 For example, there were plans for CPT training to be
8 introduced, but I do not think they had been resolved
9 and I was interested sort of preparing to come here
10 today, reading through the minutes of our own CPT
11 supervisors', our DIs' meetings, the week before
12 Victoria died the DIs were discussing feedback from that
13 policy meeting and they are giving us the sorry news
14 that they will not be eligible for detective training
15 because it is not viewed as suiting their needs, which
16 is a little unfortunate given the timing.
17 MR SHELDON: Absolutely, because it would suggest that even
18 if, as you say, by the time we get to Victoria's death
19 the issues had been recognised and researched and plans
20 had been drawn up, what those minutes would seem to
21 indicate is that those plans are not sufficient, at
22 least in that respect.
23 MR COX: I think it demonstrates that, I think the wording
24 of the minutes is such that -- I am sure that you have
25 a copy -- is that the CPT officers do not actually fit
41
1 the criteria for detective training and that they will
2 have to wait for the bespoke CPT course to be
3 introduced. So yes, the issues are being addressed but
4 it is not a rapid response, shall we say?
5 MR SHELDON: So although we may take some comfort from the
6 fact that the issues had been recognised and a review
7 was under way, as far as Victoria's case is concerned,
8 and the issue as to what practically was being done as
9 a result of that review to resolve the issues that had
10 been identified within child protection teams, the
11 answer is by the second half of 1999 nothing yet.
12 MR COX: Nothing concrete had been delivered certainly.
13 MR SHELDON: The general picture one might get from all of
14 this, and I wonder if you think it is justified, is that
15 this is an issue, these difficulties with child
16 protection teams, that is being put off. First of all
17 you are told, "Let us not deal with this now, let us
18 wait and see how things work out when borough based
19 control has been introduced." Then one is told, "Let us
20 not do anything now because we have the Met, we have got
21 the London-wide review and the thematic survey being
22 done."
23 Eventually things start to happen but not until
24 a considerable period of time has elapsed which
25 unfortunately for Victoria was the period in which she
42
1 was under the investigation of your teams.
2 MR COX: I think that could be an impression that could be
3 gained. I am not sure it is entirely fair. Firstly, it
4 is a real consideration that the territorial units were
5 going to be restructured on borough lines. There was an
6 argument for putting CPTs under control of the borough
7 units, whether it was a good argument is another matter
8 but there was an argument.
9 Secondly, there was -- around the time of the
10 decision to not progress my review was taken, there was
11 the announcement of the Metropolitan Police Inspection
12 and it would have been possible to wait for that. There
13 was also the revision of Working Together and the
14 forthcoming HMIC inspection. Those were going to
15 obviously generate service-wide level recommendations
16 which there was a good argument that it was sensible to
17 wait and see what they were and to respond to them
18 corporately.
19 MR SHELDON: But you have already indicated that was an
20 argument about which you had reservations because you --
21 MR COX: I am highlighting what the arguments are.
22 MR SHELDON: Absolutely, but it would be right to say that
23 despite the fact that you have highlighted the
24 arguments, you had reservations, because to put it
25 simply you felt that these problems needed to be
43
1 addressed more urgently than they were going to be
2 addressed if one waited for the slow wheels of
3 Metropolitan Police-wide reviews to turn.
4 MR COX: I think that is fair. I think I had a concern,
5 I think that the CPT staff, whilst encouraged by the
6 fact that they were going to be inspected and they would
7 have the chance to put their points, certainly people
8 like Mike Anderson and Dave Howard would get the
9 opportunity, and took it, and people like Sue Akers who
10 was very knowledgeable would have concerns. They would
11 be pleased the process was under way but I do not
12 ascribe to myself any visionary status. It was not just
13 me seeing that there were problems. I think it was
14 people perhaps who were closer to child protection work
15 were a little concerned about how long it was all going
16 to take.
17 MR SHELDON: But visionary or not, your view, it might be
18 said, has been borne out by Victoria's case, in that
19 whatever improvements were made within child protection
20 teams as a result of the sort of reviews that we have
21 been discussing came too late for her.
22 MR COX: Tragically so, sir, yes.
23 MR SHELDON: Focusing on 1999 in particular, you make the
24 point at some length in your statement that this was
25 a particularly busy year for the North West OCU.
44
1 I think something like 75 major investigations of which
2 65 were murders.
3 MR COX: Indeed. I think Mr Copson mentioned on Friday
4 there was also the problem of unsolved cases from
5 previous years and I think our case load for the year
6 was 92 enquiries.
7 MR SHELDON: Yes, which you put it into some perspective in
8 your first statement when you say that that is Greater
9 Manchester Police plus West Midlands plus any other
10 county's police case load all in one.
11 MR COX: Indeed, yes.
12 MR SHELDON: What did that mean for child protection teams?
13 MR COX: For me what did that mean for child protection
14 teams, it meant that whilst I still regularly spoke to
15 Sue and Phil and Mike Anderson when he was doing Phil's
16 job, and I retained an interest and I read the minutes
17 and I could see what was happening both at the senior
18 supervisors' and at the CPT inspectors', the vast
19 majority of my time was devoted to the problems of the
20 murder teams in terms of resourcing, staffing, workload.
21 MR SHELDON: And not just your time but the resources of the
22 OCU as a whole would have to be directed principally in
23 that direction?
24 MR COX: Indeed, yes.
25 MR SHELDON: I wonder the extent to which that may reveal
45
1 a structural problem, in that CPTs at this stage at
2 least were part of the Crime OCU, so within that OCU
3 they are inevitably going to be competing for resources
4 and officers with other elements of the OCU. Does that
5 mean then that when the OCU has to, as it did in 1999,
6 deal with an extremely high number of serious crimes
7 such as murders, CPTs are inevitably going to suffer
8 because child protection work is inevitably going to be
9 a lower short-term priority than a murder?
10 MR COX: I think largely that is fair, yes. It might work
11 in reverse obviously. Had there not been very many
12 murders and child protection work had gone to the same
13 extent, busy to the same extent that the murders went,
14 if we had a number of child murders or a vast increase
15 in case load to the extent that the murder teams faced
16 whilst the murder teams were not busy, then there would
17 have been an argument, and Sue Akers I am convinced
18 would have made it, let us shift some resources that
19 way. I think if the point you are making was the
20 attention about moving resources the other way towards
21 AMIPs then certainly they were the priority.
22 MR SHELDON: The point I was making was should CPTs be
23 structurally within the Crime OCU where they are
24 vulnerable to this fluctuation of demand of resources,
25 or should they be in an area where their resources and
46
1 the attention focused on them can be ring fenced?
2 MR COX: I think plainly the latter and that is why the
3 Metropolitan Police have gone that way with the new
4 dedicated unit.
5 MR SHELDON: Was that a structure or a solution that
6 occurred to you at the time?
7 MR COX: Well, I mean I think it was always an option. The
8 options really were to leave it where it was, to leave
9 them where they were, to move them to boroughs or to set
10 up a bespoke unit at the centre. What was lacking was
11 at any corporate decision level making on their future,
12 which of those options was going to happen.
13 What I think is fair to say is that because of the
14 workload of the murder teams certainly in my case
15 I would look at what statistics were available to me in
16 terms of overtime, in terms of case loads, et cetera.
17 I generally thought, and I genuinely thought that the
18 child protection teams were working well, they were busy
19 but they were coping and I noticed that they had not
20 overspent their overtime budget which is always one of
21 the first indicators of excessive case loads when the
22 overtime budget is exhausted.
23 Certainly in terms of the murder teams, the overtime
24 budget for them was finished by about June of the year,
25 so within about four months because of the case load we
47
1 had exhausted the money that we had for the whole year.
2 MR SHELDON: It may be easy with the benefit of hindsight to
3 think the structural change which the Metropolitan
4 Police has put into effect now where child protection
5 teams are separate from Crime OCUs is a sensible and
6 obvious one. It may be that it did not seem obvious at
7 the time for the sort of reasons you have just explained
8 but what I want to understand is what was the benefit or
9 what arguments were there in favour of having CPTs
10 within the Crime OCU?
11 MR COX: I was not part of the decision-making process that
12 put them there so that is difficult for me to answer.
13 I think with many other things such as the Firearms
14 Inquiry Team they were an area level unit and they had
15 to be located somewhere and I think when the Crime OCUs
16 were established the decision was taken, "We will put
17 them under the umbrella of the Crime OCU because it is
18 an area level unit and there is a command structure
19 within which they can sit." You may get --
20 MR SHELDON: The lack of anywhere better to put them?
21 MR COX: -- a more informed view from senior officers later.
22 MR SHELDON: I see. During the course of 1999 as
23 I understand it from your statement you requested more
24 staff to assist with your very high workload.
25 MR COX: Sir, I both verbally and in written form on many
48
1 occasions pointed out the difficulties that the
2 Crime OCU was under and that we were in urgent need of
3 extra staff. There were -- I mean this Inquiry has had
4 evidence from DCI Wheeler saying he put in reports
5 saying about his case load. I had visits and reports
6 from all my chief inspectors saying that they could not
7 cope, particularly those with 14 and 15 concurrent
8 murder investigations on the go which is an absolutely
9 unbelievable number of murder investigations for one
10 person to be trying to run at the same time.
11 It culminated with a meeting on 6th October of all
12 my chief inspectors which I went to and said, "Let us
13 get it all out", because whilst I had a very open door
14 policy and I think we were a relaxed, informal unit,
15 I knew and trusted all my senior officers very much,
16 they felt confident to walk into my office and talk to
17 me and I would drop in on them, but throughout the year
18 I had many visits and people saying "I cannot cope" and
19 "I am beginning to go under".
20 In some cases it was just sufficient to sort of be
21 a shoulder and an ear to listen to them and they carried
22 on, bless them, but by October I was put on notice
23 really that the situation was about to implode I think
24 is the expression I use in my statement. We were just
25 about to fall over and I had a meeting at which all
49
1 these concerns were aired by the DI and DCI and it was
2 apparent to me there were real health and safety risks
3 for my staff.
4 MR SHELDON: Perhaps we can get an idea of the scale of the
5 problem by some of the documents you were writing about
6 this at the time. Do you still have volume 34 in front
7 of you?
8 MR COX: I think I do, yes.
9 MR SHELDON: Could I ask you to turn to page 347. That
10 would appear to be a memo you wrote to Mr Todd
11 in January 1999, so before the full extent of the
12 problem.
13 MR COX: Before the flood, yes.
14 MR SHELDON: If we turn over to the second page, page 348,
15 you say in the fourth paragraph down that your answer
16 therefore, unrealistic although it may be, is that to
17 provide anything like a satisfactory response, 2 Area
18 AMIP would have to double the strength of its
19 investigative teams from 80 to 160 and in the last
20 paragraph you more realistically pitch your initial bid
21 at 40.
22 MR COX: Yes.
23 MR SHELDON: How many did you get in response to that?
24 MR COX: I think I got 40 eventually as a first tranche.
25 MR SHELDON: How long --
50
1 MR COX: Certainly by June I had 40 and then because of the
2 situation on the Crime OCU I had about another 30 come
3 I think as well by about September.
4 MR SHELDON: Could you have a look at page 351 because this
5 might be the document that prompted the second tranche
6 that you just referred to. This is to Commander Craik
7 on 28th June 2001, in which you say in the second
8 paragraph:
9 "We need to increase to the six AMIP teams
10 immediately as we discussed. This will require
11 formation of a team made up of one DCI, two DIs, five
12 DSs and 20 DCs and PCs, so about another 30."
13 Is that the 30 you got that you just referred to?
14 MR COX: Yes.
15 MR SHELDON: A total then of at least 70 extra officers
16 given to you during the course of 1999?
17 MR COX: Yes.
18 MR SHELDON: If we have a look at a couple more pages on,
19 354, in that bundle, that would seem to be confirmed in
20 paragraph 2.7, when you refer to the immediate supply of
21 an additional 70 officers to the Crime OCU as achieved
22 by a levy on the boroughs.
23 MR COX: Yes.
24 MR SHELDON: Further down in the next paragraph, paragraph
25 2.8, you seem to make reference to a further 20
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