ON 1 FEBRUARY 2010, the inquest into the deaths of Joan and John Stirland finally got underway, five-and-a-half years after they had perished so brutally on that sunny day on the east coast. Nottinghamshire Police had already agreed to pay the Stirlands’ children compensation, amounting to less than £20,000, in recognition of its failings. Given the circumstances of the couple’s death, it came as no surprise that this was not an ordinary inquest. There was tight security at Lincoln Crown Court, with members of the public and press barred from the building and instead directed to the local magistrates court a mile away, where a video link had been set up to view proceedings. Michael O’Brien, Joan’s son, who was serving a life sentence for the murder which sparked the killings, was also allowed to watch proceedings over three weeks from a room in prison. Almost all the police witnesses in the case were given anonymity, being referred to by letters of the alphabet.
The outcome would be decided by a jury and the members of that jury were directed not by the usual coroner for Lincolnshire but by barrister Karon Monaghan, a QC from London law chambers Matrix, who had been called in to oversee the complexities of the case as a human rights law specialist. Monaghan made it clear that the jury would have to consider a number of specific allegations when considering the evidence, key of which were whether police corruption had played a part in the deaths of the Stirlands and whether police had failed in their duty of care towards the couple.
From the outset it was clear that the covert nature of the investigation into the Bestwood Cartel had hindered the normal flow of information and intelligence within the police force about any threat to the Stirlands. Secrecy had been so tight that the senior investigating officer heading Operation Utah, the probe into the Gunns, did not even know who the Stirlands were until news reached him of their murder. Other police witnesses said the belief within the force was that the murders were beyond the capability of the Bestwood Cartel. As one senior officer put it, ‘Gunn usually sought out and injured those who were involved in organised crime.’ As far as they were concerned, the punishment shootings being carried out on the estate at the time were a case of ‘bad on bad’. Yet one former detective superintendent pointed out that early on in the investigation into the crime empire, intelligence suggested Gunn had a team of hitmen, at least six ‘shooters’, who were willing to carry out jobs in return for payment or drugs. The list included Michael McNee and John Russell. Added to this, the intelligence log revealed more than 100 snippets linking Gunn to the procurement and use of firearms over the period of a year. All this was information available to some senior officers many months before the slaying of the grandparents.
Other information to emerge from the inquest included a more detailed account of just how much danger Joan Stirland had put herself in in order to help police nail her own son. One of Colin Gunn’s original motives for sending shooters after the couple, when they were living in Carlton, Nottingham, was that Mrs Stirland had not ‘given up’ her son. However, it emerged in evidence that in fact Mrs Stirland had received a phone call from O’Brien in which her son had demanded £50 for food and drugs and confessed to the murder of Marvyn Bradshaw. Mrs Stirland duly related this to police and a meeting was set up in a supermarket car park in Bulwell. Unknown to O’Brien, armed police maintained watch as the money was handed to a friend of O’Brien and, by following his car, police were able to arrest O’Brien a few days later in Leicester. After her own home in Carlton was shot up, Mrs Stirland asked Nottinghamshire Police officers to make it known to Gunn that she had helped police to trace her son. Officers refused the request, saying it was ‘not appropriate’. Perhaps most controversially, it emerged that the police told Joan Stirland they could not give her protection because she had refused to give them a signed statement implicating her son.
Nick Gargan, deputy chief constable at the National Policing Improvement Agency, told the inquest that the witness protection arrangements for the couple were ‘poor and inadequate’. He said it was wrong that officers had given Mrs Stirland the impression that she could only get protection if she made a statement against her son, and other solutions had not been sought by senior officers. Command level officers had not considered the option of a ‘threat to life’ policy, something in place at the Metropolitan Police, which could have given the Stirlands more protection without going into witness protection. Not only did they not offer the required level of protection, it emerged that there was a record of the new Lincolnshire safe house address on a Nottinghamshire Police computer at least three weeks before the murder. A prison inmate who had drug dealings with the Gunns claimed the address had been compromised by DC Charles Fletcher, but anti-corruption officers stated that although Fletcher had logged onto details about the Stirlands old address at Carlton after the shootings in 2003, he had not accessed the computer for the Trusthorpe address. It was conceded that the information about the address eventually came from a British Telecom employee making a reverse ex-directory number check.
When the jury returned with its verdict, after more than three weeks of evidence, there was an inevitability about the result. In all six major failings by Nottinghamshire Police were identified by the jury, which also found British Telecom had failed the couple. Police had: failed to take reasonable steps to protect the couple; failed to put adequate protective measures in place at their Trusthorpe home; failed to manage intelligence and information properly; failed to investigate the reprisal attacks after the murder of Marvyn Bradshaw; failed to perform a proper risk assessment on the couple; and failed to warn them of Gunn’s links along the Lincolnshire coast.
It seems perverse that the design of the operation to bring down the Bestwood Cartel – in particular its inherent secrecy – prevented some officers from passing on and receiving vital information. This information indicated that the Stirlands were in extreme danger. The failings highlighted by the inquest gave heart to Gunn and his supporters, who felt it would help in any bid for an appeal. But an important fact had become lost amongst all the backslapping of the Cartel supporters. Colin Gunn was not arrested and convicted on evidence submitted by Nottinghamshire Police; it was Lincolnshire’s Operation Karoo, the biggest inquiry in the history of the force, headed by its most senior detective, Graham White, his team of officers and Lincolnshire Crown Prosecution Service, which had finally brought the crime lord and some of his henchmen to justice.
After the termination of Steve Green’s contract as Chief Constable in June 2008, Nottinghamshire Police looked to improve its poor standing in the league tables of crime prevention and detection. But by the time of the Stirland inquest, the force was in turmoil. Following Green’s departure, the police authority selection panel once again went for a successor who had no background in crime detection or CID. Julia Hodson, the daughter of a Derbyshire coal miner, was variously described as ‘well-liked’ and, when she needed to be, ‘feisty’. A former acting chief of West Yorkshire Police, she was the first woman to be appointed to the Nottinghamshire post. She inherited a difficult situation, with the county force still lying at the bottom of the league tables for many areas of crime. Added to this there were Machiavellian goings-on in the background, with several councillors looking to remove police authority chairman John Clarke.
The lack of unity, both within the police authority and at command level within the force, became public knowledge in December 2009. First came the resignation of police authority chief executive David Wilcock, who had been in the job only two months. His leaked resignation letter shook the authority to the core. ‘Whilst it is not unusual to find multiple challenges running in parallel in the public sector,’ wrote Wilcock, ‘to find so many in one organisation with no inherent capacity to support self-improvement is extraordinary. In my experience, the current situation has not happened overnight and seems to have accumulated without action over a period of time, without being tackled.’ John Mann, the MP for Bassetlaw, publicly criticised the force in the same week during Prime Minister’s Questions
in the House of Commons, suggesting that an ‘organisational malaise’ was hindering Nottinghamshire’s crime-fighting abilities.
The day after the Wilcock revelations, documents leaked to the city’s daily newspaper revealed that Deputy Chief Constable Howard Roberts had been embroiled in a private clash of personalities with the head of HMIC, Dennis O’Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. It was a dispute that Roberts claimed went back to 2005, when Nottinghamshire was under public scrutiny following Steve Green’s declaration that the force couldn’t cope with the murders on its patch. The public nature of the spat, which only came to light after it was discussed at a closed police authority meeting, was a huge embarrassment and led to the inevitable witch hunt for the person who had leaked the material. The dispute centred on Roberts’ belief that his career progression was being impeded because he had ‘stood up’ to criticisms from O’Connor when the Home Office called in investigators to probe Green’s ‘can’t cope’ comments. Roberts suggested HMIC had subsequently taken to sabotaging his applications for various high-profile police posts. He also believed HMIC had played some part in blocking a twelve-month extension to his contract at Nottinghamshire, which had been rejected by police authority members. O’Connor and Roberts declined to comment on the revelations.
The fact was that HMIC was already taking a keen interest in the running of Nottinghamshire Police, indeed it had been gazing over the shoulders of the Nottinghamshire police authority and command team since 2005. Some even felt its presence was hindering the ability of the Chief Constable to make robust decisions and resolve some of the problems besetting the force. ‘I think Julia [Hodson] has got her work cut out to deal with the mess she was left with,’ one former senior officer told me. ‘She could not have foreseen the malevolent political landscape which has been building around the force for the last few years ever since Steve Green’s ill-advised outburst. It’s a chapter devoted to meddling and muddling by outside influences, all of which appear to be speeding up the march towards a crisis.’
HMIC finally showed its public hand when a Daily Telegraph article speculated with some authority that Julia Hodson’s job was on the line and that the force was locked in a cycle of underperformance. HMIC admitted it was monitoring Nottinghamshire closely and was working with it to produce an improvement plan. Before the end of January 2010, HMIC declared it was facing an ‘enduring issue of Nottinghamshire Police’s under-performance’ and that a team of experts would be sent to the county to plan improvements which could be enacted within ninety days. It was an unprecedented move in policing terms and one which placed a question mark next to Hodson’s long-term future. The team of experts included two current chief constables and a police authority chairman from outside forces, a chief executive from British Transport Police authority and a captain of industry in Tony Wilkinson, former chairman of the Wilkinson hardware stores. It would be headed by Adam Pemberton from the Cabinet Office, who had recently overseen the biggest shake-up in the history of the civil service.
Before the team had completed its findings, the police authority chairman of ten years, John Clarke, announced he would be stepping down. At the same time, he denounced the leaks from the police authority, which he said had been referred to Derbyshire Police to investigate for offences under the Data Protection Act. ‘I’m fed up with information getting out and being blamed for poor performance when I’m in a non-operational position,’ he said. ‘I can’t work with information I’m given, be it details of counterterrorism or organised crime, if someone within the organisation is leaking information. I’m proud of my record in helping achieve the reduction in crime in Nottinghamshire but on a day-to-day basis, there are people out there trying to undermine. The way I’ve been treated by some people, I believe, has been absolutely scandalous.’ He didn’t identify where he believed the mischief was coming from but the HMIC review team, when it made its findings public two weeks later, stated poor leadership from the police authority was impeding the progress of the police force. ‘The leadership of the authority is ineffective ... The authority is not seen as adding value to policing in Nottinghamshire. By virtue of the long standing positions the chair and chief executive must accept primary responsibility for this.’
Alongside this criticism, the review team declared Julia Hodson unable to push through her vision because she lacked a capable chief officer team. ‘It is a precondition for the authority’s and force’s future success that these issues are resolved,’ the review team added. With Clarke’s departure announced, the usual jockeying for position began with city council leader Jon Collins taking the reins as chairman, elected in a secret ballot. Vacancies for a deputy chief constable and two assistant chief constables were filled to strengthen Hodson’s team in the top corridor.
Before that had happened, the latest HMIC report into Nottinghamshire branded the force the worst in the country. It could not sink any further.
Some officers speak of a deep malaise in policing in this country, one that may have much to do with social changes that have taken place among police officers and the law-abiding public in the past four decades. A former head of CID from a force close to Nottinghamshire told me that he had begun his thirty or so years in the force living among the community he actually served, pounding the streets as a beat bobby as many officers did. He got to know his community, he drank in the local pub most evenings and he gathered intelligence on who was who and who was doing what. He made sure he was a presence in the community he lived in, as an individual, as a family man, as a neighbour but above all as a police officer, and he was respected even if he had to arrest someone he had been talking amicably with the previous day. He told me, ‘What happened was, as time went on police officers’ pay got better and officers stopped living on the estates, they didn’t want to live there because they could afford to live somewhere else and all the police houses that were on the estates got sold off and suddenly the connection between the police officer and the community had been eroded. The police officer wasn’t someone who you could relate to or connect with any more. That also meant police didn’t know what was really going on on the estates as well.’
The changes in the way Britain’s streets are policed, the reduction of foot patrols and expansion of vehicle patrols, has exacerbated that feeling of detachment, creating a gulf that can easily be exploited by organised crime and gangs. The growth of the black economy has also seen otherwise honest people increasingly both at risk of being criminalised and of becoming victims of crime. Faith in both the criminal justice system and the police to deliver what the public demand is at an all-time low. In Nottinghamshire, at least, it seemed the bottom had been reached. In 2002, HMIC inspector David Blakey had stated, ‘If you lived, worked or visited Notts, you are more likely to have a crime committed against you than anywhere else in the country.’ Eight years later, HMIC assessed Nottinghamshire as the worst force in the country, and only in Greater Manchester or London were you more likely to be a victim of crime. It seemed that Nottinghamshire’s outlaws still ruled the roost.
IN MARCH 2010, Janice Collins, the mother of Brendon Lawrence, finally saw his killer brought to justice. After eight ‘horrendous’ years, she watched as Rene Sarpong, aged twenty-nine, a gang member from the St Ann’s area, received a life sentence with a minimum twenty-two-year term. The judge, Mr Justice David Clarke, was minded to reflect on how Brendon’s death had been the start of so much pointless tragedy for the city. ‘This killing, in February 2002, was the first killing by shooting of a young black victim on the streets of Nottingham,’ he said. ‘It was not the last. The killings that followed gave this city a reputation as a lawless place. Men are now serving long sentences for those offences and Nottingham is throwing off that unfortunate reputation.’
It had taken a long time to get a conviction. The jury had failed to reach a verdict at a previous trial of Sarpong and had found another defendant not guilty. This time the relief for Janice Collins was evident as she shouted �
�Yes’ and punched the air as the jury returned its verdict. ‘It has been horrendous,’ she confided afterwards. ‘I’ve never slept through the night in eight years. You are walking the streets and going to the shop and doing what you are doing and it is constantly on your mind; you know, who shot Brendon? Well, we know now. It’s taken eight years ... but we got there.’
Organised crime continues to flourish in Nottingham, despite the work of all the agencies tackling the problem. Alongside homegrown gangs there are now Chinese and Vietnamese gangs running cannabis hydroponic factories in empty houses and industrial units. Law enforcement agencies fear that foreign, particularly East European, gangs are making an impact in our cities, sometimes filling the gaps created by the successful prosecution of local drug lords. Drugs, prostitution, credit card fraud and people trafficking are their areas of expertise and they appear more adept than British gangs at laundering their gains. Meanwhile firearms and knife crime remain huge problems among the youth of Britain.
The answer lies not in the number of arrests to be made but in the offer of a positive future for the young, a future that does not involve them becoming drug dealers or gang members. There is hope in groups such as the Unity football team, set up by Morris Samuels in 2005 after the murder of Danielle Beccan and made up from youngsters from the three areas of the warring NG triangle: Radford, the Meadows and St Ann’s. There is also the No Gun Organisation, set up by Clayton Byfield, which is continuing to get the message out to young people that guns and knives do nothing but take lives away. These groups offer something positive to young people despite a lack of support and funding. From little acorns great oak trees grow, as they say, and these projects offer some hope that there is a brighter future than one in which individuals and communities have too often in the past been ready to give up doing the right thing and tacitly accept the rule of the gun.
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