Archived Transcript for 18 January 2002: Pages 101 to 150

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1 not sophisticated. What were the work rates as far as

2 I could ascertain? What were the staffing levels as far

3 as I could ascertain?

4 The third and I think more important bit is what

5 proactive opportunities did I have to check and verify

6 what I heard to actually look down into the

7 organisation, and there was a regime of inspection and

8 review that I could employ on area, not the same as the

9 force-wide one that David Kendrick had employed for his

10 inspection.

11 I had or the DAC had on behalf of the Command Team

12 an Inspection Review Team who could go out if

13 commissioned to do thematic inspections, for example

14 child protection, for example murder, for example rape,

15 or look at particular OCUs or bits of OCUs and I would

16 use that hopefully in intelligence led way, directing

17 them where I thought the risk greatest, and they would,

18 to use a term I have seen used at the Inquiry that I am

19 comfortable with, they would be the dip samplers, they

20 would be the ones who could get into the CRIS, into the

21 technology and get down to the level where you could

22 examine were people getting it right, were they doing

23 their job properly.

24 MR SHELDON: And what sense did you get from those three

25 different processes of the state of child protection

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1 teams on the North West Area?

2 DCC CRAIK: The first impression I got was I was inheriting

3 good people with good skills, good background, right

4 people in the right place. Having met them, the values

5 that they seemed to espouse were appropriate for the job

6 they were doing. Having spoken to them, they all seemed

7 committed, seemed to have the skills. They did not when

8 asked state to me that there were particular problems

9 with the exception of murders, which I know you have

10 heard about. They were quite vociferous rows about that

11 and I took a great deal of intervention steps to help

12 them put that right.

13 MR SHELDON: So given that in relation to child protection

14 teams your view as a result of that process was that

15 there were good people with the necessary skills without

16 any particular problems apart from the murders, that

17 would have fed in, would it, to your calculations on how

18 best to prioritise and divide your time?

19 DCC CRAIK: Absolutely.

20 MR SHELDON: With the inevitable consequence that it would

21 be more effectively used towards the murder problems

22 than it would be child protection teams?

23 DCC CRAIK: Yes. In addition to that I needed to get around

24 the whole of the organisation for crime, not just child

25 protection teams as well, so I would actually -- this is

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1 a process that does take some time, this is not weeks,

2 probably not months. I think some of my diaried

3 appointments for visiting some of these key people as

4 crime managers and some of the OCU commanders would be

5 as late as September, October.

6 MR SHELDON: Have you had an opportunity of looking at some

7 of the evidence that has been given by child protection

8 officers to the Inquiry?

9 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

10 MR SHELDON: Have you seen, and I paraphrase and summarise

11 for convenience, concerns such as feeling isolated,

12 feeling underresourced, feeling overworked?

13 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

14 MR SHELDON: Not having sufficient equipment, not feeling

15 adequately trained? You have seen evidence of those

16 sort of things being expressed?

17 DCC CRAIK: I have seen what they have said, yes.

18 MR SHELDON: That from what you have said does not appear to

19 sit with the picture that you were being given when you

20 went round at the start of your appointment to try and

21 ascertain how things were on the ground.

22 DCC CRAIK: No.

23 MR SHELDON: Where does the discrepancy lie?

24 DCC CRAIK: I must make clear that my efforts to get round

25 on the ground had not got round everywhere on the

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1 ground. I had not personally been into Haringey Child

2 Protection Team. If I can give an example of one I did

3 go into which was Barking and Dagenham, the picture

4 I got there was yes working hard, yes under pressure,

5 but an understanding that they recognise the rest of the

6 Met was in the same boat and that their colleagues on

7 Division and on murders were probably under greater

8 pressure.

9 So while not directly attributable to a view at

10 Haringey, then my dip sampling as far as I was

11 personally able to do it in terms of getting out and

12 talking to people on visits, and one of my personal

13 leadership styles is and was to get out and see people,

14 do night shifts, all of it, do late turns, all of it,

15 and actually get a feel for what people are saying but

16 with 8,000 people to do that with I think the

17 opportunities to get round absolutely everyone, even

18 when you are trying to prioritise, is --

19 MR SHELDON: It would appear to permit for two possible

20 conclusions, would it not? Either the story that we

21 have received from Haringey Child Protection Team in

22 particular but also from Brent as well is not

23 representative of the general picture for child

24 protection teams in north London at the relevant time,

25 or you got the wrong impression. Are you able to

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1 assist?

2 DCC CRAIK: Those options are available. My view, if you

3 are asking for my view on which of those is right, would

4 be that all the passive information and the little

5 active information I was able to gain did not paint that

6 picture and some of the evidence from the passive

7 information I was able to gain, the documentation, the

8 minutes of meetings, said things like "accommodation

9 Haringey, good". Not what I had been hearing and not

10 what you have been hearing. So there were

11 contraindications. So in terms of my looking at what

12 evidence have I got, as well as what am I hearing, what

13 you have been told is not the picture that I was given.

14 MR SHELDON: But in any event, given what we have heard

15 about the murder rates and the particular problems that

16 that raised particularly for Mr Cox the other day, the

17 state of the child protection teams would have had to

18 have been pretty dire for them to have been put at the

19 top of the agenda in 1999 at least in north London.

20 DCC CRAIK: No, it would only have needed the supervisors

21 there to recognise, corroborate what was wrong, pass

22 that information on and you have already described the

23 chain it comes up, and when it comes to me it has to be

24 dealt with, in the same way that the murders did and in

25 the same way that child protection issues on North East

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1 London around the major enquiries into child abuse in

2 Bow, you know, that despite the murder problem came to

3 my attention and I personally went out and dealt with

4 it, met with leaders of social services, negotiated and

5 agreed a way of dealing with it that could be done

6 within the resources that we had available.

7 MR SHELDON: Being realistic, if you had gone round during

8 the course of this exercise and been told by chief

9 inspectors responsible for child protection teams, "Our

10 teams are woefully under-resourced and understaffed and

11 we do not have for example sufficient number of people

12 on our teams who have had either child protection

13 training or detective training," in view of the

14 circumstances in which you found yourself in 1999 and

15 the pressures on resources, what realistically are you

16 saying you would have done about that?

17 DCC CRAIK: The first thing is when somebody says that to

18 you, what is the impact? What is this doing to the

19 organisation? On the child protection teams these are

20 critical issues, potentially critical incidents as we

21 can see here today. Then there is not an option to do

22 nothing about it. There can only be "what have you done

23 about it" would be the first thing I would ask with your

24 resources and I would expect them to have exhausted, or

25 her to have exhausted those opportunities. I would then

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1 say, "Right, let us sit down, get your OCU commander

2 here and how are we going to put this right?" And there

3 will always be a way of solving that.

4 Now, if the problem had been so bad that I had to

5 intervene again, albeit in my earlier intervention to

6 deal with murders, then I could have and would have done

7 that if it was important enough.

8 MR SHELDON: And you are optimistic that had you done so,

9 some sort of improvement if not a complete solution

10 could have been found?

11 DCC CRAIK: Of course. You can always do something but

12 people have to tell you what the problem is or you have

13 to uncover the problem.

14 MR SHELDON: So when we have heard for example detective

15 inspectors such as DI Howard saying, "Well I did not

16 make a fuss about my lack of resources and I did not

17 make a fuss about my lack of training because quite

18 frankly I knew that there was no point because nothing

19 could be done about it", then that is not a view to

20 which you subscribe?

21 DCC CRAIK: He could not know, he had not tried. If he had

22 tried and I had given him a negative response he could

23 say that, but if he had brought that to notice then it

24 could have been dealt with.

25 MR SHELDON: There are four particular areas about the

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1 practice of the child protection teams about which

2 I want to ask you. The first is the issue of manuals

3 and guidelines. The second is the number of people with

4 some form of detective training on child protection

5 teams. The third is the monitoring of performance and

6 performance indicators and the fourth is the

7 relationship between child protection teams and the

8 other agencies with which they were required to work.

9 I will deal with them in that order.

10 DCC CRAIK: Can I ask, are we talking about your third issue

11 performance indicators or are we actually talking about

12 management information?

13 MR SHELDON: We are talking about --

14 DCC CRAIK: I have seen some interchange of use of the

15 expression previously that I do not think is helpful.

16 If I can clarify, I think performance information is set

17 the target to reduce the incidence of child abuse and

18 achieve it. You have set a target, you have achieved

19 it, that is performance information. The issue about

20 resources, number of officers, amount of overtime,

21 workloads, all that, that is management information

22 that --

23 MR SHELDON: If I have unfortunately elided the two concepts

24 you will set me right when we come to it, but let us

25 deal first of all with manuals and guidelines.

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1 Paragraph 27 of your statement indicates that you were

2 aware of the Child Protection Manual.

3 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

4 MR SHELDON: That had been produced in 1995 and was current

5 during the year or so you were in charge. You say that

6 it gave detailed guidance on how to go about

7 investigating potential crimes against children. How

8 good was it, do you think?

9 DCC CRAIK: I have also heard that it is out of date and

10 there was some elements of it that were out of date that

11 had not been updated. I would also say around that that

12 it is actually the users' obligation to ensure that it

13 is updated as the manual itself points out and people

14 appeared not to have done that. But in terms of the

15 directions that it gives to officers, in terms of

16 dealing with cases, having read it, I still think it

17 provided them with appropriate advice on what to do.

18 So in terms of being out of date, I think it may

19 have been out of date in some respects but was

20 a valuable guideline and being out of date is not

21 a reason for not doing your job.

22 MR SHELDON: No, certainly not but I wonder if you could

23 while we are on this have a look at volume 33A page 65

24 please. You mention in your last answer that it is at

25 least partly the responsibility of the users of manuals

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1 to keep it updated and we see on page 65 part of

2 a minute of a meeting on 21st September 1999, as you can

3 see over the page, the 2 Area Crime Operational Command

4 Unit Child Protection Team Managers meeting and at

5 paragraph 4.2 we see that Peter Hill is dealing with

6 this. Detective Superintendent Akers was actioned at

7 a senior detectives meeting to rewrite the CR1 manual.

8 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

9 MR SHELDON: Two questions that arise out of that. Firstly

10 when you say that it is necessary for the users to

11 update it do you mean it is for people like Sue Akers to

12 rewrite it as and when required?

13 DCC CRAIK: No, I think if you look at page 2 and 3 of the

14 manual there is clear guidance to people that if they

15 find an element of the manual is out of date and they

16 are the users using it every day who should spot this,

17 then over on 3 is a simple template for them to fill in

18 to send to the policy unit: "This is out of date, can

19 you put this right please", and then that should happen.

20 So the rewriting of the manual was something that

21 when I understand it got to that position of agreeing

22 that it was out of date in some respects, that somebody

23 needed to get a grip of that and rewrite the manual and

24 that job I understand was given to Sue Akers.

25 MR SHELDON: One could have a certain amount of sympathy for

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1 Sue Akers, could one not, given that the Child

2 Protection Manual is 130-odd pages and one can imagine

3 how an extremely busy detective superintendent who has

4 just been given the manual and told to go and rewrite it

5 might find that a simply unmanageable task in the

6 context of their responsibilities, so what I was

7 wondering was is that a realistic way to go about

8 dealing with this problem?

9 DCC CRAIK: I think it is and Superintendent Akers is

10 a senior officer. If she is given something she cannot

11 manage she should say so and somebody else will find

12 another way of dealing with it.

13 MR SHELDON: Because we see when we go over a few pages to

14 page 76 in that volume, paragraph 4.2.1, Detective

15 Superintendent Akers stated that this was discharged

16 today, that is the manual.

17 "There was a meeting today and the CPT manual was

18 discussed and because the CPT manual is old, inaccurate

19 and not user friendly a complete revamp will be needed.

20 Due to current work commitments it has been decided

21 there will not be a CPT manual."

22 I do not want your help as to what "there will not

23 be a manual" means because we have dealt with that

24 elsewhere but what seems to be indicated from this is

25 that Detective Superintendent Akers has realised she

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1 does not have time to do this and so nothing is

2 effectively done.

3 DCC CRAIK: I was not part of that process and that debate

4 and I was not at that meeting and would only have had

5 sight of these minutes, and my understanding is that

6 that manual was or is being rewritten and that process

7 goes on. That was not the end of history in terms of

8 the Child Protection Manual. That development work goes

9 on and continues. Now, quite who was doing that I do

10 not know. I am not there and I was not part of that.

11 MR SHELDON: You got those minutes, did you not?

12 DCC CRAIK: Yes, I would have access to the minutes.

13 MR SHELDON: So you would have seen in September "decided

14 that rewrite is needed", October: "it has been realised

15 that a complete revamp or rewrite would be needed and

16 due to current work commitments [it seems fairly clear

17 what that means] it has been decided there will not be

18 a CPT manual", which as we have been told is there will

19 not be a rewrite. That is not a satisfactory way to

20 leave things, is it?

21 DCC CRAIK: No, and I believe, and I have seen other minutes

22 of the senior group where my understanding was rather

23 more, that not that the manual had been discharged but

24 the action had been discharged, which would be more

25 common speak around that.

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1 MR SHELDON: The rewrite?

2 DCC CRAIK: It is a rewrite process to my mind, the manual

3 is the manual, it is being rewritten. I did not receive

4 any confirmation or clear information that indicated in

5 any way that anybody should stop using the guidance they

6 were given, in addition to the other guidance that they

7 had of course.

8 MR SHELDON: Does it not stretch the meaning of

9 paragraph 4.2.1 a little far to suggest that it says

10 that somebody is currently rewriting the manual?

11 DCC CRAIK: All I know is that that is what is happening or

12 that is what subsequently happened, is that the

13 rewriting of the manual --

14 MR SHELDON: When did that start?

15 DCC CRAIK: I do not know.

16 MR SHELDON: What I want to understand before we leave this

17 topic is what was going through your mind when you read

18 these minutes, which presumably must have been the

19 manual has been found to be inadequate, it has been

20 decided that it needs to be rewritten and it would

21 appear at least from 4.2.1 that that is not progressing.

22 DCC CRAIK: But that was not -- the clarity of that was

23 contradicted by other minutes of the meeting where the

24 decision was actually made that this work would

25 continue, and that it did not mean that the manual was

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1 defunct and did not apply in terms of the operating

2 officers at the front line.

3 MR SHELDON: Did you attempt to resolve that apparent

4 conflicting information by phoning up Sue Akers and

5 finding out whether or not she was doing it?

6 DCC CRAIK: No, I was not unhappy that it was not

7 continuing.

8 MR SHELDON: According to your statement, paragraph 28, you

9 indicate that in addition to that manual child

10 protection teams would also have to be familiar with

11 Working Together, the Memorandum of Good Practice and

12 various notices that would be produced by the police

13 from time to time.

14 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

15 MR SHELDON: They would also as you point out in

16 paragraph 29 have to be familiar with local guidelines

17 such as for example Haringey Social Services Child

18 Protection Guidelines and those issued by the ACPC.

19 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

20 MR SHELDON: For those of us that have attempted to try and

21 read all that, it is a huge volume of material, several

22 hundred pages.

23 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

24 MR SHELDON: It is just too much for a busy child protection

25 officer to take on board, is it not, even if it is

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1 up-to-date?

2 DCC CRAIK: I do not think it is in that sense. They are

3 not required to read all these guidelines and memorise

4 them all. They are items for reference. They are there

5 to help them, to guide them. When they deal with

6 something and their experience is such that I am not

7 sure what to do next, there is the port of call, go and

8 look in the guidelines. If that does not work or you do

9 not understand the guidelines or you are uncertain

10 whether or not they are up-to-date, go to a colleague,

11 go to a supervisor and resolve the issue. Nobody ever

12 expects them to memorise the contents of that volume of

13 work. I cannot --

14 MR SHELDON: Certainly, but --

15 DCC CRAIK: They are there to guide them when they do not

16 know.

17 MR SHELDON: When that is the port of call, what the port of

18 call looks like is a bookcase full of rather large

19 unwieldy volumes, so in a situation where you are busy

20 and overworked and time for research and reflection may

21 be at a premium, do you not need something manageable,

22 accessible, perhaps in one volume, where you can go

23 straight for the answer rather than having to wade

24 through all this?

25 DCC CRAIK: We are speculating a bit but I thought the

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1 answer is ultimately to find something on an IT base

2 where you can go on a screen where you are already

3 working on. That is slightly futuristic but in terms of

4 the guidelines themselves people did not set out to

5 write them in a deliberately long winded style. It

6 contains the information you need. The bulk and the

7 volume, however you present it, is probably always going

8 to be there if it is to be really useful and guide you

9 properly. Abbreviations may be helpful in terms of

10 making life easier and looking it up but there is a risk

11 around abbreviating, that there is a lack of clarity and

12 it is probably as much work to abbreviate and produce

13 a smaller document than it is to actually revamp and

14 provide the proper manual.

15 There are manuals in all aspects of policing. Child

16 Protection Team manuals are not unusual. This is a way

17 of operating. Police notices contain a vast amount of

18 information that is routinely updated and they all have

19 to be referred to. It is not a reason not to do your

20 job because something is actually difficult to get into.

21 MR SHELDON: Are you able to help us, given your level of

22 seniority, and it may be that you are not, with the

23 extent to which individual officers and child protection

24 teams were (a) aware of all these guidelines and (b) the

25 extent to which they followed them?

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1 DCC CRAIK: Unless I inspected, drilled down to that level

2 at that particular place and checked and tested it, no.

3 I would expect their immediate supervisors to know how

4 familiar they are with, and indeed I guess if I was

5 a sergeant or inspector there conducting performance

6 appraisals, one thing I would be looking at is how

7 knowledgeable and well informed are my people.

8 MR SHELDON: Yes, because without those bits of information

9 the mere existence of the manuals is one of irrelevance.

10 DCC CRAIK: The existence -- manuals, if people do not use

11 them they do not work. It is the responsibility of paid

12 professional officers, constables, sergeants and all the

13 rest of us to comply with the guidance. It is the rules

14 of the supervisors, the sergeants and inspectors to

15 check that people are complying with the guidelines, the

16 policies. That is their job in life.

17 MR SHELDON: Certainly, so when you list them in your

18 statement you are simply illustrating for the benefit of

19 us what was there?

20 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

21 MR SHELDON: You are making no comment, implied or

22 otherwise, as to the extent to which the staff are aware

23 of them or they were being used?

24 DCC CRAIK: No, but they should be used. It is your

25 responsibility as a professional officer to refer to the

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1 guidelines that tell you how to do your job, unless you

2 are so familiar, so expert that you know them well

3 enough to manage without.

4 MR SHELDON: Would that be a convenient moment sir?

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, thank you very much indeed Mr Sheldon.

6 We will break for lunch. It being Friday and having

7 quite a lot to get through, I would be glad if we could

8 comply with our commitment to have a very short lunch on

9 a Friday, so you may say what is the change? If we can

10 be back at five past one I would be very grateful.

11 Mr Craik you are not allowed to discuss your evidence.

12 DCC CRAIK: I understand, of course.

13 (12.35 pm)

14 (The short adjournment)

15 (1.05 pm)

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for getting back ladies

17 and gentlemen. May I just say that we will try and

18 finish the evidence this afternoon but I hope that

19 everyone understands if my colleague Mr Richardson has

20 to leave before the end. Thank you very much.

21 MR SHELDON: Thank you, sir.

22 Mr Craik we had arrived just before the adjournment

23 at the second of the four issues I indicated I wanted to

24 explore with you, namely the lack of trained detectives

25 on the child protection teams in North West Area in the

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1 period we are concerned with. We heard from Mr Cox the

2 other day that at the time -- so 1999 in particular --

3 there was no detective training being offered by the

4 Metropolitan Police. Is that correct?

5 DCC CRAIK: My understanding is that there was some booked

6 for later that year. That is based on the document

7 I have seen since. But I was aware that detective

8 training had stopped in 1994, because of a change in

9 demand for want of a better expression.

10 MR SHELDON: It had stopped in 1994 and the best of your

11 recollection is there were some in the pipeline for the

12 back end of the year?

13 DCC CRAIK: And of course Mr Griffiths' strategic objective

14 was to develop training and I know as a product of

15 David Kendrick's review there was a training needs

16 analysis being done about what exactly officers in child

17 protection teams needed in way of training and I think

18 that is important because certainly on the basis of what

19 I have seen and heard, I think it may be a wee bit

20 misleading to assume that just detective training is the

21 answer to the difficulties.

22 MR SHELDON: Because it was not that there was no detective

23 training, there was also no specific child protection

24 training either being offered at the time we are

25 concerned with, was there?

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1 DCC CRAIK: No.

2 MR SHELDON: Can you help with whether or not the detective

3 training did start up again at the end of 1999 or not?

4 DCC CRAIK: I cannot. The only document I have seen is one

5 that indicated that some 213 places had been booked

6 through to March 2000, but whether that happened or not,

7 I do not know.

8 MR SHELDON: You have indicated the reason that there was no

9 detective training, at least until the end of that year,

10 was the priorities had changed or there had been some

11 sort of structural change in 1994 which meant that it

12 was not regarded as necessary. Is that right?

13 DCC CRAIK: In 1994 there was a change in the demand, there

14 was no requirement for training because they were full

15 up with trained detectives at that time.

16 MR SHELDON: What about child protection --

17 DCC CRAIK: But there was also a development in the way in

18 which detectives were trained away from a single course

19 being taught but through the accredited investigation

20 system, so the needs around the training of detectives

21 and the means by which they became detectives were

22 changing and then changed as well.

23 MR SHELDON: That deals with detective training. What about

24 child protection training? Why was there none of that

25 being offered?

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1 DCC CRAIK: I think in 1999, my reading of David Kendrick's

2 report was that we needed to step back and develop

3 exactly what was needed for officers, hence the training

4 needs analysis, and not provided that. There was some

5 local practice around local training, Area 4 did some

6 and some of my officers on 3 Area Walthamstow provided

7 local training on area, but that was because they had

8 the officers with training skills ready there to deliver

9 that sort of training.

10 MR SHELDON: Dealing with the detective training in

11 particular at this stage, it would appear to be or the

12 lack of training would appear to be one of the reasons,

13 or one of the reasons that has been offered to us, why

14 there were so few detectives on the child protection

15 teams with which we are primarily concerned.

16 Now for example Detective Inspector Howard told

17 us -- sir at page 99 of volume 4 -- that from March 1999

18 to May 2000, all of the constables and the sergeants on

19 his team were uniformed, none of them were

20 detective-trained.

21 Firstly, how serious a problem do you regard that to

22 be?

23 DCC CRAIK: I think the issue of being able to deal with

24 child protection issues is not simply about having had

25 a detective training course. It is about being

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1 competent to investigate. My view is that all officers

2 investigate. Probably any officer with more than two

3 years' service who has been properly assessed as being

4 competent and has the relevant investigative skills is

5 capable of starting life working in child protection

6 teams.

7 There is more than one way to deliver investigative

8 skills than just detective training courses. You learn

9 from your peers, you learn from experience. I learned

10 all my detective skills when I was a detective

11 superintendent for three and a half years on murder

12 teams and an acting chief superintendent, and I have not

13 had a detective training course. It is about how you

14 develop those professional skills. Training may well be

15 an important part but a detective --

16 MR SHELDON: May well be, or is in your professional view.

17 DCC CRAIK: -- is a part of professional development within

18 a child protection team. It is not to my mind the

19 critical issue particularly in the case of Victoria.

20 That was about errors of judgment where no investigation

21 was made. Investigative skills taught at detective

22 training do not make a difference if you decide not to

23 investigate and your supervisors do not check that you

24 did not do that and we require you to put that right.

25 There was no investigation.

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1 The issue is a judgment that was made and how you

2 train officers in recognising critical and potentially

3 critical incidents, so that they are aware of the

4 potential, so they take positive actions, not negative

5 actions, that supervisors never write "seen and noted"

6 on a negative action and require further actions until

7 they are satisfied that no further action can be taken.

8 Then, authorise that with the reasons why they are

9 agreeing with that decision. That is not provided by

10 any current or past detective training that I am aware

11 of.

12 MR SHELDON: So you would invite the Inquiry to conclude on

13 that basis that the fact that the officers concerned had

14 not received detective training and were not trained

15 detectives, you would invite us to draw the conclusion

16 that that was not a significant factor in this case?

17 DCC CRAIK: Yes. And a further conclusion which I think is

18 important is that it is something around the critical

19 incident identification or the potential for critical

20 incident identification that is the important training

21 needs in the future.

22 MR SHELDON: I see. It would follow necessarily from that,

23 would it not, that the officers on the child protection

24 teams, particularly if they had some experience, should

25 have been equipped, regardless of that deficiency in

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1 training, to investigate the sort of crimes that were

2 committed against Victoria adequately and efficiently?

3 DCC CRAIK: Yes, and in addition to that if they felt they

4 had not, they were within the Crime OCU, they had the

5 best detectives and most experienced detectives in

6 England, possibly in the world, immediately available to

7 them within the Crime OCU. That is one of the reasons

8 why child protections were in the Crime OCU, to give

9 them that immediate support. Because while an

10 investigation or an allegation of an assault against

11 a child may start off in a very simple and non-complex

12 way, they can very quickly get very complex. And if it

13 needs that level of intervention, senior investigating

14 officer and a murder team, then there it is and that

15 advice is always there and honoured.

16 MR SHELDON: If the Inquiry finds there were deficiencies in

17 the practice of the frontline officers that dealt with

18 Victoria and it seems likely that that conclusion might

19 be drawn, then you would invite the explanation that is

20 arrived at for those deficiencies to be either

21 incompetence or a lack of willingness to seek advice but

22 not a deficiency in training?

23 DCC CRAIK: Not a deficiency in training. It is not

24 a reason or an excuse to not do your job properly, to

25 not get it right because you have not had a particular

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1 course, a course that I wonder if the officers realise

2 what would actually deliver for them when they actually

3 say, "I need that course".

4 MR SHELDON: It can be an excuse, can it not? In some

5 instances it can be legitimately suggested by

6 a frontline operative in whatever service they are in to

7 say that I can excuse my poor practice or explain my

8 poor practice in a particular instance on the basis that

9 I have not been given the sufficient training in order

10 to deal with it?

11 DCC CRAIK: You can say that if you actively investigate,

12 that the skills you had were not sufficient to take you

13 through that investigation. But here there was no

14 investigation, they decided not to and that is the

15 critical bit. That is the bit where we need to get

16 into, to actually make sure that that does not happen or

17 is not allowed to happen so that there is always

18 challenge, there is always investigation and when you

19 have not the investigative skills personally, then you

20 get them from those around you and that is what

21 supervisors are there for as well, to either provide it

22 or to arrange to provide it.

23 MR SHELDON: So there would be a distinction in your view,

24 and relating it to the facts of this case, there would

25 be a distinction between say going along to the flat to

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1 investigate the potential crime and making some sort of

2 mistake about dealing with the forensic evidence or

3 collecting the evidence, a difference between that which

4 might be excused by lack of training if you had not done

5 the course, and failing to go along in the first place,

6 which cannot be?

7 DCC CRAIK: That is right.

8 MR SHELDON: I see.

9 DCC CRAIK: That is a cop's job, doing something. Police

10 get called, they start an investigation. The first day

11 a probationer walks out they could be called to a house

12 where a child has been abused. They must find out and

13 when they get to the point where they do not feel they

14 are comfortable investigating, they must get somebody

15 else in. You do not walk away and say no I will not

16 deal with that. No further action is not an option.

17 MR SHELDON: No. I wonder if we could just explore this

18 briefly. You say that this is basic to any form of

19 police work. You investigate crimes, that is what the

20 police do, regardless of whether you are a murder

21 investigator or a child protection officer or anything

22 else. What would seem to be the case in Victoria's

23 situation is that these investigations were not started

24 or at least were not progressed in the way that one

25 might expect. Were you aware of any sense, on the child

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1 protection teams for which you were responsible, of

2 a view that crimes against children -- or in the Met

3 generally -- that crimes against children should be

4 approached in a different way to crimes against adults

5 at least in terms of how they are investigated?

6 DCC CRAIK: Only in terms of that we have special units,

7 child protection teams especially designed to help

8 protect children. They had more. Other than that they

9 have every and immediate access to the same level of

10 investigation that adults have. The same team that came

11 in to investigate the murder could have been called in

12 by anybody of inspector rank and above to assess at any

13 stage and help either with the inquiry or take over the

14 inquiry. That is another reason why they were in the

15 Crime OCU, so they had that opportunity, when life is

16 not crystal clear about what this is, what situation are

17 we in here.

18 It is very different, I understand, of course, where

19 a child is found dead at home and where we have a series

20 of events where life unfolds over a period of time, but

21 the premise must always be until you are absolutely sure

22 and somebody authorises you to stop investigating, you

23 keep going, and when you get to the point where you do

24 not understand or it is beyond your capacity, you get

25 somebody else in, and that was always available.

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1 MR SHELDON: They would not have come though, would they?

2 Detective Inspector Niven and his team would not have

3 come along and investigated a child with a couple of

4 suspected belt buckle marks on her body, they deal with

5 more serious things, do they not?

6 DCC CRAIK: They would come along if the risk was to the

7 child. I give you some examples. I intervened on North

8 West Area despite the murder rate, and required

9 David Cox's teams to go and investigate missing persons,

10 because I foresaw a risk there that was very serious for

11 the individuals, and they were not murders, but I said,

12 no, the risk here is about looking ahead, about changing

13 the mindsets of officers so they look ahead and say:

14 what could go wrong here? What is the worst case

15 scenario? And until I am happy that cannot happen, it

16 will be investigated, and when it is beyond my remit

17 I will go to my supervisors, and when the sergeants

18 cannot help, they go to the inspector, and at the

19 inspector level, any CID inspector can call for an AMIP

20 SIO either to assist and advise at any time or to come

21 out and investigate. Now they will come out and

22 research it and make a judgment about whether they

23 should or should not, and they will refer to their

24 senior officers if it is a difficult decision, but that

25 option is there for them.

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1 MR SHELDON: It might be thought that is a slightly

2 surprising assertion to make in view of some of the

3 other evidence we have had so far for two reasons.

4 Firstly, if for example Detective Inspector Howard or

5 one of his teams decided that there were concerns that

6 crimes were being committed against Victoria on the

7 basis of marks that they had seen on her body or the

8 concerns of the nursing staff or Social Services,

9 firstly, is it really the case that a senior

10 investigating officer of Detective Inspector Niven's

11 standing or equivalent would have come in with a team to

12 investigate that particularly in view of the fact that

13 they had 75 murders to deal with?

14 DCC CRAIK: Only if the investigation was beyond the

15 capacity of Mr Howard and his staff. I would expect an

16 officer like Mr Howard to be able -- and his staff to be

17 able to investigate something like that himself.

18 MR SHELDON: I see. so in relation to Victoria's case that

19 is a theoretical possibility because if we look at it

20 realistically, the crime as it was then was not

21 sufficiently complex to require --

22 DCC CRAIK: Well within their capability to deal with within

23 the Child Protection Team, and it was my belief that

24 within that team, as within any other teams, they had

25 the capacity to do that effectively and that is their

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1 day-to-day work. They do that all the time, all around

2 London.

3 MR SHELDON: Because one might be struck by the discrepancy

4 and the standard of the investigation that was done

5 after Victoria died with one that was done or was not

6 done beforehand; because all of a sudden a child dies

7 and a remarkably efficient service is performed,

8 commended by the judge at the trial, that results in the

9 conviction. Does it need a child to die before that

10 sort of service is provided?

11 DCC CRAIK: The key point came in your first sentence there.

12 It is that -- and I am conscious that I am reiterating

13 my point here but I think it is important -- it is that

14 there was no action. It was not that a real

15 investigation was started and got into difficulty and

16 people did things wrong, it was the decision to take no

17 further action, and for a supervisor to say that because

18 then there is no investigation. It becomes an all or

19 nothing phenomena, not a gradual development into

20 a serious investigation.

21 MR SHELDON: But in attempting to understand why or how that

22 could possibly have happened, I am wondering the extent

23 to which the fact that this was a crime against a child

24 played a part, because one cannot really imagine

25 an investigation not getting off the ground if for

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1 example it was a serious assault against an adult within

2 the home or on the street, that would be in the normal

3 course investigated by CID officers, or if the crime

4 reaches the sort of level of seniority that gets people

5 like Detective Inspector Niven involved.

6 DCC CRAIK: It matters not that it was a child or an adult.

7 The key issue here is the judgment that was made by the

8 officer and the decision not to. Now, the fact that it

9 was a child, not an adult, the error, the mistake was

10 the judgment not to challenge the information. To go

11 along with the decision, to take no further action, and

12 the failsafe, the checkers who then did not get it right

13 either accepted that decision and did not challenge it,

14 did not check it, did not require the gathering of

15 further information to make a better informed decision.

16 MR SHELDON: Leaving aside the particular circumstances of

17 Victoria's case, and the fact that no investigation was

18 got off the ground for which as I understand you to say

19 there can be no excuse in any event, is the fact that

20 there were very few if any detectives on the child

21 protection teams with which we are concerned something

22 about which we should be surprised or concerned?

23 DCC CRAIK: It is not connected with the decision.

24 MR SHELDON: No --

25 DCC CRAIK: But --

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1 MR SHELDON: Should there be detectives on child protection

2 teams?

3 DCC CRAIK: Yes, I would value their experience and their

4 training on the Child Protection Team, and I guess the

5 easiest way to say it is if I was being asked now with

6 hindsight what the balance of detective to PCs should be

7 or should they all be detectives, then if I had the

8 freedom to pick then I would go for something around

9 50/50 because I think there are particular benefits that

10 PCs can bring. One, part of their training to develop

11 them into detectives, therefore they de facto come in as

12 constables. But also they bring skills around

13 interagency working that can be useful in addition to

14 that. Provided they have the competencies and they are

15 assessed when they join, they are chosen, they are

16 selected, then they can do that job.

17 Detective training and detective officer skills will

18 help that. It may help the Inquiry remit if I said it

19 is about the range of competencies, investigating skills

20 that they have, the label of being a detective does not

21 make the difference. It is can they do the job, have

22 they got the competencies and have they got the skills?

23 MR SHELDON: In view of that, in view of the fact that

24 although as you rightly say the issue is the skills not

25 the label, but in view of the fact that it is preferable

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1 that there are at least some detectives on Child

2 Protection Team and ideally 50/50 and the corollary of

3 that is that none is unsatisfactory, was the problem of

4 a lack of detectives on child protection teams in North

5 West Area one that reached your ears in the year that

6 you were Commander?

7 DCC CRAIK: I am not sure I quite agree with you around the

8 corollary that none is acceptable.

9 MR SHELDON: Unsatisfactory.

10 DCC CRAIK: Unsatisfactory, I beg your pardon. Yes. When

11 I inherited both area commands, responsibility for both

12 areas, then I was aware of the number of detectives and

13 the number of constables. I was also aware that on

14 other areas it was slightly different, not significantly

15 different but slightly different. Having been on

16 3 Area, and it appeared to be functioning successfully

17 with very similar ratios of constables to detectives,

18 I was not immediately concerned that the ratio of

19 constables to detectives was the same on North West

20 Area. That may not have been the case had I been on an

21 area with a higher ratio and my experience base was

22 different.

23 But both appeared, insofar as we could tell from the

24 limited information we had, and the contact I had been

25 able to generate personally in my own interventions and

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1 supervisions, was that that appeared to work and the

2 developing people with the right skills and the right

3 ratios was properly the longer term work of the

4 strategic objects that Bill Griffiths' group were

5 probably going to consider and develop.

6 MR SHELDON: You indicated at the outset of your evidence

7 this morning, or at least near the beginning of it, that

8 had you received reports that there were particular

9 problems within child protection teams, your approach

10 would have been to sit down with the relevant people and

11 work out a way through it and that no problem was

12 incapable if not of complete solution then of some

13 improvement.

14 If you had received a visit from say Mr Cox, saying:

15 I am deeply concerned by the lack of detectives or

16 people with a requisite detective skills on child

17 protection teams in my area; there is nothing you could

18 have done about that, is there?

19 DCC CRAIK: I go back to my original point; there is always

20 something you could do.

21 MR SHELDON: What would you have done?

22 DCC CRAIK: Well, if the situation as Mr Cox hypothetically

23 would have presented it to me was so serious, I would

24 have intervened in the distribution of detectives that

25 was already going on and if necessary change my

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1 decision. The world moves on. Priorities change.

2 Things happen that -- events happen that I have no

3 control over. I have to deal with those and I would

4 make those tough decisions if they came my way, and if

5 I have to undo partially a decision that said detectives

6 must go into the murder teams, HMIC inspections on

7 murders that are indicated, then yes I would make that

8 risk management decision and say no, I have a new

9 priority here and I will move one or two or whatever

10 I thought was the right balance to redress that problem.

11 MR SHELDON: What if you had received back the indication

12 that none of the detectives really fancied that job and

13 they would rather not go?

14 DCC CRAIK: Two ways of dealing with that. One is, yes, it

15 has been difficult to get officers into there. But if

16 I think the bottom line is would I eventually find

17 myself in a position where I have to say sorry, you work

18 for the police, we like to have committed volunteers, we

19 like to have, because of all the volunteers one has

20 here, to have the right of people in there, but if the

21 need was that great I would put people in.

22 With detective skills, even if they did not

23 particularly want to do that job, and given the nature

24 of child protection teams, I probably personally would

25 speak to them and make sure that they went in there

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1 briefed with a positive attitude, and went in there and

2 did the right job, because clearly one of the down sides

3 of posting people when they do not want to be in there

4 is it can undo all the good marketing work you try to do

5 to improve the image of officers in there. So if I did

6 that, I would have a strategy to manage those

7 individuals to minimise any possible negatives effects

8 I may have.

9 MR SHELDON: Thank you. Moving on to what I now I hope

10 I can unobjectively call "monitoring performance". You

11 say in paragraph 31 of your statement that:

12 "Child protection investigations should be monitored

13 at a number of different levels in a number of different

14 ways."

15 Do you see that?

16 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

17 MR SHELDON: You also make the point that Victoria's case

18 reveals weaknesses in the monitoring and evaluation

19 process.

20 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

21 MR SHELDON: Let us start if we may by looking at what

22 should have been done or the system that should have

23 been working. As you explain in your statement, the

24 first level of supervision is provided by sergeants.

25 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

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1 MR SHELDON: The sergeants provide the PCs or DCs with their

2 supervision and then the sergeants in turn are

3 supervised by the detective inspector in charge of the

4 team. That is day-to-day supervision which would

5 include, as I understand it, looking at the CRIS reports

6 from time to time.

7 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

8 MR SHELDON: It is after that that the position seems to get

9 a little less clear, because the next level up is the

10 DCI. What is he supposed to be doing in terms of

11 supervising investigations?

12 DCC CRAIK: To my mind the DCI is the one who is at that

13 level where he is -- and it is a "he" in this case --

14 was a member of the Crime OCU Management Team. He is

15 part of their top team. He is in there and he is

16 working on behalf of David Cox to deliver the service in

17 child protection teams.

18 I would expect him to have the capacity to get down

19 and dip sample at that level, as well as checking what

20 the inspector said and checking that the inspector was

21 doing exactly the same thing, looking into the work and

22 quality checking. I would expect him to be able to do

23 some of that himself and verify it. But I would say

24 Mr Wheeler would be the last point in that chain and

25 would expect that to be functioning -- I could not do it

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1 8,000 times. Mr Wheeler could certainly do it for the

2 number of officers under his command.

3 MR SHELDON: Dip sampling and a person who cannot be in

4 eight places at once showing his face from time to time?

5 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

6 MR SHELDON: Is there any sense in which the role of an area

7 DCI in that position could be described as

8 administrative only?

9 DCC CRAIK: Absolutely not.

10 MR SHELDON: What do you understand that term to mean in

11 that context, if anything?

12 DCC CRAIK: I can only think back to an old admin support

13 role that does not exist in the Metropolitan Police.

14 I was once an Admin Chief Inspector on what was then

15 known as a division. I would still have operational

16 command responsibilities, but that does not exist any

17 more. I do not understand what has been referred to

18 about that. He is a member of the Command Team and

19 everything that comes with that.

20 MR SHELDON: Whilst we are on Detective Chief Inspector

21 Wheeler you mention in your statement, paragraph 22,

22 that he had 12 areas of responsibility. I do not wish

23 to go through them with you, we can deal with them with

24 him. What I want to understand is: does the fact that

25 he has 12 areas of responsibility mean in your view that

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1 he would be justified in not doing the two things we

2 discussed now, namely dip sampling and showing his face

3 from time to time?

4 DCC CRAIK: Absolutely not, I do not think the volume of

5 work was that much. I was concerned with the volume of

6 work and the complexity of it that his counterpart in

7 East London had. And in any event it is about

8 prioritisation and checking what your people are doing,

9 and supervision and leadership is one of the priorities.

10 MR SHELDON: He says in his statement that his main control

11 or function as he saw it was to be the deputy to the

12 informant registrar, and as far as child protection

13 teams, he says that he never had a defined role in that

14 respect and most of what he did was from his own desire

15 to improve CPT conditions. It seems to indicate that he

16 was doing it off his own bat almost. Did you regard the

17 DCI post that he was filling in relation to child

18 protection as being an ad hoc, ill-defined one that the

19 post holder could dip in and out of as he chose?

20 DCC CRAIK: Absolutely not. My understanding was, because

21 I inherited DCI Wheeler and I was not part of his

22 selection, but my understanding was he was selected

23 because he had the background and skills in child

24 protection. That was his CV if you like. He was

25 specifically chosen it seems to me largely because of

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1 those skills, to fulfil that role in managing the Child

2 Protection Team.

3 MR SHELDON: If he did perform his role in the way that he

4 says in his statement and he started saying in his

5 evidence to us, and if he did view himself as I have

6 just described, then that knocks a major hole in the

7 chain of supervision that we have been describing, does

8 it not? Because as you say in paragraph 32 of your

9 statement, superintendents are policy advisers

10 essentially and deal with at a more strategic level.

11 We have heard from Mr Cox and Mr Campbell as to how

12 much day-to-day monitoring they can realistically do,

13 particularly in the context that they were in. One can

14 see then, if there is nobody in between DI Howard and

15 Superintendent Akers doing any active supervision, one

16 can see how DI Howard may say with some justification

17 "they felt out on a limb".

18 DCC CRAIK: It was DCI Wheeler's role to fulfil that gap.

19 It was his job. I saw him several times. I was in and

20 out of Becke House a great deal because of the murder

21 situation and otherwise. He was there. I saw him at

22 meetings. On no occasion did I ever get that view of

23 life from him personally.

24 MR SHELDON: Well, if he cannot give you an accurate picture

25 because he is not giving attention to the materials, he

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1 is not getting down there and he is not dip sampling,

2 and if as you say in your statement -- we touched on

3 this earlier -- you cannot be entirely confident in the

4 numbers you are getting, the management information

5 because it was quite crude and needed to be developed,

6 then you are not getting any decent information, are

7 you, or people up the chain as to what is going on,

8 because the link in the chain that would provide it is

9 not or cannot do it accurately and the numbers are not

10 providing it either, so you are in the dark?

11 DCC CRAIK: If people are not telling me, but I did as

12 I mentioned earlier have a proactive repertoire of

13 interventions I could put in to check what was not going

14 on in addition to my own personal visits and in addition

15 to what his supervisors and staff might be saying about

16 him or saying about the processes that were going on.

17 I did not actually deploy my own area inspection teams

18 to that purpose, in that location, in the time period

19 I was there.

20 MR SHELDON: Why not?

21 DCC CRAIK: The amount of inspection and review work and

22 personal visits that could be made, they were -- dip

23 sampling is quite a major event in terms of managing and

24 the intrusion that comes along. To do so I would have

25 employed the detectives from the Inspection Review Team,

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1 I would commission them to do a bit of work. I could

2 either do it on an OCU basis, on a theme basis, "Please

3 look at child protection teams for me, please look at

4 murder teams for me" but I would need to commission them

5 to do that work.

6 I may even get your ACPO officer to go and oversee

7 that to give an objective perspective of what is going

8 on rather than inform or confirm my own view or

9 otherwise. At that time I had not commissioned that

10 work at Haringey and because of the span of demand and

11 the ability to dip sample across the whole of the 8,000

12 officers and half a million crimes and the rest of it,

13 it probably would have been intelligence-led on my part.

14 I would put them in where there was a risk.

15 Other than that, we rotated around those dip

16 sampling inspections by the Inspection Team and ACPO

17 which involved meetings with officers to confirm what

18 was found on the CRIS and the rest of it.

19 So it was a rigorous dip sampling approach but the

20 scale of things meant I either had to prioritise it and

21 put where the risk was, and to be fair, about that time

22 I probably thought the risk at Bow, because of the major

23 inquiries going on there, of things not done properly

24 would have been greater.

25 So had I been minded I would have followed where

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1 I thought the risk was greatest, otherwise I would wait

2 until the OCU was inspected.

3 MR SHELDON: But to some extent it is an accident of

4 circumstance. You looked at some. You did not happen

5 to look at this one.

6 DCC CRAIK: Yes, and indeed dip sampling because of the

7 nature of it can look and miss.

8 MR SHELDON: Last topic, relationship with other agencies.

9 There was, as you point out, an HMIC thematic inspection

10 report produced in 1999. Sir it is in our bundles,

11 volume 31, page 121. I will not ask you to look at it

12 at the moment, Mr Craik, because helpfully you list some

13 of the more pertinent conclusions of that report at

14 paragraph 37 of your statement.

15 The first one that you list is that the chief police

16 officer has a responsibility for ensuring that there is

17 communication between the police and other agencies, and

18 the third is the importance and sensitivity of

19 intelligence sharing.

20 Who are the chief police officers that are being

21 referred to in the first of those two conclusions and

22 recommendations?

23 DCC CRAIK: It must be chief officers at ACPO.

24 MR SHELDON: You?

25 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

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1 MR SHELDON: What did you do in light of that report to

2 establish whether or not you were meeting those

3 responsibilities?

4 DCC CRAIK: It is part of that takeover strategy, the

5 intervention where I see the senior officers, speak to

6 them about what my expectations are, and find out how

7 they are operating with other agencies and within

8 themselves. I would also have access I guess to minutes

9 of ACPC meetings, and I would be aware, for example, of

10 the occasion that Superintendent Akers was asked to go

11 along to an ACPC meeting because of a particular

12 difficulty, the details of which I would not know about,

13 unless it became such a difficulty that it came through

14 to my level to resolve.

15 MR SHELDON: You see, I am scrabbling around to find

16 a precise date on the report. I cannot find one but it

17 was your recollection that it was available to you when

18 you took over the post in April 1999?

19 DCC CRAIK: Sorry, what --

20 MR SHELDON: The thematic inspection report. This is

21 something you looked at when you took over the joint

22 role?

23 DCC CRAIK: It is part of my reading into the job, the

24 research into the job. I am not quite sure of the date

25 it was published but I was reading into the job through

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1 January, right through to April, so I think it would

2 have been available at that stage.

3 MR SHELDON: I see. From that survey that you have

4 described, led by this document and other

5 considerations, what impression did you get of the

6 working relationship between the police and their

7 partner agencies within North West Area, in particular?

8 DCC CRAIK: Not difficult to the point of requiring

9 intervention. Recognising not every child protection

10 team would have the same smooth relationships and that

11 there would be variations between them, but I would

12 expect that and I would expect people to manage that.

13 MR SHELDON: Were you aware, for example, of any particular

14 difficulties between Haringey CPT and their local

15 Social Services?

16 DCC CRAIK: Not at the time. Clearly we are now but at the

17 time -- and it is slightly confused by the fact that

18 I remember dealing at one stage with the OCU Commander

19 around issues with Haringey that were not connected with

20 child protection teams. So I am slightly conscious

21 I may mislead you there if I am not careful.

22 MR SHELDON: Given that the thematic inspection report

23 places this responsibility on you and it was one that

24 you were aware of and part of the driver for your

25 survey, if that relationship was any worse than sort of

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1 low level, odd personality clash, something along those

2 lines, would you have expected to know, find out?

3 DCC CRAIK: Yes, and I would expect at some stage, and if

4 I can explain this, I was always aware that as I said

5 this was a holding position for me, but business as

6 normal for the police. If at some stage this had

7 continued, I did discuss with my colleagues the

8 possibility of merging North East and North West Areas,

9 and at that point, had I been interested in that or

10 committed to doing that, I would have commissioned my

11 inspection teams to go in and provide me with the

12 information to inform me of that decision whether that

13 was a good idea to do it across the board or in terms of

14 the Crime OCU, or whether there were good reasons to

15 leave the two operating separately, because you will see

16 they have slightly different command structures and

17 there were differences in the way that the Crime OCUs

18 operated on North East and North West and the total

19 number of officers that were there.

20 So I would have been looking for an inspection that

21 actually got right down into all those levels and told

22 me how is this working so I could make an effective

23 judgment about whether I would bring the two together or

24 not. Bear in mind of course I was always aware of the

25 work Bill Griffiths was doing and the likelihood that

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1 the current functional command structure that you will

2 hear about from others would be coming through. It was

3 a question of when that would come through and whether

4 I would need to take action to manage the differences

5 between North East and North West or whether I could

6 safely leave them as they were.

7 In the months that I was there, then that handover

8 strategy that I explained was part of my information

9 gathering that would inform whether I wanted to make

10 changes or not. Bear in mind the change before another

11 change might not be the smartest idea around.

12 MR SHELDON: In view of the fact that the report emphasised

13 the need to communicate between agencies, share

14 intelligence and so on, would you regard it as necessary

15 for the police to attend case conferences?

16 DCC CRAIK: It could be done on necessity basis. I am aware

17 that --

18 MR SHELDON: Should it be done on a necessity basis?

19 DCC CRAIK: In an ideal world it would be helpful if they

20 could attend all, but given the pressures they were

21 under, I understand or I recall that Sue Akers made the

22 decision that they would not go to all of those reviews

23 and that it should be done when necessary and that

24 she -- I think that may well have been the issue that

25 she went to see -- that she personally visited the ACPC

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1 around, rather than the DI whose normal function it was.

2 MR SHELDON: She did, and your recollection of it means I do

3 not have to take you to the minutes specifically,

4 volume 26B pages 020.502 to 504. She did go along and

5 say exactly what you recollect, namely we do not have

6 the resources to go to all of them so we will go on

7 a needs based formula of the type you have described.

8 Now you were aware of that decision at the time, were

9 you?

10 DCC CRAIK: It would be after because I would have got it

11 through reading minutes I suspect, I believe and quite

12 properly, so she would have only told me about the

13 problem if it was a problem she could not have solved.

14 MR SHELDON: But when you did read it you would have thought

15 along the lines that that is not ideal but that is

16 acceptable in light of the circumstances?

17 DCC CRAIK: Understandably.

18 MR SHELDON: And you would have been aware, would you, that

19 Social Services were expressing some disappointment in

20 the level of police involvement they were able to take

21 advantage of in case conferences?

22 DCC CRAIK: No, not personally aware. I would expect it and

23 would expect them to manage that and would expect them

24 to review the position and then go back after a while

25 and say, "Is this still working? Is it still

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1 a difficulty and what can we do about it?" It is not

2 something I would expect somebody to just do and then

3 walk off and leave it. It has to be monitored, it has

4 to be evaluated. If it does not work, go back and

5 change it.

6 MR SHELDON: Did you read the report that DCI Wheeler did on

7 Haringey CPT following Victoria's death?

8 DCC CRAIK: I have seen it but I was not in post then and

9 I have seen subsequently.

10 MR SHELDON: I should show one part of it for the sake of

11 completeness on this subject. Volume 44, page 26. This

12 is his conclusions -- I would not take you through the

13 report in detail but it is the penultimate paragraph

14 I would like to draw your attention to. He says:

15 "Haringey itself seems to have its own particular

16 culture and ways of working within the child protection

17 framework. It seems that they [he is talking about

18 Social Services] are extremely powerful within the

19 protection network and some social workers work hard to

20 actually prevent police involvement."

21 Now, the question of whether or not that is directly

22 contradicted by what has being said in the minutes to

23 which we have referred and the plan that Sue Akers put

24 forward is a question we can put to Mr Wheeler. What

25 I want to ask you is whether you were aware of any

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1 particular difficulty either of the sort he describes or

2 of resentment about a lack of police involvement in

3 Haringey at the time we are concerned with?

4 DCC CRAIK: No, not in the time you are concerned with, nor

5 the time I was there, and I guess I would have to say if

6 this was such a powerful issue, why did he wait until

7 then to let people above him in the organisation know

8 about it?

9 MR SHELDON: One final point while we are on that report.

10 If you turn to page 1 in that volume, you will see what

11 it is -- you may recall it in any event. Called

12 a Review of Highgate CPT for Commander Brown, done by

13 DCI Wheeler, ADI Mike McDonagh and DC Christopher Bloor.

14 Do you know who commissioned that report?

15 DCC CRAIK: I do not, no.

16 MR SHELDON: It was not you?

17 DCC CRAIK: No.

18 MR SHELDON: Given he was the DCI in charge of that CPT at

19 the relevant time, would you have regarded it as

20 appropriate for him to have done that review?

21 DCC CRAIK: It is perhaps easier looking back. I find it

22 difficult, with the benefit of hindsight I would not

23 have given that job to Wheeler.

24 MR SHELDON: Did you know who did give him that job? We

25 have struggled to find out.