Archived Transcript for 18 January 2002: Pages 151 to 200
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1 DCC CRAIK: I do not and I would be speculating as to who or

2 why.

3 MR SHELDON: What sort of level is that kind of decision

4 taken at? Can you even help us with that?

5 DCC CRAIK: Given the serious nature of the event and if

6 I was Commander (Crime) at the time, and I am conscious

7 we are into speculation here which may not be that

8 helpful, I would expect to have a hand on that and

9 I would be conducting that personally at that stage and

10 I would agree with that.

11 MR SHELDON: Thank you, that is all I wish to ask.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr Thwaites?

13 MR THWAITES: Mr Craik, to what extent do you personally

14 accept responsibility for police failures here that may

15 have contributed to Victoria's death?

16 DCC CRAIK: My officers let Victoria and her parents down.

17 I was responsible for those officers. I was the

18 Commander. By anybody's definition -- you can go

19 through job descriptions as much as you like -- I was

20 the boss in the organisation. If they let the family

21 down and Victoria down, I let them down, and the family

22 are not here now but I would like to apologise to them

23 for that.

24 MR THWAITES: Thank you, that is all I want to ask.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: That you very much, Mr Thwaites.

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1 Mr Craik I would like to follow on from Mr Thwaites'

2 question if I may. I am really struggling to understand

3 the accountability arrangements within the force because

4 you have described very clearly, very precisely what you

5 described as a "cop's job" and there was nothing in the

6 referral of Victoria that fell outside, if I can put it

7 that way, a cop's job.

8 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: And it should have been handled in what you

10 think is, what you describe as a straightforward,

11 uncomplicated way.

12 DCC CRAIK: Yes, sir.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Why do you think it was not?

14 DCC CRAIK: I think -- and this is based on my experience of

15 critical incident training and over 20 critical

16 incidents that I have personally investigated, not just

17 in London but they happen in Northumbria as well -- that

18 officers -- it is about changing officers' mindsets so

19 that if something comes in you do not make a judgment,

20 particularly a negative judgment, do no more on the

21 basis of limited information, and if I could perhaps

22 give a medical analogy that might help, if it does not

23 please tell me, and it is about meningitis syndrome.

24 The old fashion approach would be perhaps -- I mean

25 no disrespect to the Health Service, they have got this

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1 right and I think this is a good example -- where

2 a young child or an adult comes in with a rash,

3 temperature and a headache, the presumption is it is

4 probably minor, have a paracetamol, go home, come back

5 if you have a problem. Trouble is they came back dead

6 and dying with meningitis. The presumption must always

7 be that somebody who comes in with a rash, a temperature

8 and a headache may well have meningitis, and you go

9 into -- however expensive it is -- the regime that tests

10 and treats for that, until you are satisfied it is not,

11 then you can send them home with some paracetamol.

12 I want to bring that mindset to all officers. Now

13 some of us who have had the training, and some of us who

14 have had the misfortune of dealing with 20 of these sort

15 of events where cops have not got it right but have not

16 had quite the tragic consequences that we have here,

17 I want to pass some of that learning on.

18 Now, David Kendrick and I distilled some of that

19 critical incident training and passed it on in seminars

20 to our chief inspectors and inspectors on North East

21 Area, and in fact I employed David Kendrick as

22 a consultant to come back and continue that process when

23 he left. It is my regret that I did not pursue that

24 across into 2 Area. I might have reached Wheeler,

25 I might have reached Howard, and it might have got down

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1 and impacted on people's decision-making and how they

2 viewed things.

3 I have to say that my intention was to take it

4 further down in 3 Area because this was something that

5 David and I had invented and developed because we

6 recognised or were beginning to recognise, because there

7 was no day when this happened, that judgments about what

8 is potentially going to turn critical is key. And that

9 is the bit, and I apologise for repeating myself, that

10 I think we need to bring into training or development,

11 professional development of officers.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Just following on from that. Although you

13 have accepted responsibility from your position that you

14 had in the Metropolitan Police for what happened to

15 Victoria, if I understand your evidence right you

16 basically believe that the fault lay from Inspector

17 down?

18 MS GIBSON: Did the checkers check? Did they check

19 compliance with policy, procedures and guidelines, or

20 did they just say senior notice? Did they challenge?

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Inspector down is where the faults lay.

22 Inspector up was okay?

23 DCC CRAIK: No, I have accepted my responsibility. I do not

24 think that Mr Wheeler was checking to see whether

25 systems were being complied with. People make systems

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1 fail. They do not fail on their own. He should have

2 checked and my checking of him did not reveal that.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: But if it was as easy to feed things up the

4 line as you say, or to bring in more specialist teams,

5 why first of all did it not happen, and secondly why

6 have the officers of Inspector below that have come so

7 far to this Inquiry given us the impression that

8 actually there was no other course of action open to

9 them?

10 DCC CRAIK: I think two things. There is clear evidence

11 that when there was difficulty around resources, that

12 senior officers, through that chain right up to me, did

13 take action. The murders are a good example around

14 that, the events in child protection and child abuse

15 issues in North East London Operations, Maperton

16 Radcliffe (?) are clear examples of people coming to us

17 with problems, with issues, and us responding to them.

18 I have difficulty understanding why, if these were

19 genuinely the reasons behind people's poor

20 decision-making and judgment, why they say that after

21 the event when they never mentioned it before. There is

22 no evidence that I can find that that was their view

23 before, it was different, and I understand the difficult

24 position they are feeling, they have come to the Inquiry

25 and apologised for what they have done and they accept

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1 their responsibility. I cannot agree that the reasons

2 that they give justify not getting it right and not

3 doing your job properly.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Can I suggest one reason that comes

5 immediately to mind from their evidence, which is that

6 of course when there was an issue about murders you

7 would take a course of action because murder is murder

8 is murder, but when it is child protection that would

9 not -- child protection was not well thought of in the

10 Metropolitan Police.

11 DCC CRAIK: No, we take action around missing persons,

12 anything that we think can be critical, and that -- come

13 back to that important point: the health and welfare of

14 children is critical. It is critical that we support

15 the response teams out there because they are often the

16 first officers who were called to deal with a child who

17 is injured in the home, as well as supporting the child

18 protection teams.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: So it is not your view that child protection

20 was not accorded a low priority and was not an

21 attractive place to work in the Metropolitan Police

22 because it was not a prestigious or even much highly

23 thought of area of activity?

24 DCC CRAIK: Well I am conscious of some of the comments that

25 were made in the report commissioned by

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1 Commander Kendrick. That is not the image that I got

2 from people I met. I had lived and worked in north east

3 London almost all my career. I knew people well. I was

4 not a stranger as I was, if you like, coming into North

5 West. I did not get that sense. I think that is the

6 past talking largely. They were professional, committed

7 officers and respected by their colleagues.

8 There are lots of reasons why people find different

9 roles in the Metropolitan Police Service attractive and

10 not attractive, and we have tried -- predecessors have

11 tried a great deal in the past to make child protection

12 team work more attractive to highly skilled officers.

13 It is difficult. Nobody has cracked that yet.

14 The same phenomena happens to a degree in my current

15 force, it is not just a Met problem, but there are ways

16 of dealing with it. It is actually difficult to be

17 innovative. If you are looking for ways in which we

18 might improve that, I think one of the things I would

19 do -- and I was not that clever, somebody else did it in

20 my current force -- is if you put a highly talented,

21 charismatic, well respected leader in there, even if

22 they do not particularly want it, because you can market

23 that sort of work, then more naturally people tend to

24 want to follow in behind a respected and valued leader

25 and that might be an approach that is valuable, but of

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1 course as ever there are down sides to this because

2 talented individuals tend to move on very quickly and

3 you do not get continuity. So I would want to think

4 about that and balance that, but that might be an

5 approach that would help improve the recruitment issue

6 around that.

7 THE CHAIRMAN: One of the ways in which managing the police

8 force has been described to us in fairly colourful terms

9 is like an under 10 football team, that something hits

10 the headlines, of which murder is a very good example,

11 but it could be terrorism, it could be burglary, it

12 could be street crime, and all the action follows that

13 and child protection teams were just left to cope as

14 best they could.

15 DCC CRAIK: I do not agree with that view. I can understand

16 how people feel about it but I think the Metropolitan

17 Police is far more complex than that. It has set for it

18 priorities that we deal with. Those priorities did not

19 include murder. It did not include child protection

20 teams. There is something I think about statement of

21 the obvious around child protection, that to my mind

22 puts it on a par with murders. It is always a priority.

23 It is a key thing we deal with.

24 I think you may notice that in terms of priorities,

25 that we are given ministerial priorities, local policing

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1 plan priorities in accordance with our consultation with

2 the communities through the Crime and Disorder Act --

3 are actually focused on very local issues that people

4 want us to change our service delivery around. We make

5 them a priority because we want to get better at those

6 things.

7 The priority that the Child Protection Team has in

8 my eyes never changes, it is there, it is a constant.

9 That may be why it does not appear in priority policing

10 plans, and that will change. It already has changed in

11 Northumbria because I have made them change it.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: They would say priority has not changed, they

13 would say it is low, but you take a different view?

14 DCC CRAIK: Can I answer the second part as well, this

15 charging around like a child's football team? The

16 Metropolitan Police and all police services have a plan

17 of operation. They are documented, that is the business

18 they are in, that is a service -- events happen.

19 September 11th happened. All sorts of events happened

20 and we have quite properly to move resources to help

21 with needs. That is intelligence led, it is not chasing

22 around like a child football team.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: One further observation. I gathered from the

24 way you have given your evidence that you have actually

25 followed evidence that officers of the Metropolitan

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1 Police Service have given to the Inquiry?

2 DCC CRAIK: Yes, that is right.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: In the light of your operational

4 responsibilities, has any of that evidence surprised

5 you?

6 DCC CRAIK: Yes.

7 THE CHAIRMAN: Tell me more.

8 DCC CRAIK: The reasons officers give I think for their

9 judgments -- my word not theirs -- and because I think

10 that is what it is about, I have some difficulty with.

11 They were not the picture that was painted before, they

12 appear to be the picture that was painted after, and

13 I come back to my point: it is about doing your job,

14 getting your job right, and whatever was wrong with the

15 Child Protection Manual, whatever the debate about

16 resources, and the whole Met was under-resourced -- you

17 will hear from others no doubt that 28,000 police

18 officers went down to 26,000 or even less, everybody

19 suffered -- my view is that we protected, David Cox and

20 I would agree, protected the Child Protection Team

21 numbers and North West London. They were resourced. We

22 dealt with problems when they arose when we went looking

23 to check, there were things hidden we did not see, and

24 when there were problems identified we got a grip and

25 dealt with them and tried to put them right in that

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1 environment.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: So your perception and their perception are

3 widely apart?

4 DCC CRAIK: They are different, yes.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much? Mr Sheldon.

6 MR SHELDON: Sir I have no further questions. Perhaps

7 Mr Craik could be released. Thank you.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Indeed. Thank you very much for your

9 evidence.

10 MR SHELDON: Sir Ms Gibson will take the next witness.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: Fine, Ms Gibson.

12 MS GIBSON: Sir, the next witness is Deputy Assistant

13 Commissioner Griffiths.

14 DAC WILLIAM GRIFFITHS (sworn)

15 MS GIBSON: Good afternoon. Would you begin by giving the

16 Inquiry your full name and professional address, please.

17 DAC GRIFFITHS: William Ian Griffiths, Deputy Assistant

18 Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service, Director of

19 the Serious Crime Group at New Scotland Yard.

20 Chairman, before I give my evidence I have a duty to

21 perform. Mr and Mrs Climbie are not in the room but

22 I do understand that they can either hear me or can read

23 the transcript of what I am about to say.

24 Sir, as the senior ranking officer attending from

25 the Metropolitan Police Service, I should like to offer

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1 or send to the family the Commissioner's deepest

2 condolences on the loss of their daughter, Victoria.

3 Secondly, to confirm the apology that was made by

4 Commander Howlett after the trial at the Old Bailey.

5 Clearly errors and omissions did occur in the service

6 that the Metropolitan Police provided to Victoria. For

7 that, and on behalf of the Commissioner and the whole of

8 the Metropolitan Police Service, I wish to say sorry to

9 Mr and Mrs Climbie.

10 Thirdly, on behalf of the Commissioner and the

11 Metropolitan Police Authority I wish to make it clear

12 that we are totally committed to learning the lessons

13 from this tragedy and that the changes we would

14 institute will be meaningful, sustained and that

15 Victoria's death will not be in vain.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for that. I can assure

17 you Mr and Mrs Climbie have heard what you have had to

18 say. Ms Gibson.

19 MS GIBSON: Thank you Mr Griffiths. Could I begin by asking

20 you about the two statements you have made for the

21 Inquiry, which are found at volume 4, page 78.601 and

22 also in the same volume at 78.610. Firstly, can you

23 confirm the contents of those statements are true to the

24 best of your knowledge and belief and make any

25 amendments you wish to make before you do that?

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1 DAC GRIFFITHS: Chairman, may I offer an amendment to the

2 time that I took up the post of Director of Crime

3 Management. I have recorded it there as April 1998. It

4 was actually July 1998. Apart from that, these

5 statements are true.

6 MS GIBSON: Just by way of background, it is right that you

7 joined the Metropolitan Police Service on 24th April

8 1967 and that you were appointed Commander (Crime) for

9 4 Area in August 1994?

10 DAC GRIFFITHS: Yes.

11 MS GIBSON: You have been a Deputy Assistant Commissioner

12 since September of 1996?

13 DAC GRIFFITHS: Yes.

14 MS GIBSON: Can I ask you what experience, if any, you have

15 had yourself of child protection work?

16 DAC GRIFFITHS: Chairman, as a detective through most of my

17 career, I was involved in child abuse investigations in

18 the CID office up to the rank of Detective Chief

19 Inspector, but shortly after that the child protection

20 teams were formed from a mix of dedicated detective

21 teams and uniformed colleagues who worked on childcare

22 issues in departments that were called juvenile bureaux.

23 They were brought together I think quite sensibly

24 following the Children Act into combined

25 multi-disciplinary teams and thereafter I have not had

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1 direct involvement in child abuse investigation other

2 than of course having responsibility as a Crime

3 Commander on an area and latterly as the Head of the

4 Serious Crime Group.

5 MS GIBSON: Thank you. It is the position that from April

6 of 1998 you were tasked with all crime policy

7 development for the Metropolitan Police Service?

8 DAC GRIFFITHS: It is now July 1998.

9 MS GIBSON: Sorry, I was looking at my old note. The

10 exception at that stage was the portfolio held by

11 Commander Kendrick, which included child protection and

12 you then took that over and retained that lead, up to

13 his retirement in February 1999?

14 DAC GRIFFITHS: That is correct.

15 MS GIBSON: What priority did you consider that child

16 protection had been afforded by the Metropolitan Police

17 prior to your taking on that particular portfolio?

18 DAC GRIFFITHS: I believe that the Metropolitan Police give

19 priority to child protection through setting up of

20 dedicated teams around London, working on a borough

21 basis. That is a manifestation of giving priority. You

22 will not see child protection listed as these are the

23 priorities of the service in any annual planning

24 document. But I think it is self-evident that the

25 protection of children along with things -- other things

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1 that do not appear in our plans such as the emergency

2 response, for example, they are not listed because they

3 are self-evidently what we are set up to do.

4 MS GIBSON: Would it however be your evidence that they were

5 given appropriate priority in that period before you

6 took over the portfolio?

7 DAC GRIFFITHS: I am actually accepting responsibility

8 before that because I was a Crime Commander in

9 south-east London. So from the restructuring of 1994

10 I was just as responsible in an executive way as

11 Michael Craik was in North East and David Kendrick. So

12 I own -- share the responsibility and I certainly accept

13 that from that period on I had a stake in how child

14 protection was delivered in London and I can tell you

15 about how we went about that.

16 MS GIBSON: Perhaps it would be convenient to do that now.

17 You accept responsibility but I am anxious to learn what

18 you accept responsibility for and what the longer term

19 problems were running up to the period in 1999 when

20 Victoria's case was dealt with.

21 DAC GRIFFITHS: Would it help Chairman if I simply outline

22 in a thumbnail sketch way what the 1994 restructuring

23 was about so we can set the scene there?

24 I recall Sir Paul Condon coming in as commissioner

25 in 1993. He took soundings and I was one of the people

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1 he actually spoke to. I had been a divisional

2 commander, I was head of the Flying Squad and I had some

3 knowledge he wanted to share with me. His view was, and

4 I know a lot of colleagues were saying: this

5 organisation is run from a big department at Scotland

6 Yard, if you want anything, you have to go through

7 a massive bureaucracy to get it. Resources were nowhere

8 near where they should be in terms of a customer-facing

9 organisation. It was a monolith run from Scotland Yard,

10 and I believe that view formed part of his thinking

11 which was to turn the whole thing on its head, to give

12 resources freedom of choice and operational choice to

13 the territories, where we were delivering our services.

14 Most of our services are delivered from police

15 stations around London in a very complex way. Now he

16 was trying to simplify the way in which he would get the

17 resources you needed to deliver. He appointed,

18 obviously with the Home Secretary's approval, five

19 assistant commissioners with territorial responsibility

20 and effectively they were moved out of Scotland Yard and

21 worked in the territorial areas. He gave them

22 appropriate support.

23 He devolved all decision-making regarding budgets,

24 freedom, other than major, major decisions such as the

25 cost of a new police station or a big IT project, issues

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1 of that nature that clearly need to be retained at the

2 centre. He provided a business manager -- this has not

3 come out so far as I can see from reading the evidence

4 thus far -- a business manager whose job it was to sort

5 out the business functions to support operational

6 policing.

7 All of this I think was a very brave move because of

8 course the risk was that you would end up with a number

9 of different ways of delivering policing services. So

10 he had to find a coordinating mechanism so that we would

11 be a cohesive service for London, because the risk would

12 be assistant commissioners would operate as chief

13 constables, and that is the pay grade they operate at,

14 and we would have separate county forces if you will

15 growing up.

16 Now to police London you have to be able to call on

17 assets from right across to deal with policing capital

18 city events and so on. For example, in 1999 there were

19 more than 40 events that required in excess of 500

20 police officers. So we have to operate as a whole. We

21 cannot completely sub-divide ourselves.

22 Now the way in which he managed the continuation

23 between complete freedom and corporate approach was to

24 give portfolio responsibilities to assistant

25 commissioners. On 4 Area, south-east London, the

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1 Assistant Commissioner was Ian Johnston. He had the

2 crime portfolio. I was his Crime Commander, newly

3 appointed, and of course I would therefore work very

4 closely with him on setting up how we would manage the

5 tension between operational freedom and developing

6 policies and processes and training that would support

7 that right across the field of operation.

8 So he formed the Crime Operations and Policy Group

9 and there the Crime Commanders from the five

10 territories, plus of course I should mention specialist

11 operations as another Assistant Commissioner's

12 responsibility with terrorism and major crime issues and

13 so on, that group then became the policy making group

14 for all matters pertaining to crime. There was another

15 portfolio for criminal justice, another one for

16 operations, and so it went.

17 So all of policing had a kind of tension where those

18 with executive authority also had a policy authority

19 right across. That meant they had to work together as

20 a team. They could not, for example, develop their own

21 policies around crime in north west London.

22 Now that is a very long exposition, I have probably

23 mystified you. I hope to have clarified things,

24 particularly for Mr and Mrs Climbie, because this must

25 be a complete mystery to them. But in organisational

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1 terms, I think it was a very sensible and actually

2 a very exciting development for us because it meant that

3 the frontline operation had freedom of choice in how

4 they went about delivering the services.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

6 MS GIBSON: I want to explore with you now how that

7 structure actually was enabled to deliver change when

8 problems were recognised. Would you agree that the

9 problems with child protection teams are problems which

10 have been well-known for quite a considerable period of

11 time?

12 DAC GRIFFITHS: Well, I must admit I was shocked by the

13 revelation in the Inspectorate report from 1998 about

14 the cultural issues. I had not come across that. Maybe

15 I have not been listening or I have not been drilling

16 down enough but that certainly -- and I speak for

17 4 Area, south-east London, because I set up the Crime

18 OCU; that was my first job, to find a way of delivering

19 crime across an area that includes the response to

20 homicide, the response to level 2 crime, that is crimes

21 that cross borders, intelligence management, criminal

22 justice, and child protection.

23 Now child protection -- I mean there was a legacy in

24 the sense that one inherited the assets that already

25 delivered those services. But that was 25 per cent of

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1 that OCU. It was a big part of the business. It is

2 a part of the business that I took particularly

3 seriously. I had had experience up to Detective Chief

4 Inspector level. I was very glad of the changes that

5 had occurred because the difficulty when you are working

6 those cases in a general CID office is that it is very

7 difficult to adjust your thinking and your approach

8 because the victim issues are very different, the

9 partnership issues impact, it is not the standard way of

10 operating on working investigations in the CID office.

11 So, the fact that they had a specialist group of

12 assets who were very highly skilled, very highly

13 motivated, I was glad of it and I recommended to

14 Ian Johnston that we put a Detective Chief Inspector

15 solely to look after those units, and the way we worked,

16 it was that that Detective Chief Inspector reported

17 directly to the OCU Commander, Albert Patrick, who had

18 been brought in just for that job.

19 Now he and I understood very clearly the importance

20 of child protection. That Detective Chief Inspector was

21 the field manager for those units. His job was to be

22 their champion. His job was to get them things when

23 they needed it and I was very satisfied that we were

24 providing adequate resources for good people to do

25 a proper job, and I personally checked these things out

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1 by my visits, by my meetings with them.

2 There were several levels of intervention, where

3 child protection officers could speak directly to me,

4 could speak to the Assistant Commissioner, and the

5 Assistant Commissioner was holding Albert Patrick

6 personally to account for those services, and

7 Ian Johnston was going to management board or policy

8 board as it was then and dealing with any issues

9 directly with the Commissioner. We had flattened the

10 organisation. We had stripped out the bureaucracy that

11 was inhibiting the way in which we were operating.

12 I was very satisfied with the way it was set up.

13 Now, you could always give more to important components

14 of the business, but what I did was make sure that we

15 did the best we could to protect them. They did not

16 grow in any significant way. We did our best to give

17 them the tools they needed to do the job within the

18 financial constraints we were faced with, but when the

19 cuts came in -- I call them "cuts", they were called

20 efficiency savings or I think cashable efficiency

21 savings, but Chairman these are cuts because the budget

22 reduced over that period by effectively 2,000 less

23 police officers. That is a lot less police officers,

24 even in a force the size of London.

25 Now what we did, Ian Johnston's approach was speak

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1 to the business manager and task her with finding

2 savings from headquarters. We always took pain before

3 we even thought of divisions taking any pain.

4 We would then say, right, this is the cut that we

5 are left with. Now I will acknowledge that -- I suppose

6 it was difficult to determine where these cuts might

7 fall and we used to describe it as "equal misery". Now

8 that is just a euphemism for saying everyone takes an

9 equal drop in the budget they get, but we then expected

10 the OCU Commander to find savings from within his or her

11 headquarters, so that the impact on the ground would be

12 minimal.

13 Now I have looked at the numbers on my own area and

14 I have looked across the piece. I have not found

15 evidence where child protection teams were materially

16 stripped out of numbers. There are some fluctuations

17 and each area would have gone about this in their own

18 way. I cannot answer for what 2 Area did because in

19 a devolved structure the Assistant Commissioner for that

20 area has to make his own operational choices.

21 I can help you, I think, and perhaps give you

22 a benchmark by describing what we did in south-east

23 London. You know, these are not answers but I think

24 Mr and Mrs Climbie need to understand that the

25 Metropolitan Police did not take child protection issues

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1 lightly in any way.

2 MS GIBSON: Mr Griffiths I want to put to you some points

3 that have been made in evidence by other witnesses

4 before the Inquiry. Detective Superintendent Copson

5 when he gave evidence said that it was his experience

6 that the same issues that he had found raised in a focus

7 group relating to child protection which he had led

8 ten years earlier were the issues coming up surrounding

9 child protection teams that we have spoken of in this

10 Inquiry.

11 He also said -- at page 131 of his evidence -- that

12 the problems in child protection teams had been known to

13 Metropolitan Police Service management for all of their

14 existence. Would you agree that those sort of problems

15 were in fact known but that no effective action was

16 taken, whether it be for resources issues or otherwise?

17 DAC GRIFFITHS: I was surprised when I read Mr Copson's

18 evidence. I am obviously not privy to the focus group

19 that he held. I think you could make a list of things

20 that they could have had more of, things that they could

21 have had more speedily, better training and so on.

22 I really think you could make that list.

23 Equally, I think if you took any cross-section of

24 police officers probably in any force you would be able

25 to generate such a list. I mean, I do not think any

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1 officer feels that they have everything they need to do

2 their job effectively. I take very seriously his

3 comments, but I honestly do not believe -- and you will

4 hear from David Kendrick who had the policy lead before

5 I did that there was a real passion about this. He is

6 certainly a passionate man and cares very deeply about

7 these kind of issues. I was leading on other matters,

8 but he was constantly making the case for child

9 protection as an important part of policing that, niche

10 though it undoubtedly is, it needs proper resourcing and

11 proper care and attention.

12 On a personal level, I can honestly say that I knew

13 of no example where we did less for child protection

14 teams in south-east London. In fact, I can think of

15 a number of examples where we actually fixed things that

16 needed fixing.

17 Could I illustrate that with an example: I mean, one

18 of the rubbing points for a lot of Metropolitan offices

19 is CRIS. Now CRIS is a very effective tool and I do not

20 think there is any other force has anything as

21 effective. Each crime record has 200 fields in it.

22 Each record is confirmed -- the moment you commit the

23 button to commit, you are committing forever your

24 record. That record is then on a database, of about

25 a million crimes a year. We keep two years on there, so

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1 you have two million records with 200 fields. It is

2 a phenomenal amount of information that is available

3 24 hours a day, seven days a week to any officer from

4 any terminal in London. Now that is a crime system that

5 was very expensive but has proved to be very effective.

6 One of the rubbing points was that it operated by --

7 the terminal that you were on was on a local server.

8 Sorry, if you are operating from the division which your

9 office was, you had quite a good service. But if you

10 wanted to go outside, let us say most child protection

11 teams operated in more than one division, not the case

12 now, they are all borough based, but divisions were not

13 borough-based apart from one or two places.

14 The example I will give you is the child protection

15 team working in Hither Green on Catford Division, had

16 the responsibility for Catford, Lewisham and Bromley.

17 The rubbing point was we are okay at Catford but we get

18 into this outside our own server; we are now in a sea of

19 data and it is much slower.

20 The fix was to rewire their terminals, one to the

21 server at Bromley, one to the server at Lewisham.

22 Now these were fixes that could have been identified

23 at a lower level than I but I think sometimes colleagues

24 are so close to the action they just do not see

25 solutions. I was able to fix that very quickly at

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1 a very low cost, and that rubbing point then does not

2 then become a running sore.

3 And I think it is the role of command, executive

4 command, to get around and do things that demonstrate to

5 junior colleagues that we actually care for them, you

6 are doing your very best for them. It is almost

7 symbolic, so I always take the trouble to find fixes

8 everywhere I go. I am constantly looking to fix rubbing

9 points, as I call them, because if they become to the

10 point it is so frustrating for those officers that it

11 becomes a running sore, then that in itself can become

12 a demotivating factor and can actually inhibit the

13 effort that they bring into work, and I think it is very

14 important -- sorry, it is again a very long answer but

15 what you do with child protection teams who are in

16 satellite places, is you have to give them a lot of care

17 and attention, visibility and so on, so that they know

18 you actually care about them. Because they are going to

19 feel isolated. They are not, but the nature of their

20 work, the reason for them being separate is a good and

21 valid one but you give a lot of time to making sure they

22 feel valued.

23 MS GIBSON: Thank you for that. But the impression that

24 appears from the evidence before the Inquiry is that

25 when you took over the child protection portfolio, there

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1 was a lot of activity, a lot of looking at IT and

2 training issues, but prior to that, those issues were

3 known about but not a lot had been done and the

4 organisation was very slow to respond to these problems

5 with child protection teams.

6 DAC GRIFFITHS: I would be the first to acknowledge that the

7 scale of the Metropolitan Police makes it a very slow

8 responding entity. With the numbers of staff comparable

9 in size to the Royal Navy, with 10,000 calls for

10 assistance every day with a million crimes every year,

11 operating out of more than 100 sites and trying to be

12 a cohesive institution is immensely problematic and we

13 are slow. I would be the first to acknowledge that

14 and -- but it is not extravagant, therefore we have to

15 tread very carefully when you get into big spends and so

16 on.

17 But I would not agree with Gary Copson's analysis

18 that nothing happened in ten years. You only have to

19 ask David Kendrick what he did, you can ask me what

20 I did in South East. But certainly I did not get the

21 impression of lack of impetus or energy being applied to

22 taking forward child protection and sex offences

23 generally, because that was what David's whole portfolio

24 was about, sex offences. Look what happened with sex

25 offenders: the Met actually led the country on sex

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1 offenders because I notice one of the HMIC

2 recommendations talks about the scoring matrix. Well,

3 the Met developed that and we implemented it.

4 So I refute that the Met were not interested in

5 child protection, that it was somehow a backwater

6 enterprise. Although it is a very small part of what we

7 do.

8 MS GIBSON: When you took on the child protection portfolio

9 you say that you had a meeting with Commander Kendrick

10 and you became aware of the report that he had

11 commissioned and also the HMIC thematic report.

12 Presumably you must have learned from those reports that

13 there were very serious issues and serious concerns

14 about the child protection teams in terms of their

15 training, status within the force?

16 DAC GRIFFITHS: I certainly take the report seriously.

17 MS GIBSON: Did you consider that those reports were an

18 accurate reflection of child protection teams at that

19 time?

20 DAC GRIFFITHS: No, not at all. I think more could have

21 been done. I think the Inspectorate report, worthy

22 though it is, would have benefited from having a police

23 officer on the team because there are issues there that

24 I think a police officer, a detective, say, would have

25 picked up and perhaps highlighted as issues. I mean,

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1 I have looked back, I read the report in more detail,

2 and I have found things in there that I really wish had

3 been brought to my attention. Had they been, I would

4 have done something and I can clarify that if you wish,

5 but there are unseen messages -- not unseen because you

6 can read them, but there is interpretation of that

7 inspection which actually makes it more serious than

8 I thought it was.

9 I certainly accept what they say and I certainly

10 accept the HMIC report because that gives us a flavour

11 which says these problems are not the monopoly of the

12 Metropolitan Police, they are common to all policing and

13 they have to be fixed, and, I hope you have accepted,

14 through the minutes of meetings and so on, actually went

15 about trying to fix some of those issues.

16 MS GIBSON: Indeed, but looking at that report, you had the

17 report -- you have said in your statement you read it

18 and what I want to establish is that that in fact showed

19 that there were serious problems in these teams which

20 must have accumulated over a period of time, a period of

21 neglect.

22 DAC GRIFFITHS: Well, I refute the word "neglect" Chairman.

23 I have to because that is not my personal experience.

24 I do not take the reading of that report as a story of

25 neglect, I take it for what it was intended to do.

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1 David Kendrick set the objectives and they met those

2 objectives. It was a snapshot, a very valuable

3 snapshot. It had not been done since 1992.

4 There had been a staff inspection in 1992 where they

5 had actually adjusted some of the figures, the staffing

6 ratios and so on. That was the last time they had done

7 it, so it was timely, and I think when you have a report

8 like that, that is a very good benchmark now to say,

9 right, well where do we go from here?

10 I accept fully that there are some reports in there

11 that give me cause for concern. Of course they do,

12 especially when they are cultural concerns. Grave

13 concern. This was prime time Stephen Lawrence Inquiry,

14 and we had had the hearing here throughout 1998.

15 February 1999 was when Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report

16 was published. Uppermost in our minds was the culture,

17 the charge of institutional racism, and some of the

18 words I read in that report has resonance around

19 a culture of that nature. Stereotypical comments,

20 ignorance, unwitting prejudice. I read across and I did

21 read across and develop some concerns but I do not

22 accept this was a symptom of neglect.

23 MS GIBSON: You say that there had been no such inspection

24 review report since 1992. Is that not in itself

25 a matter of concern, given that you have already

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1 highlighted the importance attached to child protection

2 teams not to have looked at that very important part of

3 the Metropolitan Police Service for that period of time,

4 in itself is indicative of a problem?

5 DAC GRIFFITHS: I would suggest Chairman with the greatest

6 respect it is indicative of the problems that the Met

7 has in terms of managing such a large business with so

8 many components. We have an inspection team but we

9 cannot spend all our resources on inspections. So its

10 commensurate with the fact that you need to have

11 inspections right across your operation. That

12 inspection team was fully employed looking at various

13 cross-sections of the outfit.

14 On this occasion I think it was not a question of it

15 coming along in a queue. David Kendrick actively

16 lobbied, spoke to Ian Johnston, and I think it is in one

17 of the policy meetings there, I remember it quite well,

18 saying that no matter what else is going on -- because

19 the pressure was all about Stephen Lawrence, quite

20 properly; we were in crisis around that, I do fully

21 acknowledge that -- but notwithstanding that crisis, he

22 was able to argue for this inspection.

23 Now that is not indicative of lack of care for child

24 protection issues.

25 MS GIBSON: Looking now at the problem of status within

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1 child protection teams. We have heard evidence about

2 what has been described as macho nonsense and again it

3 was Superintendent Copson who agreed that there was this

4 type of macho nonsense in relation to the view of child

5 protection teams, it was something that existed

6 throughout the force at all levels -- within

7 individuals, not everyone -- but it was a problem. Do

8 you agree that there was a problem in that regard?

9 DAC GRIFFITHS: I agree that the problem had been identified

10 by the inspection team. I noted, and I noted at the

11 time and I have noted it since, that the very next

12 paragraph they actually say: that is not a problem now.

13 Now, I do not draw any comfort from that and I did not

14 accept that it could not be a problem now or in the

15 future, because they were only looking at a tiny

16 selection. But they did have the benefit of

17 a questionnaire from child protection colleagues. They

18 looked around. These were off-the-cuff remarks. These

19 are the sort of remarks we challenge day in and day out.

20 It is possibly part of what was described in the Stephen

21 Lawrence Inquiry.

22 We do have over many decades of policing history

23 a macho reputation. In many ways it is a tough,

24 demanding job and that generates perhaps through

25 ignorance, through unwitting prejudice and stereotypical

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1 images, the kind of comments that were recorded there.

2 But I do not accept at all -- and this is from extensive

3 visits and discussions with colleagues -- that that was

4 a generally held perception or belief. In fact I would

5 go so far to say that child protection officers are

6 extremely highly valued. I have deployed them --

7 If I take the Damilola Taylor investigation, I know

8 it is sub judice, but in a neutral way to say we used

9 child protection officers to interview all of Damilola

10 Taylor's classmates because they had the skill, the

11 technical skill of memorandum interviewing and they were

12 the right people to do that work and in that sense they

13 are highly valued by murder squads.

14 I look at the annual report that Albert Patrick used

15 to do. They had their own section in there. They had

16 stories of all the things that they had achieved, they

17 were receiving more commendations than others and this

18 is not because we were trying to make them feel good,

19 this was because they had earned them through judges'

20 commendations and the like.

21 I do question that there was a general culture that

22 was dismissive in any way of Child Protection Team work.

23 It was highly valued and by the great majority of

24 colleagues accepted as a very important job.

25 MS GIBSON: Have you ever personally come across any

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1 examples of child protection teams being denigrated by

2 members of the Metropolitan Police Service? Have you

3 heard any of the expressions such as "cardigan squad"

4 that we have heard?

5 DAC GRIFFITHS: I think I said earlier Chairman I was

6 actually shocked to read that because I had never heard

7 it. I do not rule it out. Clearly, it had happened, it

8 had been reported by somebody on that inspection,

9 therefore it has currency. I was reassured by the fact

10 that this is not the case now, and "now" was during

11 1998. So if there is an historical cultural problem

12 then that may be the case. I have never heard such

13 a comment. If I did, I would deal very severely with

14 the person who made it.

15 MS GIBSON: Mr Cox, when he gave his evidence, said he

16 thought some commanders felt the child protection teams

17 were overstaffed with supervisors and they made that

18 comment because they did not understand the nature of

19 the work and the need for a high level of supervision.

20 He also said he had the opinion that some people thought

21 the importance of child protection teams was being

22 exaggerated. Again, is that a sentiment that you share?

23 DAC GRIFFITHS: I do not share that. I mean, I will just be

24 rehearsing what I have already said Chairman. I have

25 a very strong view on this. I know you have to put

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1 these views to me but I do not accept that. The ratio

2 of supervision, I would actually advance, is evidence of

3 the Met's commitment to child protection. We are

4 cognisant of just how sensitive and delicate these

5 operations are and by giving them a greater ratio of

6 supervision it is actually a form of valuing their work.

7 Now that is a deliberate policy. The standard ratio

8 of sergeant to constable is 1 to 10. In CID offices it

9 is more like 1 to 5 or 6. Here we had 1 to 3. That is

10 right across the field so I think it is a manifestation

11 of concern and importance.

12 MS GIBSON: What I am asking you though Mr Griffiths is

13 this: it was the opinion of a very senior officer in the

14 Metropolitan Police that some commanders felt that child

15 protection teams were overstaffed with supervisors and

16 he makes that comment to illustrate that there was not

17 a very good understanding of what child protection teams

18 did, what they required amongst the senior -- the very

19 senior level in the Metropolitan Police.

20 DAC GRIFFITHS: If by senior you mean the executive level?

21 MS GIBSON: Yes, Commander level and above.

22 DAC GRIFFITHS: I have been in many discussions with senior

23 colleagues and never once had advanced to me the ratio

24 in child protection is wrong. Where he gets that from

25 I do not know but I have certainly never had it and

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1 I have been discussing child protection off and on since

2 1994.

3 MS GIBSON: There is a difficulty here in that there seem to

4 be concerns about status of child protection teams, the

5 view of child protection teams, coming from the very

6 senior management, that has been put forward in evidence

7 by relatively senior officers but not at your level, but

8 I think both Commander Campbell and yourself do not

9 accept that that is the case at all. That either

10 indicates that those officers who point that out are

11 mistaken or exaggerating or that the senior staff in the

12 Metropolitan Police have failed to identify this

13 problem, or have identified it but do not want to state

14 that.

15 DAC GRIFFITHS: Well that latter proposition is certainly

16 not the case because it does not chime at all with what

17 was going on, the discussions that were going on.

18 I think what is possible here is the junior colleagues

19 may have a blind spot as to what we were deliberating

20 upon. Now, not all of our deliberations were published,

21 minutes went out and so on, but the detail behind those

22 minutes clearly would not go out.

23 So maybe we were not effective enough in

24 communicating why it was we had structured child

25 protection in the way it was, effectively. If people

187



1 were envious or in some way critical of that, it did not

2 come up on my radar. If it had, I would have taken the

3 trouble to explain why and I think if anyone that I come

4 across professionally lacks insight as to the importance

5 of child protection, I would probably send them on an

6 attachment to a child protection team so that they would

7 find out just how difficult and demanding the work is

8 and how important we see it.

9 MS GIBSON: Can I ask you now about training issues? That

10 is certainly one of the issues that you identified when

11 you picked up the portfolio and took steps to deal with

12 through the meeting of senior supervisors and reports

13 that were commissioned in that regard. What are your

14 views on the sort of training that child protection

15 officers need to have?

16 DAC GRIFFITHS: They need two components. They need core

17 investigative skills, because the nature of the work is

18 primarily investigation. Secondly, they need technical

19 skills that are peculiar to them. So I would not

20 envisage a child protection officer that had not been

21 trained in interviewing child witnesses in line with the

22 memorandum of understanding. I think that would be very

23 dangerous if that were the case. I would add to that

24 the other specialism that is child protection, is the

25 partnership working.

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1 It is not something that we normally do. As police

2 officers, we have individual responsibility. We are

3 accountable in law for our exercise of policing powers.

4 Therefore, it is very difficult for us and very strange

5 for us as a culture to work in partnership, making

6 decisions about investigations, about whether or not to

7 arrest and so on.

8 So because that is very different, you would not --

9 I mean you could but it would be undesirable to employ

10 police officers who did not have a very good

11 understanding of the guidance contained in Working

12 Together. You know, the guidance that spells out how

13 you go about managing that potential conflict or tension

14 between different agencies or concerned with the

15 protection of children.

16 So with those two technical skills I believe that is

17 where the focus should be: core skills about

18 investigation, then the technical skills that are

19 peculiar to their line of business.

20 MS GIBSON: What about the part that should be played by

21 detective training and the foundation CID course? We

22 know that again it was Superintendent Copson who was

23 shocked to find that there were so few detectives on the

24 child protection teams.

25 DAC GRIFFITHS: Yes.

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1 MS GIBSON: Is it your view that there should be a large

2 percentage of detectives comprising those teams?

3 DAC GRIFFITHS: Chairman when we set up 4 Area, the mix of

4 detective to uniform was a ratio of 1 to 2. So

5 one-third of the team had core detective experience.

6 That would not seem to be the case in Haringey. I too

7 am shocked that that is the case because I checked what

8 the position was when I left 4 Area, and Albert Patrick

9 had maintained that ratio. It is a very sensible ratio.

10 I think I suggested at some point that we ought to

11 advance it maybe to 50/50, but given the scarcity of

12 detectives generally in the Met -- because these are not

13 colleagues who you can pull out of recruit school, they

14 have to build up over time a lot of experience and skill

15 to be deployed as detectives, therefore 50/50 is

16 aspirational. It is the aspirational target I have set

17 for SO5 now and Derek Kelleher is charged with achieving

18 that target. But I would say the minimum I would want

19 to be one-third to two-thirds ratio.

20 MS GIBSON: The problem with detectives was not one that is

21 unique to Haringey; that would be correct? It is

22 something that is a problem generally in child

23 protection teams?

24 DAC GRIFFITHS: Sir, it is not a problem generally for child

25 protection teams.

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1 MS GIBSON: Well within the Metropolitan Police Service?

2 DAC GRIFFITHS: It is a problem within one area as was of

3 the Metropolitan Police Service.

4 MS GIBSON: Can you assist with how that came to be the case

5 and why systems were not able to pick up on this

6 developing problem?

7 DAC GRIFFITHS: Chairman, I have had a revelation of my own

8 in preparing for this Inquiry and I think it is timely

9 for me to point to that revelation, which you will find

10 in appendix O of the Inspectorate report.

11 When you look at that you will see -- and you have

12 to do a bit of mathematics, I am afraid, but if you tot

13 up detectives to uniformed officers by area you will

14 detect a difference in the ratio.

15 Now that was a shock and revelation to me. It is

16 not something I had seen when I was -- when I first took

17 custody of that report from David Kendrick. It had not

18 been brought to my attention through the body of the

19 report. The way I see appendices is that they are there

20 for reference if something in the body of the report

21 excites your interest.

22 I think the level that I operate at, and I think it

23 is something I regret about that I did not do this, is

24 I did not read the detailed appendices. There were

25 something like 30 appendices to that report and

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1 I confess I did not read them all. I have now read them

2 all and what I see in appendix O is a revelation and the

3 revelation is North West Area was differently

4 constructed in terms of the ratio of detectives to

5 uniformed officers than the rest of the Metropolitan

6 Police.

7 Therefore I conclude that the lack of detectives was

8 not general. The lack of detectives in Haringey was not

9 the general position regarding the Metropolitan Police.

10 MS GIBSON: When you say "detectives" are you referring to

11 detectives who have full CID status or nominal

12 detectives or people who have become detectives through

13 being accredited investigators?

14 DAC GRIFFITHS: These detectives in the 1998 report are all

15 substantive appointed trained detective officers.

16 MS GIBSON: You mention in your statement that the CPT

17 course that was held in Hendon during 1998 had very poor

18 uptake, in fact one of the courses had to be cancelled

19 because of the poor uptake.

20 DAC GRIFFITHS: Yes.

21 MS GIBSON: Are you able to assist with why there was a lack

22 of enthusiasm to participate in training, given what we

23 have heard about perception that there was lack of

24 training?

25 DAC GRIFFITHS: Can I Chairman, with your leave again,

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1 answer that in two parts? One is about what happened to

2 the detective training school, then I will come back to,

3 if I may, what I think happened around those specific

4 courses. I think it would assist this Inquiry and again

5 would assist Mr and Mrs Climbie to understand that there

6 was not a deliberate closure of the detective training

7 school at the price of detective training or child

8 protection training. I need to explain the context.

9 What occurred was something called the

10 Sheehy Inquiry, commissioned by the then Home Secretary,

11 looked at the structure of policing. This was

12 a national project. Because of that, the consequence

13 certainly for the Metropolitan Police was a moratorium

14 on promotion. There was deep uncertainty about how many

15 ranks were likely to be stripped out of our structure

16 and what that then might do to downsizing forces.

17 So certainly the Metropolitan line -- and this was

18 under Sir Peter's input -- said, we need to put a block

19 on promotions because if we start promoting people into

20 these ranks, there will be new people and we will have

21 them for years and years, and we will have a problem

22 unloading them as a cost. In fact, some officers, when

23 Sir Paul Condon came in, he offered some packages to

24 officers to leave early. Now the consequence was four

25 years of no promotions at all in the Metropolitan

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1 Police.

2 Given that every year we train 1,500 people just to

3 stand still, you can imagine the effect, a throughput

4 effect on anyone who was moving anywhere in the

5 organisation. So if there are no promotions, that

6 starts to stack back so the detective vacancies were not

7 occurring.

8 The consequence of that was that by 1994, the

9 detective training school had trained all of the

10 detectives who needed training, it had trained all the

11 child protection officers who needed training and the

12 only thing that they were doing at that point was

13 maintenance training such as surveillance, financial

14 assets, those kind of things that were needed to keep

15 our skill level up.

16 Now you cannot have skilled detectives who are

17 trainers sitting around waiting for the next wave of

18 people to come through, and of course it was the

19 moratoriums coming off in 1994, but of course the log

20 jam is just starting. So we then had a period from 1994

21 to 1997 with virtually no detective training going on.

22 People say the detective training school was shut. It

23 was not shut, it was completely closed down in terms of

24 what it was delivering. So there was a core there,

25 delivering maintenance training.

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1 Then what happened was a trickle of people coming

2 through requiring detective training and then a tidal.

3 That tidal wave was in the form of the accredited

4 investigators who of course were building up their

5 accreditation over four or five years. We had 409

6 officers who had become accredited investigators. So

7 that log jam was there. Now could we give those 409

8 colleagues five weeks foundation training? We could but

9 not without at the expense of other things we wanted to

10 do.

11 So, the decision was taken -- and this is at

12 Ian Johnston's level in the policy group, it is a matter

13 he would have referred to the Commissioner and the rest

14 of the Policy Board: we are going to train them, we are

15 going to give them a bespoke two week training with an

16 exam which would test their -- had they met the

17 standard. The reason it was two weeks is that they had

18 had at least five years experiencial learning; they were

19 de facto detectives. So it was almost an insult to give

20 them five weeks training, frankly, and that is how they

21 felt about it.

22 Perhaps another revelation of the culture of the

23 Met, they became known as the 409 Club and that there

24 was a lot of silly jokes and so on.

25 The test was seen with great resentment and

195



1 I remember personally having to deal with the fact that

2 four people failed on the first course that went through

3 and we agreed there could be a resit opportunity. That

4 was given and one of those failed and that went into

5 a grievance and so it went on. But that was how hot it

6 was.

7 Now after that we then started to gear up the

8 training school again. So senior investigator training

9 and all these things were coming on line to be built up.

10 Now I think that is where the child protection, the two

11 courses came from, because David having that portfolio,

12 and he will tell you himself I guess, but I think what

13 happened was he said: we now need CPT training. He went

14 to the training school: what can you do for me? He

15 devised an interim course, he published that.

16 I understand it was not taken up. I do not know if it

17 was lack of interest or lack of need. He may have the

18 answer to that because I presume that he did some

19 inquiries as to why it was not taken up.

20 MS GIBSON: Is it not however the position that there has

21 been an underestimate of the need for detectives, when

22 the detective training school had this period where they

23 were not taking on detective training in the same way as

24 they had done previously, you have just described? We

25 have now arrived at the point that the Metropolitan

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1 Police Service has not got enough detectives to cover

2 all of the work adequately.

3 DAC GRIFFITHS: I think we are short of detectives,

4 Chairman, and I think it has been a problem for most of

5 my service, but I do not think there is a cause and

6 effect here. By slowing down detective training --

7 there was a good and valid reason for that. Gearing up

8 again was meant to deal with demand. But the shortage

9 was about other competing pressures. That is my

10 recollection.

11 If we take 1998 as a very defining year for the

12 Metropolitan Police Service, we were in this building,

13 listening to tales of incompetence. I mean, I perhaps

14 set aside the institutional racism charge, the

15 underlying charge that we failed Stephen Lawrence in the

16 investigation. We were incompetent, and the review, the

17 inquiry report said we were incompetent. The inquiry

18 report said that the HMIC would come around and look at

19 just how incompetent we were on all other unsolved

20 murders and that happened in 1999.

21 So we were gearing up from the start of this, from

22 my recollection, October 1997, and it so happens that

23 I was the first officer, senior officer in the Met to be

24 told that we had a completely flawed investigation, with

25 11 lines of inquiry missed, and that the review was

197



1 hopelessly inadequate, and I was invited to Kent police

2 headquarters to hear that news because that is where the

3 PCA Inquiry was being run from.

4 I immediately alerted my Assistant Commissioner and

5 the Commissioner and we immediately put in train a plan

6 to start changing the way in which we investigate

7 murder, and that involved training. We commissioned the

8 detective training school. We commissioned Dr Jonathan

9 Creegar(?) to generate a new way of learning, right

10 across the piece in terms of our first response, "the

11 golden hour", in terms of our detective response, the

12 senior investigator training, in terms of our strategic

13 response. And Michael Craik has referred to critical

14 incident training.

15 Well, the Met were gearing up throughout 1998 and we

16 started delivering in 1999 right across the field to

17 manage critical incident training. It was a massive,

18 massive effort to restore our confidence in our ability,

19 because this was earth shattering news. The whole

20 ethos, the whole cachet of the Scotland Yard detective

21 was being dismantled. I cannot tell you how serious

22 this was and how effective this was -- how shocked we

23 were.

24 So we had to do a major programme of work and we

25 were approaching it in a very different way. We were

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1 not simply going to generate a manual and have it on

2 a shelf. The manual was being generated through the

3 national police training. We were going to adopt that

4 manual but we were going to gear up our training in

5 a very different way to give colleagues a better

6 understanding of what they need to do to grip

7 investigations.

8 Now, that may have blown some other things into the

9 margins, and I think that it did, and I think in my

10 statement I refer to the investigative management board

11 which I set up because I could see we have to manage and

12 juggle these priorities. This was coming in as I said

13 as a tidal wave. How were we going to adjust our

14 priorities? And we developed a scheme which was --

15 I tasked the detective training school with assembling

16 a list of all of the training that was required because

17 there was a finite capacity in the detective training

18 school by then and we would adjust the priorities

19 accordingly.

20 I do recall a time when I moved some of the assessed

21 child protection as low priority and I moved it

22 myself -- I directed it be moved from low to medium.

23 Now I have reflected since, should I have moved it to

24 high? Knowing what I know now, I probably would have

25 done but of course at the time I was faced with all the

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1 other priorities. I was marshal in child protection

2 training, getting it, so it was positioned to get the

3 very first opportunity I could give it.

4 MS GIBSON: Can I ask you about training in relation to

5 child protection in particular, and we have already

6 touched on that. A scoping study was produced at your

7 final meeting of the senior supervisors in February

8 2000, and presented three options: create new training

9 course for CPTs, which would use modules from the

10 detectives foundation course; allocate places on the

11 current detective foundation course, the CPT officers;

12 and thirdly, investigate training to be delivered by

13 area trainers.

14 It was your position that you favoured the third

15 option. Why?

16 DAC GRIFFITHS: I believe Chairman it was the only option

17 that was viable. Sending them on the detective training

18 course in many ways would have been the solution because

19 you would then get some confidence that they had had the

20 complete detective training that was available. Where

21 that was unattractive was that they would be getting

22 a lot of training that they did not actually need.

23 Secondly, that they would be taking the place of

24 colleagues who did need it.

25 So we had to get more detectives through because we

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1 were building up murder, the murder response. There

2 were big resource shifts in 1999. You probably have

3 seen them in my second statement. We moved hundreds of

4 people across from divisions to murder and a lot of them

5 needed training. So I knew: (a) they needed it (b) this

6 was not actually fit for purpose for child protection

7 officers.

8 The second option was my favoured option but I also

9 knew we did not have time. We had the HMIC

10 recommendation that the Association of Chief Police

11 Officers develop training. I knew and I think

12 I commented in one of the minutes that this is going to

13 take 18 months, two years. We have not got time to wait

14 for that. I do not want to go launching off into our

15 own arrangement that that is going to have to be

16 adjusted when that comes, so the best thing would be to

17 provide something locally.

18 Now this was happening in my old area. I knew it

19 was happening there, I knew it was very good training,

20 it was fit for purpose. That was a very pragmatic

21 solution that was going to tie us over, prevent any gaps

22 occurring in this very essential requirement for child

23 protection officers to be properly trained. So

24 I think --

25 MS GIBSON: So you regarded that as a sort of stop-gap