Archived Transcript for 28 January 2002: Pages 151 to 200


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1 thinking, using the term you have asked, sir, "How could

2 this happen? How could this happen?"

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Is one of the reasons why it happened -- if

4 I could just take you to another of the conclusions of

5 the inspection report you initiated. Mr Thwaites has

6 referred to one section. Let me refer to another

7 section, which is -- I will read it to you:

8 "The fact that many CPTs feel that they are the

9 'poor relations' of the Crime OCU and the Service in

10 general is a sad indictment on the MPS.

11 "It is generally only when something goes badly

12 wrong that attention - and resources - are directed

13 towards some of these individuals and teams. In the

14 case of CPTs this would undoubtedly mean serious injury,

15 or worse, to a child or children. No-one would of

16 course wish this to be the reason that CPTs become the

17 focus of attention for their management."

18 But clearly it should. Now that was a very

19 perceptive, perhaps, comment.

20 MR KENDRICK: Sir, when I read that in the conclusion, to me

21 that was a clear, very clear warning shot across my bow,

22 and my colleagues at all levels in supervision and

23 leadership, that we must never be complacent, never be

24 complacent about child protection work or any other

25 policing when we are dealing particularly with the most

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1 vulnerable people we have in our society.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: You see, Mr Garnham quite rightly said that

3 we have been told on many occasions during the course of

4 this Inquiry the phrase that you used, which was,

5 "Nobody drew it to my attention. Had they drawn it to

6 my attention I would have done something about it", but

7 is it not the responsibility of managers, particularly

8 senior managers, to know what is going on and to be

9 absolutely up-to-date with the issues about service

10 delivery?

11 MR KENDRICK: To the very best of our ability, sir. That is

12 why I instigated the inspection, that is why I on my

13 area conducted visits, not just to child protection

14 teams but to all my stations -- there were over

15 40 stations and units in my area -- and that there were

16 systems and structures whereby, to the best of our

17 ability, meetings of the senior supervisors, that

18 actually people would actually tell me what was going

19 on.

20 That is why I instigated the inspection, to find out

21 the point you made, sir. I need to know and I have

22 a duty to find out what is going on. If people do not

23 tell me, and some people will not tell me, that is why

24 I instigated the inspection.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: Yet within a few months of all of this work

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1 that you left behind, a child was to suffer intolerably

2 and to be murdered in a way in which you say

3 flabbergasted you. How am I to reconcile what your

4 perception of the service you left behind is with what

5 happened to Victoria?

6 MR KENDRICK: I wish I was able to give you a logical,

7 supportable explanation as to that. I cannot, sir,

8 because at the end of the day -- and it is easy for me

9 now sitting aside, having left the service, but I feel

10 and care no less about it, as a father and

11 a grandfather. Why did it happen? How could it happen?

12 I wish I knew the answer.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much Mr Kendrick. Mr Garnham.

14 MR GARNHAM: Sir nothing more from me. Thank you very much.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Kendrick.

16 MR GARNHAM: Sir, before we move to the next witness there

17 is one matter I need to raise with you. You will

18 recall, sir, that a substantial volume of additional

19 documentation was provided to us by Haringey in the

20 latter part of last year. When we came to read one of

21 the documents, a document in volume 45H at page 42, we

22 saw reference to a report to a committee saying that

23 there would be a position statement drafted which would

24 need members' approval in January of this year for the

25 purposes of a follow-up SSI inspection that was to be

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1 done in February.

2 We asked for a copy of that position statement and

3 Haringey promptly provided us with a copy of it. It

4 referred, however, to a large number of additional

5 documents, and Mr Fitzgerald on behalf of the Inquiry

6 wrote on 24th January asking for the documents referred

7 to. There were 64 of them. 19 of those 64 appear to us

8 to be directly relevant to the lessons learned issues to

9 which we turn. Those 19 documents were delivered to the

10 Inquiry at 5.30 on Friday afternoon and we are now in

11 the process of getting them copied and distributed to

12 the interested parties and to you, sir.

13 Sir, it may well be that Miss Lawson will have

14 something to say on the matter but for our part, sir, we

15 have seen no adequate explanation for the delay in

16 providing this documentation. We understood Miss Lawson

17 to tell us that Haringey were disclosing all

18 documentations that were either relevant as they looked

19 at them or potentially relevant.

20 Frankly, it seems to me sir inconceivable that

21 I could attempt to cross-examine Ms Bristow, who comes

22 here on Wednesday, without carefully reviewing all of

23 those 19 documents. It is said by Haringey that some of

24 the documents were in draft form, as part of the

25 committee process within Haringey Council. Sir, if that

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1 were the case then that might be understandable. But,

2 sir, it seems to us that the bulk of the documents that

3 are in draft were not in draft for committee stage but

4 were drafts that could readily have been disclosed to us

5 and should have been disclosed to us.

6 Be that as it may, sir, we are dealing with

7 a situation that we are in and we will put the necessary

8 questions to Ms Bristow on Wednesday. I am not asking

9 for any adjournment, sir, but I do raise the matter

10 publicly now because interested parties will be

11 wondering why it is that another file full of

12 information is wheeling its way to them from Haringey.

13 Sir, that is the explanation. We will get it to

14 them as soon as the printers have produced it, probably

15 tomorrow, but I do not guarantee that.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Miss Lawson?

17 MISS LAWSON: Yes, sir, I do have something to say about it.

18 The position is this. It is true that on -- I will

19 get the precise date -- we were written to by

20 Mr Fitzgerald on 17th January asking us for a copy of

21 the position statement. That is Thursday of the week

22 before last. In fact, the document was not finalised

23 then, it was still at the printers. We wrote back

24 telling Mr Fitzgerald that and Mr Lloyd, it came back

25 from the printers late on the Friday, Mr Lloyd picked up

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1 a copy of it on Monday.

2 We then discovered that there were these references

3 within it to other documents. We handed in a copy of

4 the position statement first thing on the Tuesday

5 morning which was the next day that the Inquiry was

6 sitting, and we attached to it or we indicated that we

7 would produce an index of the documents as soon as we

8 had managed to put one together and to identify which

9 documents were already before the Inquiry. In fact

10 a substantial number of them already were.

11 That index was put before the Inquiry at the end of

12 the following day -- that is the end of the Wednesday --

13 and on the following day, the 24th January, we had the

14 letter from Mr Fitzgerald telling us which further

15 documents the Inquiry wished to look at. So we then

16 obtained copies of them and since he indicated that he

17 thought some explanation would be required, we sent in

18 an explanation in relation to those documents.

19 The position, sir, is this. You will recall that

20 the terms of the summons issued against the Director at

21 the beginning of December were in relation to lessons

22 learned in the widest possible terms and in far wider

23 terms than any other party has been required to produce

24 documentation. We are required to produce any documents

25 relating to the lessons learned by Haringey Council as

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1 a result of the death of Victoria Climbie. So whereas

2 it seems it is acceptable for the Health Authority not

3 to produce the internal report at the North Middlesex

4 Hospital into Victoria's death and nobody bats an

5 eyelid, we are now being criticised for not having

6 produced documents towards the end of December in

7 relation to the internal Social Services' budget

8 for December when the Inquiry has details of the

9 budgeting, reports and everything else that have gone to

10 the committee up until that point, and to other

11 documentation, some of which is also in the hands of

12 other interested parties.

13 Sir, I appreciate that the position of Haringey is

14 different to this extent because there has been

15 a summons and because of the documentation which has had

16 to be produced, but virtually none of the documentation

17 to which Mr Garnham has drawn your attention predates

18 the issue of that summons, so we are talking about

19 material which has come into existence since.

20 The point that he made about draft documents is one

21 which we raised with the Inquiry in the cover letter we

22 sent with the documentation at the beginning

23 of December, in which we made the point that within an

24 organisation like Haringey there are a large number of

25 draft documents, some of which go nowhere, some of which

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1 go to committees and so on, and that we had therefore

2 thought it right only to put them before the Inquiry

3 when they had been accepted by the council at its Policy

4 and Strategy Committee.

5 Similarly, when a document referred to background

6 papers and reports, we had included only those which

7 related to the Children's Services relevant to the

8 Inquiry and not other matters.

9 Even using that definition I have to tell you that

10 40 per cent of the documentation produced by Haringey in

11 response to that summons and in accordance with our own

12 approach to put things in, in view of the time pressure,

13 have been considered not relevant by the Inquiry itself.

14 So, sir, the position is that this is an area in

15 which there is room for very significant disagreement

16 and difference of opinion over what is or is not

17 relevant and has to be put in at any particular time.

18 We received no response from the Inquiry suggesting that

19 the approach that we had taken to the including of

20 reports was not appropriate, and that the Inquiry

21 required to see draft reports whether or not they had

22 been finally accepted by the council or not.

23 Now, in the absence of that, we had assumed --

24 plainly wrongly in the light of what Mr Garnham is now

25 telling me -- that the approach we had taken was an

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1 acceptable one. But as I say, I certainly say that if

2 it is the case that the Inquiry now wishes to have any

3 draft reports from Haringey regardless of its status or

4 where it ends up, then I at least would appreciate

5 knowing precisely what it is the Inquiry now wishes to

6 have.

7 I also make the point that of the documents which

8 have been produced thus far, and which were considered

9 sufficiently relevant to go in the bundles, in fact

10 apart from I think one document that Ms Gibson referred

11 to in her questioning of Mr Travers, the only person who

12 has referred to any of them has been me. The fact --

13 the other parties may well be riveted by knowing that

14 there are more documents to come but I venture to

15 suggest that having seen what they are, it will not

16 affect them in their preparation in any way.

17 MR GARNHAM: Well sir, there it is. I do not invite you to

18 issue any form of censure. I rise to explain why we are

19 now dealing with these documents so late. I am afraid

20 Miss Lawson and I will have to disagree about a number

21 of the points she makes. Certainly we have been using

22 the material for example. There we are. I am not

23 inviting you to do anything else about it, sir. We will

24 distribute this material when we have it.

25 The only other comment I would make is in relation

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1 to the half-suggestion of Miss Lawson's that we are

2 approaching Haringey differently from others. We are

3 not. We have largely found that other parties have

4 provided documentation without us needing to make much

5 of a fuss about it. That has not always been the case

6 with Haringey. Sometimes it has been, sometimes it has

7 not.

8 But, sir, if we come across documentation which we

9 think are relevant -- and in my respectful submission,

10 sir, it is for us and then for you to make the decision

11 in the first instance -- then we have asked for it,

12 regardless of who happens to be the holder. But, sir,

13 I do not ask for anything more on this.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr Mason?

15 MR MASON: Sir, I would like if I may to deal with the

16 suggestion that either the Inquiry or North Middlesex

17 thought it was acceptable not to disclose to the Inquiry

18 an internal North Middlesex report about Victoria. Sir

19 there is no report to the best of my knowledge and

20 belief and anybody else's at North Middlesex and there

21 is no report, it has not been disclosed.

22 I think Miss Lawson may be referring to the review

23 carried out by Dr Drabu. The only documentation in

24 relation to that is the numbers of points of action

25 plans which were disclosed back in May and in fact

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1 referred to by Mr Garnham in his opening speech.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Mason.

3 Well, Miss Lawson, thank you very much for the

4 points that you have made. I had thought that these

5 issues that have been raised now, this afternoon, with

6 regard to Haringey, are issues that had been put behind

7 us, as it were. I woke up this morning thinking that

8 this being what is scheduled to be the last full week of

9 listening to witnesses in Phase I, I thought that maybe

10 we had got to the end of the unhappy saga of the late

11 arrival of documents.

12 I think that although Mr Garnham does not invite me

13 to say any word of censure, I think Miss Lawson I will

14 look very carefully at the list of the documents,

15 19 relevant to the lessons to be learned, especially as

16 Ms Bristow is coming on Wednesday.

17 I am concerned about the tremendous workload that

18 this puts on the excellent staff that we have serving

19 this Inquiry and I sometimes think we are in danger of

20 taking advantage of their very good nature in the way in

21 which documents have had to be photocopied in huge

22 amounts and distributed, classified and the like. But

23 it is also unfair to counsel, and I think I would

24 venture to suggest it is also unfair to the Panel to

25 receive these important documents so late, and

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1 particularly to my colleagues who are extremely

2 conscientious in the way in which they analyse the

3 material that comes in.

4 So, I think that I will hesitate to say more at this

5 stage, but I will take a personal interest in the matter

6 when we rise this afternoon.

7 MR GARNHAM: Thank you sir. I ask Mr Sheldon to call the

8 next witness.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr Sheldon.

10 MR SHELDON: Thank you sir. Derek Kelleher, please.

11 DETECTIVE CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT DERRICK KELLEHER (sworn)

12 MR SHELDON: Good afternoon Mr Kelleher, please have a seat.

13 Would you confirm your full name and professional

14 address, please.

15 MR KELLEHER: It is Derrick Paul Kelleher, Detective Chief

16 Superintendent, OCU Commander of the Child Protection

17 Operational Command Unit SO5 at New Scotland Yard,

18 Broadway, London SW1.

19 MR SHELDON: You have made two statements for this Inquiry,

20 I hope copies of them are in front of you. They are

21 both in volume 4 of our bundle, one is at page 150, the

22 other at page 189.501. Mr Kelleher, would you have

23 a look at the last page of both of those statements and

24 confirm that it is your signature, please. In fact,

25 I think your signature appears on every page.

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1 MR KELLEHER: It does indeed.

2 MR SHELDON: Are you content that the facts and matters in

3 those two statements are true?

4 MR KELLEHER: Yes. There are two amendments in those

5 statements, both involve the date 2000 which should be

6 2001. The first is to be found in the first statement

7 at paragraph 40 which is on page 12, and the second is

8 at --

9 MR SHELDON: Paragraph 40 should be 1st January 2001, should

10 it?

11 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

12 MR SHELDON: And the second?

13 MR KELLEHER: Is at para 128 of the same statement.

14 MR SHELDON: Yes, 30th March 2001.

15 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

16 MR SHELDON: Thank you very much. You are currently

17 a Detective Chief Superintendent in the Met, is that

18 right?

19 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

20 MR SHELDON: In your present role you are responsible for

21 the SO5 Operational Command Unit, being the Child

22 Protection OCU?

23 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

24 MR SHELDON: That is a role you took up as I understand it

25 on 3rd July 2000?

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1 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

2 MR SHELDON: Was that when the SO5 OCU was formed or did

3 someone else hold that post before you?

4 MR KELLEHER: It was formed on that date.

5 MR SHELDON: Prior to taking up that command you worked as

6 a project manager for DAC Griffiths?

7 MR KELLEHER: I did indeed.

8 MR SHELDON: As part of that role on 1st January 2000 you

9 assumed responsibility for policy formation in respect

10 of child protection?

11 MR KELLEHER: No sir, that was one of the amendments. It is

12 the 1st January the follow year.

13 MR SHELDON: 2001, I apologise. Without going into the

14 details of the projects that you were managing for

15 DAC Griffiths prior to taking up command of SO5, they

16 acquainted you to at least some extent with the

17 management and structure of child protection teams?

18 MR KELLEHER: They did indeed, sir.

19 MR SHELDON: Did you have any direct experience of child

20 protection work prior to taking up SO5 command?

21 MR KELLEHER: Not since 1988 when I left divisional CID

22 work, before the inception of CPTs, and I went into the

23 intelligence side of the Metropolitan Police. When

24 I emerged in October 1990, CPTs had been formed and

25 although I had occasional contact with them in the Royal

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1 Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, then the Hammersmith

2 and Fulham Borough, then City of Westminster in various

3 ranks, I was not intimately acquainted with their work.

4 MR SHELDON: So as a general CID officer you would have

5 dealt with some cases with children but you never worked

6 within a specialist CP unit?

7 MR KELLEHER: There are two strands to that. One is, yes,

8 we used child protection officers to interview the

9 victims of stranger offences, secondly, I have referred

10 in my statements to a system called MERLIN which was the

11 SO3 index, card index, quarter of a million index cards

12 plus the prostitutes index, plus missing persons index,

13 which I did the initial project work with and got

14 underway.

15 Because of my lack of knowledge of CPTs I did visit

16 one CPT to find out what their information systems were

17 and that would have been in the summer of 1997.

18 MR SHELDON: I will ask you a bit more about that when we

19 come to deal with IT in a moment. Before we come to

20 deal with the specific areas of child protection work

21 with which I want to deal today, I would just like your

22 assistance on the general picture. Firstly, the picture

23 as it was when you took up responsibility for CPTs or at

24 least when you started to look at them in your role with

25 DAC Griffiths. Now have you had chance to read much of

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1 the evidence given to this Inquiry by junior officers

2 thus far?

3 MR KELLEHER: I have tried to follow it when I have not been

4 able to be physically present on the Internet. I think

5 I have read a substantial amount of it but I have not

6 read it all.

7 MR SHELDON: You may have seen a number of instances of

8 evidence given to us, and some of it has been mentioned

9 today, of CPTs being under-resourced, not having enough

10 cars, not having enough radios, not having sufficient

11 accommodation. Has that come to your knowledge?

12 MR KELLEHER: It has.

13 MR SHELDON: Similarly, about child protection officers

14 being insufficiently trained for example either in

15 detective skills or in child protection specific skills.

16 MR KELLEHER: I am aware of that, sir.

17 MR SHELDON: Similarly admin staff seem to be fairly few and

18 far between in some of the CPT teams we have been

19 looking at and some of them also have complained about

20 a feeling of some isolation from other areas of the Met.

21 MR KELLEHER: That has been the complaint I have received,

22 yes.

23 MR SHELDON: Is it fair to say -- and we will come on to

24 look at it specifically in just a moment -- that the

25 picture that has been given by some of those junior

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1 officers in the sort of evidence I have just mentioned,

2 that picture is not dissimilar to the one that you

3 painted in your report of September 2000?

4 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

5 MR SHELDON: Perhaps we can turn to that now. It is

6 volume 45, page 6, please. You remember this report,

7 Mr Kelleher?

8 MR KELLEHER: I do indeed, sir.

9 MR SHELDON: Could I ask you to turn to page 10 first of

10 all, please. The second paragraph down you make the

11 point first of all that child protection teams have

12 become the Cinderellas of the MPS, and to explain

13 I suspect what you meant by that you go on in the next

14 sentence to say that they have been under-resourced.

15 There are a number of points that you draw specific

16 attention to as we go down that page: only 15 per cent

17 or so have access to Otis, yes?

18 MR KELLEHER: 50 per cent, yes.

19 MR SHELDON: Four vehicles between 23 CPTs?

20 MR KELLEHER: That is actually a mistake on my part. It

21 should have been 27 CPTs.

22 MR SHELDON: I wondered if you were missing out four for

23 some reason.

24 MR KELLEHER: It was early days still and there was some

25 ambiguity about the brigade teams.

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1 MR SHELDON: So four vehicles between 27, accommodation

2 which in some cases was dreadful, portacabins with

3 warped windows et cetera?

4 MR KELLEHER: But there was also good accommodation, but in

5 balance --

6 MR SHELDON: As far as training is concerned, in the last

7 paragraph of that page, to paraphrase, would it be an

8 accurate summary to say training is starting to look up

9 but that must be seen against a background of

10 historically grossly inadequate training?

11 MR KELLEHER: Well, some of the officers, about 70 I think

12 currently at the moment, had attended the two-week CPT

13 course, so it would be probably an exaggeration to say

14 grossly. I think I was primarily concerned with the

15 level of CID training as well as about 140 officers that

16 had not received any training whatsoever, other than

17 their basic recruitment training.

18 MR SHELDON: Can I make sure I have understood one aspect of

19 this training issue before we go on later to discuss it

20 in detail. You say 70 of the officers you surveyed for

21 the purpose of this report had done the CPT course. We

22 have heard evidence before during the course of this

23 Inquiry that that course was not running from about

24 1997. So is it the case that those 70 officers had all

25 done it prior to 1997?

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1 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

2 MR SHELDON: I see. What I meant to say, and I phrased the

3 question inaccurately, is against at least a short-term

4 picture of grossly inadequate training, because from

5 1997 up to when you wrote this report there was little

6 if any in the way of CPT training. Would that be fair?

7 MR KELLEHER: That would be fair, sir. At the detective

8 training school there was training going on with

9 partners.

10 MR SHELDON: Was there any sense in which you were

11 attempting to mislead the recipients of this report into

12 thinking the position was worse than it really was?

13 MR KELLEHER: No sir, because in order to get resources in

14 the Metropolitan Police, you have to submit a very

15 detailed business case. The purpose of this report was

16 in response to a memorandum on behalf of the

17 Commissioner sent out by Simon Corkhill who was

18 organising the senior management seminar for the

19 Metropolitan Police, which was going to set the agenda

20 for the objectives which would go into the policing

21 plan, which is a statutory plan which we offer up, and

22 it actually belongs to the Metropolitan Police

23 Authority. I was really getting a place on the agenda

24 as opposed to holding out any real and immediate hope of

25 getting resources directly as a result of this suddenly

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1 appearing.

2 MR SHELDON: I see. So it is not a case, is it -- please

3 understand I am not suggesting anything underhand -- it

4 is not a case that this is a tactical move on your part

5 to paint a picture blacker than it really is so you get

6 pushed further up the agenda?

7 MR KELLEHER: Tactical move it certainly was, but certainly,

8 no, this was as I saw it and in fact it reflects many of

9 the points in the report you have being going through

10 with Mr Kendrick.

11 MR SHELDON: You stand by it now, I take it?

12 MR KELLEHER: I do indeed sir.

13 MR SHELDON: Have you had a chance to glance through

14 Mr Griffiths' evidence he gave?

15 MR KELLEHER: I was here for it.

16 MR SHELDON: He said when the Chairman started to go through

17 this report, "You have to understand at the outset

18 [something along the lines] there will be a dichotomy

19 between what I have been saying and this report" and he

20 went on to say -- sir, Day 49 page 220 -- that you had

21 painted the gloomiest picture possible.

22 Mr Kendrick's evidence one might interpret to being

23 more on the Griffiths' side of the spectrum than yours.

24 It would seem to be the case, and you heard his evidence

25 so you can tell me if I am wrong, he was saying as far

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1 as the state of CPTs was concerned he was right and you

2 were wrong.

3 MR KELLEHER: I can only say what I found between

4 3rd July 2000 and the date of the report which I think

5 was in September matched by the Met's own inspection

6 report. I stand by that report and I stand by the items

7 in it as matters which I came across. The only matter

8 that I cannot take further is the issue around the

9 reinforcing of the murder teams within the figure of

10 13.5 per cent, but I have said in the report I cannot

11 find documentary evidence to support that.

12 MR SHELDON: But there is nothing in the evidence of

13 DAC Griffiths or Mr Kendrick that you have heard earlier

14 on today which induces you to abandon the picture or the

15 position that you have adopted in this report; you stand

16 by it?

17 MR KELLEHER: Sir, not only do I stand by it, I have

18 supplied two very lengthy statements to this Inquiry

19 detailing a programme of work to set out what I believe

20 were the necessary additional resources for child

21 protection in the Met.

22 MR SHELDON: We will come on to that in detail in due course

23 as you would expect, but just at this stage I would

24 appreciate your assistance on one point, which is that

25 the implementation of that plan has been a complicated

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1 and an expensive exercise in many ways.

2 MR KELLEHER: It has indeed, sir.

3 MR SHELDON: You would not have been able to implement it

4 one would suspect without the support of the

5 Metropolitan Police?

6 MR KELLEHER: And specifically without the support of

7 DAC Griffiths, sir.

8 MR SHELDON: No. One would suspect that the Metropolitan

9 Police does not go around flinging money at problems

10 that do not really exist.

11 MR KELLEHER: It never goes around flinging money at

12 anything, sir.

13 MR SHELDON: No. And so that leads one on to the conclusion

14 that there must have been something wrong or they would

15 not have sought to fix it?

16 MR KELLEHER: Certainly there was an under-resourcing issue

17 they sought to clarify.

18 MR SHELDON: In assisting the Inquiry to determine where on

19 the spectrum the true position lies between the picture

20 you have painted by Mr Griffiths for example in this

21 report, it may be of assistance to consider what your

22 respective opinions are based on.

23 When you wrote this report you had been in post as

24 Commander of SO5 for a couple of months, is that right?

25 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

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1 MR SHELDON: Had you been concerned when you came into that

2 post to find out what the state of your command was

3 like?

4 MR KELLEHER: Yes, that is correct, sir.

5 MR SHELDON: How had you gone about doing that?

6 MR KELLEHER: It was a joint exercise between Deputy

7 Assistant Commissioner Howlett, then Commander Howlett,

8 Detective Superintendent Copson and myself. We all

9 visited sites. I tended to also pick individual sites

10 where I knew staff that would actually have been serving

11 that had served with me in other places. That would

12 help me get a measure of what they were telling me and

13 the calibre of the individual, and as a result of that

14 exercise, clearly the three of us compared notes, and

15 that would be a sum total of three observations.

16 MR SHELDON: Did the three of you get round most if not all

17 of the teams between you?

18 MR KELLEHER: I think we got round all the teams between us.

19 MR SHELDON: To what extent would someone for example in

20 Mr Griffiths' position be reliant upon the information

21 you were feeding him for an assessment of what the CPT

22 teams were like on the ground?

23 MR KELLEHER: He would be totally reliant sir.

24 MR SHELDON: Were you aware of him commissioning any of his

25 own private investigations or reviews of CPT teams going

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1 on in parallel with what you are doing?

2 MR KELLEHER: I was his OCU Commander, working to

3 Commander Howlett. Both of us were working directly

4 with him and indeed I was working fairly closely with

5 him because I was also the -- I had a second

6 responsibility of the Headquarters Commander for the

7 Serious Crime Group while I was finishing off my project

8 work to bring the serious crime work about.

9 MR SHELDON: If you are the only one -- if he is totally

10 reliant, I am sorry, on you for an indication of what

11 CPT teams are like on the ground and you and your

12 colleagues reporting to you are the ones that have gone

13 round to visit, is there any basis you can think of for

14 why he should disagree with your view and adopt one of

15 his own?

16 MR KELLEHER: Mr Griffiths, when he had been on the South

17 East Area, had taken personal interest in child

18 protection matters and he had ensured that they were

19 well resourced to the best of his ability at that time,

20 and that they had significant numbers of detectives.

21 Indeed, I should say in fairness to that position

22 that when we did go round I found the South East Area

23 better resourced than the others, as the South West Area

24 was fairly well resourced, Central Area not so, and in

25 the North East and North West, because they were the two

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1 commands -- I was also very interested in homicide

2 because that was another part of my work -- they were

3 experiencing large workloads of homicide and perhaps

4 because we were concentrating on those, but those parts

5 of those commands, but not on the child protection

6 aspects.

7 MR SHELDON: But your report that we have just looked at and

8 the comments that you make are not restricted to one

9 particular area of CPTs, that is CPTs right across the

10 Met.

11 MR KELLEHER: That is correct. They were variable and in

12 different states.

13 MR SHELDON: Is there any basis upon which we should be

14 cautious about assuming that the state of child

15 protection teams when Victoria's case arrived in Brent

16 and Haringey was different to that painted by you in

17 your report in September 2000? Was there anything in

18 particular that caused a marked deterioration of the

19 service that you became aware of between mid-1999 and

20 mid-2000 or can we assume that they are roughly the

21 same?

22 MR KELLEHER: I am not in a position to say that actually

23 because as I have never been in the area command --

24 sorry the area Crime OCU structure personally, and as

25 I was working on divisions across -- as I mentioned

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1 earlier on -- those three boroughs that I mentioned,

2 CPTs were really out of sight, they were not part of my

3 world, and certainly at the management meetings I was

4 attending these matters were not flagged up at the Area

5 Command Team meetings, so I was coming to this really

6 fresh if you like.

7 MR SHELDON: You went around the teams and you must have

8 spoken to the officers and explored with them what their

9 problems and challenges were?

10 MR KELLEHER: Yes, after 3rd July.

11 MR SHELDON: You have written your findings in your report.

12 Did you get a sense during the course of those visits

13 and the conversations that you had with officers that

14 these were longstanding problems with which they had

15 been grappling for some time or that they were new

16 problems which had some identifiable cause of a recent

17 past?

18 MR KELLEHER: They all gave me the impression that these

19 were old problems.

20 MR SHELDON: If one takes as a point of comparison the

21 picture of CPTs that you paint in this September 2000

22 report, and then goes on to read the 70 pages or so of

23 changes and lessons learned that you chronicle in your

24 evidence, one is struck or one may be struck by the

25 starkness of the comparison.

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1 Would it be a fair characterisation to say that

2 since that report was written, child protection policing

3 within the Met has been completely overhauled?

4 MR KELLEHER: It has indeed sir.

5 MR SHELDON: This is not just tinkering around the edges of

6 a few small problems, this is a considerable change.

7 MR KELLEHER: It is very radical and I think you have to put

8 into perspective DC Howlett until recently had a murder

9 command as well, but now both of us have full-time

10 responsibility for child protection. We have the

11 ability to formulate strategy without reference to

12 anybody else and we have the ability to effect that

13 strategy into tactical reality and that is something

14 nobody else has ever had in the Metropolitan Police

15 Service before and I think that has made a world of

16 difference.

17 MR SHELDON: And your ability to do that has only been

18 achieved by a significant commitment in terms of

19 resources from the Metropolitan Police, is that right?

20 MR KELLEHER: It has indeed, sir.

21 MR SHELDON: We can see some easily identifiable differences

22 between the picture then and the picture now, such as

23 there are five times as many cars in CPTs as there were

24 then; there are more radios, there is better

25 accommodation, they have all got Otis now except

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1 possibly for Ealing.

2 MR KELLEHER: That has now been rectified.

3 MR SHELDON: They all have Otis now. There are central

4 units dedicated to the service at Scotland Yard and, as

5 I understand it, you have even evicted someone from the

6 6th floor of the Victoria Block to make way for your new

7 SO5 command unit.

8 MR KELLEHER: My plans suffered as a result of

9 11th September. As a result of representations by

10 DAC Howlett we eventually managed to remove certain

11 units that were temporarily accommodated there that

12 prevented us building the headquarters. That work has

13 now commenced.

14 MR SHELDON: Less obvious that those sort of changes are the

15 training courses and the training programme that you

16 have put in place. We have gone it would seem, looking

17 at your evidence, from all but nothing in 2000 or late

18 1999 to an array of training courses. We will go

19 through them as I say in detail but I count at least

20 seven or eight courses that are now available to child

21 protection officers.

22 MR KELLEHER: The foundation course is about five and a half

23 weeks.

24 MR SHELDON: You now have as I understand it a dedicated

25 budget for SO5 which is £19 million or thereabouts for

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1 the financial year we are currently in, is that right?

2 MR KELLEHER: That is correct sir.

3 MR SHELDON: I know we cannot compare that to what was in

4 place before, because as I understand it all of the OCUs

5 allocated however much of their budget to child

6 protection teams as they saw appropriate, and I do not

7 know if anyone has done the calculations but I suspect

8 not, and we are just left with your £19 million, but we

9 can safely assume that is more money dedicated to child

10 protection teams than they had before.

11 MR KELLEHER: That budget would include staffing and we have

12 significant numbers of staff more than was before. We

13 additionally have our own dedicated major investigation

14 teams, that is another 50 officers alone, and that

15 represents a considerable amount of money.

16 There are other areas of the expenditure which would

17 lie below the horizon on this with the commitment to

18 information technology, well in excess of £1 million has

19 been committed to be spent in relation to MERLIN protect

20 and the other adjustments to the IT infrastructure to

21 put us on to Otis.

22 MR SHELDON: The improvements that one reads about in your

23 evidence are so extensive and the speed in which they

24 have been delivered is so rapid that one recalls what

25 Mr Cox said when he gave evidence to us -- sir, at

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1 Day 46, page 53 -- that a Mr Camilletti once, in

2 Mr Cox's words, famously described the Metropolitan

3 Police as an "under-10 football team", a problem is

4 identified in one corner of the pitch and everyone

5 rushes to go and sort it out.

6 I am not for a moment suggesting the movements you

7 chronicle are not well thought out and expertly

8 implemented, but one does wonder, does one not, who may

9 be suffering as a result of this focus?

10 MR KELLEHER: The Metropolitan Police generally sets its

11 plans well in advance and it has actually taken me a lot

12 longer than I thought it would do to effect these

13 changes. Money is allocated to major projects for

14 instance several years in advance, so we do not get the

15 opportunity to run about like an under 10 football team

16 in terms of money. So I would have to refute that.

17 MR SHELDON: The analogy may be an unfortunate one but the

18 basic problem is one that has been identified or at

19 least hinted at in more measured terms by Mr Kendrick

20 earlier on today. When your aim of 70 per cent

21 detectives was put to him, he said, "Gosh [paraphrasing

22 again], that sounds a lot. I am just slightly concerned

23 where they might be taken from". So you understand that

24 there is a concern about this. Is it one that we should

25 justifiably have?

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1 MR KELLEHER: No, sir. Our growth, it will be linked and

2 our continued growth will be linked to rising numbers in

3 the Metropolitan Police Service. Both Mr Griffiths and

4 Mr Kendrick tried to paint the context of an

5 organisation which was losing large numbers of staff,

6 for a number of reasons -- we lost part of the home

7 counties, for instance, to line off the GLA -- there

8 were severe budgetary restrictions and we had falling

9 numbers.

10 We were also unable to recruit and more importantly

11 retain experienced staff. That situation has halted and

12 it has been reversed. As numbers rise, so resources --

13 in terms of human resources -- will be allocated as best

14 to the organisation. So that is part of the answer to

15 this particular aspect.

16 MR SHELDON: So you could say, could you, in general terms

17 that the improvements that you have implemented: more

18 staff, more resources, defined structure as described in

19 your statement, that can be achieved and delivered

20 within the sphere of child protection without

21 substantially disadvantaging another area of the

22 Metropolitan Police's business?

23 MR KELLEHER: No, because the numbers involved are not so

24 significant.

25 MR SHELDON: So we do not find ourselves in a post-Lawrence

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1 situation where, as we have been told by for example

2 Commander Howlett, other teams are plundered in order to

3 fill the gap that has been identified?

4 MR KELLEHER: One of the main problems that I faced was

5 a lack of reliable historical data and I have spelt that

6 out in some detail in my statements to you because

7 I think it is a very relevant factor because it has

8 inhibited the progress I have been able to make. I said

9 earlier we have to have a business case for any

10 improvement, particularly one that is going to cost

11 a lot of money. I have to put forward the reliable data

12 to make my case and I have been trying to in-house

13 address that situation.

14 MR SHELDON: The reason I ask is because we were told in

15 relation to the Lawrence situation by Mr Thwaites at the

16 outset of this Inquiry -- sir Day 2, page 73 -- that it

17 would be naive for us to imagine that the police can

18 respond to changing requirements of frontline policing

19 without plundering the boroughs and specialist squads of

20 scores and sometimes hundreds of officers. As I say,

21 that was in relation to the Lawrence situation, not the

22 situation we find ourselves in. But you would not say

23 the same in relation to the improvements you chronicle

24 in child protection teams; we can have our cake and eat

25 it, can we, in that sense?

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1 MR KELLEHER: Because numbers have risen in the Metropolitan

2 Police, but can I also make the point -- as Mr Thwaites

3 correctly pointed out -- I was the Divisional Commander

4 at Paddington Green which is a large inner London

5 division, very very busy, is under stress as probably

6 any other part of the Metropolitan Police Service.

7 Between 1998 and 1999 I lost 30 police officers and 12

8 members of civilian staff, as a result of (a) budget

9 cuts and (b) the need to reinforce murder. So I am

10 aware of the position.

11 MR SHELDON: Is it Victoria's case that has enabled this to

12 come about?

13 MR KELLEHER: I think there are two main reasons, yes.

14 Victoria's case certainly was one reason. The other, as

15 I pointed out earlier, for the first time in the history

16 of the Metropolitan Police everything to do with child

17 protection has been put under one hand of one OCU

18 Commander, me. I am able to look at the thing across

19 the whole of the Met. When Mr Kendrick for instance and

20 later Mr Griffiths were involved in the policy

21 portfolio, they had to fight their corner, so to speak,

22 with the views of five separate assistant commissioners,

23 who all would regard or add different weighting to the

24 policing problems in their area. So I am in

25 a totally -- as is Mr Howlett -- different position from

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1 those that have gone before me.

2 MR SHELDON: Is the point that you are making there that the

3 decision to centralise the command of child protection

4 teams under you was one that predated Victoria's death?

5 MR KELLEHER: It was indeed. Sir John Stevens, who took

6 over as commissioner on 1st February 2000, considered

7 that the area structure had to go, he believed it was an

8 unnecessary structure. It was swept away fairly quickly

9 and other units, such as myself for instance, the

10 homicide side of the business, and other aspects, policy

11 and operations were directly linked and everything was

12 going to be provided from a borough unless it had to be

13 provided from specialist operations at New Scotland Yard

14 which were all under Mr Veness, Assistant Commissioner.

15 MR SHELDON: I am sure that the structural changes are of

16 enormous significance, and the fact that people in posts

17 such as yourself can give their undivided attention to

18 child protection teams is an enormous step forward, as

19 far as those teams are concerned. But what we also see

20 in your statement is the provision of resources to those

21 teams, not just putting them within a new structure.

22 One wonders in that context whether or not given that

23 this is, as you say, a sustainable improvement that can

24 be achieved without disadvantaging substantially other

25 areas of the Met, why it took so long for it to happen?

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1 MR KELLEHER: I think it took so long for it to happen

2 because, as I said before, the strategic and the

3 tactical delivery of the service was not in one place

4 under two sets of hands, DCI Howlett's and my own.

5 MR SHELDON: They could have given child protection teams

6 more cars or radios without a dedicated chief

7 superintendent having control of CPTs, could they not?

8 MR KELLEHER: I would guess on the individual areas under

9 each individual area commissioner, assistant

10 commissioner, that could have been possible, yes,

11 I suppose.

12 MR SHELDON: And so how do we then assess the record of your

13 predecessor, at least in the portfolio role, Mr Kendrick

14 who we have heard from today who has had this portfolio

15 for four years or so by the time he retires and has left

16 a child protection team system in the state that you

17 describe in your September 2000 report?

18 MR KELLEHER: It is very difficult as I have just said to

19 benchmark the two of us because we are both in different

20 positions. I have other considerations as well; since

21 Mr Kendrick retired, the Human Rights Act has produced

22 other pressures on the Metropolitan Police Service. As

23 Mr Kendrick was retiring the MacPherson Report was

24 coming, had been published or was being published, and

25 the impact on the Metropolitan Police Service was

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1 enormous from that one particular publication.

2 MR SHELDON: I would like to turn on now to look at some

3 specific areas of Child Protection Team operation.

4 There are six of them and I will tell you what they are

5 at the outset. Firstly, the new structure under SO5 and

6 the way in which the teams are managed within it.

7 Secondly, the relationship between the teams and other

8 agencies. Thirdly, the issue of training. Fourthly,

9 and connected with that, the question of numbers of

10 detectives on the teams. Fifthly, staffing generally;

11 and finally, tangible resources, by which I mean things

12 like IT, cars and accommodation.

13 If we will take them in that order and start with

14 the issue of structure and the way in which teams are

15 managed within SO5 now. As I understand it, up until

16 the creation of SO5 the 27 teams were managed by

17 whichever one of the five OCUs they fell into

18 geographically; is that right?

19 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

20 MR SHELDON: As such they would be competing for resources

21 with other teams within that OCU?

22 MR KELLEHER: Of a varied nature, homicide and all sorts.

23 MR SHELDON: Yes. And then on the 3rd July 2000 you assumed

24 responsibility for all 27?

25 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

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1 MR SHELDON: Reporting to Commander Howlett as she then was?

2 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

3 MR SHELDON: You now, as you say, are slightly delayed due

4 to the events of September 11th but you now work from an

5 operations room at Scotland Yard where you coordinate

6 the activities of all those 27 teams?

7 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

8 MR SHELDON: And that basic restructuring of a centralised

9 command was one that you and I think Commander Howlett

10 and DCI Griffiths had effectively decided on by

11 about January 2000?

12 MR KELLEHER: That is correct. Certainly I had

13 conversations with Mr Griffiths at that point.

14 MR SHELDON: One of the bases for that decision, as you put

15 it in paragraph 22 of your first statement, is that

16 child protection teams dealt with very serious crimes

17 and so it was thought that a separate OCU should be

18 established; is that right?

19 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

20 MR SHELDON: Are you saying in that case that if an area of

21 crime is serious enough then it should have its own OCU?

22 MR KELLEHER: That is a very specialist area and I felt the

23 volume of the demand on the Metropolitan Police

24 justified, sir.

25 MR SHELDON: If we adopt that test and say serious and

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1 specialist areas of crime need or deserve their own OCU,

2 is the fact that child protection teams up until the

3 creation of SO5 -- is the fact that they were lumped in

4 with other OCUs, the five other OCUs, symptomatic of

5 people within the Met thinking they did not deal with

6 serious, specialised and difficult crimes?

7 MR KELLEHER: The Area Crime OCUs only did deal with

8 serious, specialised and difficult crimes from the date

9 of their inception. I think from 1994 they came into

10 being, or thereabouts.

11 MR SHELDON: You see the basis of my question, which is, if

12 you said, "These teams deal with serious specialist

13 crimes, therefore they need their own OCU," what do we

14 draw from the fact that they had not been given their

15 own OCU before and had been lumped in with the five

16 other ones?

17 MR KELLEHER: You could draw the same conclusions around

18 murder because the murder teams from the five OCUs, or

19 three OCUs, were put inside one entity called SO1.

20 MR SHELDON: Regardless of whether we can draw the same

21 conclusions about other areas, we need to know what the

22 conclusions are and what is the conclusion we can draw

23 from that?

24 MR KELLEHER: The conclusion was the way the Met dealt with

25 serious crime above borough level, it was in a middle

189



1 tier structure before. When the Commissioner came along

2 and removed the area middle tier structure it came with

3 murder, where it had been placed before to the Serious

4 Crime Group. It was: how do we rearrange that business?

5 And the consideration had to be: was it better placed on

6 boroughs or was it better placed within the Serious

7 Crime Group and the Specialist Operations Department?

8 MR SHELDON: What role in that decision, the decision not to

9 have a separate OCU or to deal with child protection

10 teams in the way in which they were dealt with before,

11 what role did the fact that they were not an identified

12 ministerial priority have in that structure?

13 MR KELLEHER: No greater or less than murder, of course,

14 which did not have either.

15 MR SHELDON: Because you say in paragraph 27 that child

16 protection was never an explicit ministerial priority

17 and I just wonder what the effect of that is and the

18 link between ministerial priorities and Met Police

19 priorities. Is one dependent upon the other?

20 MR KELLEHER: Yes. I go back to the policing plan aspect.

21 What goes in the policing plan when you are fighting --

22 competing for resources in a big organisation like the

23 Met, you have to be a priority in the corporate plane if

24 you are going attract the level of resourcing that

25 I particularly needed. I was fighting against the fact

190



1 that one of the things that was against me on this was

2 the fact that in the Crime and Disorder Act audits, it

3 had never really been thrown up as an issue, and there

4 had been no policing objective or ministerial inquiry

5 about it. They tended to revolve around burglary and

6 robbery, diversity after the Stephen Lawrence clearly

7 was another one, and class A drugs. They were the sort

8 of operating areas that the government thought were

9 important. Clearly, they were going to be addressed in

10 the policing plan and I felt that it was another hurdle

11 to me getting resources.

12 MR SHELDON: The bumping of your team, the SO5 OCU, up the

13 agenda, now is that a reflection of the identification

14 of child protection as a ministerial priority?

15 MR KELLEHER: No, sir, it is because of extensive lobbying

16 by DAC Griffiths, Howlett, myself directly to senior

17 management.

18 MR SHELDON: So the Met does have some control over this

19 agenda?

20 MR KELLEHER: It does.

21 MR SHELDON: You are not simply sitting there passively

22 waiting to do what central government tells you to do?

23 MR KELLEHER: No, that is correct.

24 MR SHELDON: So the Met could have paid more attention and

25 provided more resources to child protection if it had

191



1 wanted to prior to the changes we have seen more

2 recently?

3 MR KELLEHER: I would say even in the previous -- going back

4 to 1997 -- Crime and Disorder Act I guess was dominating

5 our agenda because that brought about greater local

6 partnerships, and the crime audits which were there to

7 inform policing from an almost bottom-up approach.

8 MR SHELDON: You refer us at paragraph 30 of your first

9 statement to the annual policing plan which is in

10 volume 44, page 46. I wonder if you could have that.

11 This is a plan I take it you wrote?

12 MR KELLEHER: I did indeed.

13 MR SHELDON: It is the basis upon which you will judge the

14 performance of SO5 at the end of a period which it

15 covers, is that right?

16 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

17 MR SHELDON: Can we just have a look at page 9 of your first

18 statement, paragraph 30. Firstly, are we looking at the

19 right plan?

20 MR KELLEHER: I am looking at my business plan for the OCU.

21 MR SHELDON: There is a Metropolitan Police annual policing

22 plan which covers the whole of the Metropolitan Police?

23 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

24 MR SHELDON: I see. That has two specific objectives which

25 are relevant to child protection which you list there;

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1 is that right?

2 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

3 MR SHELDON: In the last sentence of that paragraph you say:

4 "The Metropolitan Police accepted these two

5 objectives and they have been included in the published

6 plan."

7 Does that mean that the objectives were set by

8 central government and then they have been accepted by

9 the Met?

10 MR KELLEHER: No sir, it is actually accepted by the

11 Metropolitan Police Authority, who are -- when the mayor

12 was appointed and the Greater London Authority came into

13 being, the Met for the first time had a police authority

14 which was not the Home Office. They are our statutory

15 oversight body.

16 MR SHELDON: I had not appreciated the distinction because

17 I was reading that as saying the Metropolitan Police had

18 accepted its own objectives and I was thinking, of

19 course they did.

20 MR KELLEHER: And every police authority in the country has

21 a statutory obligation to provide the home secretary

22 with a costed policing plan.

23 MR SHELDON: One point of detail, before we have a short

24 break, on the business plan you have open. You refer us

25 in paragraph 31 of your statement to two parts of that

193



1 plan in particular. Firstly page 16 which has the

2 service level agreement, and page 21 which summarises

3 the seven objectives. I am not sure if those are the

4 right references. I wonder whether or not you mean

5 page 13 when you said 16. Is that possible, for the

6 service level agreement?

7 MR KELLEHER: Service level agreement is --

8 MR SHELDON: I am looking at page 13 which is page 57 in our

9 bundle.

10 MR KELLEHER: Yes, page 13.

11 MR SHELDON: And instead of page 21 should we be looking at

12 page 18 for the summary of the seven objectives, because

13 I think 21 is something different?

14 MR KELLEHER: What was the other reference?

15 MR SHELDON: I wonder whether instead of page 21 we should

16 be looking at page 18 for the summary of the seven

17 objectives.

18 MR KELLEHER: Yes, that is correct.

19 MR SHELDON: Sir, would that be a convenient moment?

20 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Sheldon, that is very

21 thoughtful.

22 During this break, Mr Kelleher, you are not able to

23 discuss your evidence with anyone, including your

24 advocate. We will resume, ladies and gentlemen, at

25 3.45.

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1 (3.35 pm)

2 (A short break)

3 (3.45 pm)

4 MR SHELDON: Mr Kelleher, you note in paragraph 13 of your

5 statement that prior to the restructuring into SO5,

6 DCI Wheeler was the line manager of the 6th North West

7 London CPTs.

8 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

9 MR SHELDON: You discuss his role at paragraph 16 of your

10 first statement, where you state that his main role was

11 to manage the informant system. What do you base the

12 assessment that that was his main role on?

13 MR KELLEHER: It was when I interviewed him about what he

14 had been doing.

15 MR SHELDON: I see. That is what he told you?

16 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

17 MR SHELDON: Because Mr Cox came and gave evidence to us

18 some time ago, and he said that as far as he was

19 concerned, when he appointed Mr Wheeler, his child

20 protection work was just as important as anything else

21 that he was doing, if not more so. You do not, as

22 I understand it from your previous answer, disagree with

23 that; that is just different to what you were told by

24 Mr Wheeler?

25 MR KELLEHER: That is correct. Mr Wheeler did mention all

195



1 his different responsibilities, as I have outlined in

2 the statement. He was the last of what I would class as

3 the Area DCI role which was a role that had been in the

4 Metropolitan Police for some time which the others had

5 largely discarded.

6 MR SHELDON: When you asked him to come and talk to you

7 about his role and he described it, as you reproduced in

8 your statement; namely, Child Protection Team management

9 being just one of a whole range of different areas and

10 not even the main one, did you think that that was

11 a satisfactory state of affairs?

12 MR KELLEHER: No, and I could enlarge on that.

13 MR SHELDON: Please do.

14 MR KELLEHER: I currently use four detective chief

15 inspectors to manage the teams. I did originally have

16 three and that is in the original plan and my original

17 statement. Mr Copson and I have had some debate about

18 the span of command, the amount of time individuals

19 would have. We did commission the consultancy group of

20 the Metropolitan Police to study our three DCIs and they

21 concluded, or the report concluded, that we did not have

22 enough DCIs to do the full-time job, so we have four.

23 Those four find it a very challenging role. So I have

24 developed a view over time, not necessarily when I took

25 the OCU over, that that would be an unsatisfactory point

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1 of view.

2 MR SHELDON: I want to come on to that in some detail in

3 just a moment, but the pre-SO5 role, so the pre-review

4 position that you have just been explaining, the role of

5 a DCI in that situation is crucial, is it not, in the

6 management of the team? We have heard evidence that

7 North West Area was one that was almost overwhelmed by

8 the number of murders and other serious investigations

9 it had to do. Detective Superintendent Akers had an

10 enormous amount on her plate as did Detective Chief

11 Superintendent Cox. If it was not Mr Wheeler that was

12 managing these teams, then nobody was going to be

13 managing them. Is that fair?

14 MR KELLEHER: That is fair.

15 MR SHELDON: So one of two things must be right, must it

16 not? Either his role is as he described it, and it is

17 a manifestly misconceived role because you have to have

18 somebody keeping a proper eye on these teams, or there

19 is nothing wrong with the role, it was the way in which

20 he performed it, namely not giving enough time to it.

21 Are you in a position --

22 MR KELLEHER: I am not in a position to make that latter

23 judgment but clearly from my experience now of managing

24 the CPTs directly and the experience of my DCIs, clearly

25 it is a full-time role.

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1 MR SHELDON: The DCIs that are in place now, managing the

2 teams, and I know there are now four when there were

3 three, that is all they do, is it not?

4 MR KELLEHER: Absolutely.

5 MR SHELDON: The review that indicated that the three of

6 them were overworked is in volume 45H and I wonder

7 whether you could have that, please. Page 303.

8 Mr Kelleher, that is the report that you were talking

9 about just now, is it not?

10 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

11 MR SHELDON: In a nutshell, what it was concerned with

12 reporting on was whether or not the three Area DCIs that

13 you had in place had sufficient time to do the job

14 properly.

15 MR KELLEHER: Absolutely, sir.

16 MR SHELDON: If we have a look at page 314 in that bundle,

17 we can see a summary going to that question, which is

18 that Area DCIs do not feel they are able to deliver

19 a number of key principles for their rank effectively,

20 and there are a number of barriers to that which all

21 effectively boil down to having to do too much.

22 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

23 MR SHELDON: Your response to that was to create an extra

24 DCI post, so that there were four; so that each of them

25 had roughly six CPT teams to look after.

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1 MR KELLEHER: One had five, the other six teams. They each

2 had a portfolio of work to develop the OCU and they were

3 removed as well.

4 MR SHELDON: Is the position a satisfactory one now, can

5 they cope?

6 MR KELLEHER: Yes, they can cope but for reasons I have set

7 out in my statement, until they get a crime management

8 unit to support them I do not believe they will be fully

9 effective or as effective as I personally would like

10 them to be.

11 MR SHELDON: You may have read sufficient of the evidence of

12 in particular the senior officer evidence to this

13 Inquiry to pick up the fact that there has not been very

14 much in the way of sympathy for DCI Wheeler saying he

15 was overworked in his role in 1999. But it might seem

16 from this review and the answers you have just given

17 that he may have a point, because the DCIs that you now

18 have in place, looking after six CP teams, it is the

19 only thing they have to do, they are going to be

20 assisted by a central unit as you have just described,

21 and yet this was a job that DCI Wheeler was being asked

22 to do along with lots of other things.

23 MR KELLEHER: That is correct, sir.

24 MR SHELDON: I wonder also to the extent, having read

25 paragraph 14 of your first statement, the extent to

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1 which he was almost uniquely badly off in this respect

2 within London, because as I read that paragraph you were

3 suggesting that other areas were moving towards this DCI

4 role as being solely child protection; is that right?

5 MR KELLEHER: Or had actually arrived there. South and

6 East -- South East and North East had full-time

7 dedicated officers that were -- yes, South East,

8 DCI Tulloch just did CPT work. The North East DCI had

9 to SIO roles but they were both around child protection

10 issues, and the South West DCI was in fact the SIO for

11 the Ricky Rill Inquiry as well, so re-investigation.

12 MR SHELDON: It is important to get as balanced a picture as

13 possible, and I am sure that other senior officers on

14 North West OCU were enormously busy, but in relation to

15 DCI Wheeler it would appear from your evidence that not

16 only was he considerably worse off in terms of amount of

17 time he could give to child protection than his

18 successors now, but he was also in some respects worse

19 off than other DCIs in London.

20 MR KELLEHER: He had a different job description.

21 MR SHELDON: So when for example Mr Cox tells us that he

22 regarded the management of the CP teams as terribly

23 important, and that he picked DCI Wheeler because of his

24 experience in that particular area, we should be aware,

25 should we not, that DCS Cox did not do what his

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1 contemporaries in the rest of London did, which was make

2 this a solely, if not principally, a child protection

3 role?

4 MR KELLEHER: That is a fair comment.

5 MR SHELDON: Finally on this point, the child protection

6 supervisors' meeting. You mentioned at paragraph 18 of

7 your statement that it was usually the DCI who went,

8 yes?

9 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

10 MR SHELDON: But that was not the case in North West Area as

11 we have heard, it was usually Detective

12 Superintendent Akers?

13 MR KELLEHER: That is correct.

14 MR SHELDON: Should it have been Mr Wheeler?

15 MR KELLEHER: It is a matter for the individual area.

16 I also pointed out in the same statement each of the

17 five areas were similar in status to county forces where

18 the structures were not necessarily the same. It is

19 a local management decision.

20 MR SHELDON: Was there any practical disadvantage to him,

21 provided of course he had access to the minutes, by not

22 going and doing his job effectively?

23 MR KELLEHER: I think if he was expected to run the CPTs he

24 should have gone in the manner described by others.

25 MR SHELDON: Yes. One wonders the extent to which, and it