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Hello there, how's your week been good? I hope we
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are fully caffeinated and ready to talk about the intriguing
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world of criminal intelligence. Now you might think that policing
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is all about making an arrest, feeling a collar, nicking
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a criminal, but in reality, it starts with little bits
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of information, often from all over the place. A single
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piece of information doesn't really mean much on its own.
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Criminal intelligence is what happens when you join all of
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those pieces together like a jigsaw, and suddenly you can
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see the picture. At least that's what I think, Jack,
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am I right.
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That's pretty much it. Yeah. The National Crime Agency that's
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the UK's equivalent of the FBI, and that states that
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intelligence is the processed, analyzed and evaluated information regarding actual
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or suspected criminal activity used by law enforcement to make decisions,
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identify suspects, and predict trends. It transforms raw data such
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as forensic reports, human sources, and surveillance, which we talked
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about last time, and it converts that into actionable insights
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to guide investigations, support operations, and prevent crime. Now that
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sounds great in an ideal world, and I think this
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episode could well be called that. In an ideal world,
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law enforcement agencies would would know everything, wouldn't we we'd
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be one step ahead of the game, would prevent or
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detect every criminal act in the country. But like in
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a lot of areas, we don't live in an ideal world.
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How has intelligence changed over the years? Because you were
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thirty years on the job and you've been out of
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the job for a little while. Now, how did it
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evolve during your time as a copper?
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I think, like everything, it's changed enormously, particularly with the
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digital age, which was sort of the nineties. So if
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you go back nineteen eighty five when I joined, we
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had what was called the collator. The collator worked at
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subdivisional stations and had an office that collated or collected
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information or details of crime reports, intelligence reports, etc. Typed
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them up, put them on a card, index into little
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metal draws and cabinets, linked it to addressers, names, types
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of crime, etc.
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I see, I just had a vision of a collator
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being a machine, something beige, sitting in the corner, like
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a fax machine. But it's a role, it's a job role,
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it's a person. It's not like a computer. Used to
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be a person who did calculations, kalator was a person.
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It's very much a person, an officer, and they would
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also have someone to help type this intelligence or this
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information onto bulletins and cards, etc. Often that typist was
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an officer who was maybe on recuperating from injury, that
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kind of thing, not necessarily trained in the use of
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the typewriter, remember those. Yeah, So, what the cleator would produce,
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I don't know whether this was weekly or or every
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couple of days or whenever they felt they had the
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time to do it would be an intelligence report, a
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sheet of paper, a sheet of a four that would
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be used in briefings to all the offices about what
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had been happening, trends, a particular criminal who was back
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living on the area, that kind of thing. And I
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remember this as well because the colleague and friend who
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is still a friend of mine was working there at
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the time, and I remember he was criticized behind his
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back in terms of the amount of intelligence that he
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was submitting.
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Too much or too little, too much, too much?
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Yes, and well this is key because we're going back
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to the nineteen eighties here, And what other officers would
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say was, well, why doesn't he go and sort it
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out himself that he's putting this information about a criminal
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who's driving a particular car, who disqualified driver who's driving
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a particular call, this kind of thing, and that would
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Load full transcript
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be the criticism of him, which was wrong, which was misguided.
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But in those days, I think you have to remember
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policing was very parochial. Officers and detectives kept things close
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to the chest. They wanted to deal with it, and
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that was a failing because it meant that information wasn't
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shared properly and allowed to be managed properly. People were parochial,
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quite sort of selfish of their own self interests.
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So we're talking about working in silos, which is something
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I'm familiar with from my work in business and industry
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and something which the BC used to be criticized for.
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I remember working for different programs and they were very
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very parochial about their stories, their contacts. They wouldn't share anything. Yes,
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this is it, and trying to overcome that culture took decades.
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Yes, and it's it's actually goes beyond silos in terms
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of teams who were working in silos. But as individuals
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there was something competitive and something keeping your cards close
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to your chest, and it was it was not productive.
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It was not properly productive. I mean I remember in
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my early days of supervisory duties, I would say to
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an officer, can you put this put some intelligence in?
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And that the standard The stock reply would be I
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would do but I'm not very intelligent and you know,
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pretty poor sort of gag. I suppose. So officers were
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sort of culturally trained, sort of not to keep things
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either close to the chest or can't really be bothered
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about putting in this thing called intelligence, Well it should
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have been put in. So I've always been a champion
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for putting intelligence in. Now in those days as well,
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it would be a simple handwritten report on a sheet,
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so you could be done in seconds, providing you thought
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about it carefully. What you were putting bear in mind.
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But wherever the information had come from, put it in
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and then let somebody else analyze it, look at it,
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evaluate it, etc.
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Puts me in mind of the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe
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and how that produced a mountain of information that overwhelmed
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the detectives working on the case to the point where
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they couldn't to use a cliche, see the wood for
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the trees, right, and opportunities to identify Sutcliffe and to
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arrest him were missed as a result the card index
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and you'll remember the Psycho Killer podcast about the Yorkshire Ripper.
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The card index filled an entire floor of Millgarth Nick
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in Leeds, the main police station for Leeds. It's like
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a blockhouse, this thing. And the weight became so great
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that the floor below had to be cleared and they
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brought in pit props from a nearby colliery to support
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the weight of the floor above to prevent it collapsing.
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Such was the weight of all of the card indexes
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and the filing cabinets and all of the paraphernalia of
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that analog system upstairs.
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That's right, and remember for good reasons in a way,
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but all that information held in there would not be
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available anywhere else.
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Yes, of course you'd have to go there, effectively, go
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to the library to retrieve the information from somebody who
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could help you find it. Yeah, yes, akalator. Yeah, so
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that was well nineteen seventies, late seventies, coming into the
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early eighties, and then you joined the police force early
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to mid eighties, is that right?
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Yeah?
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So how was what was the situation like then with
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intelligent gathering and data storage. Was it similar card index
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or was it moving on to an electronic form of storage.
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It was very much card index systems. In the nineties,
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I was working at headquarters when something called the World
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Wide Web was launched and our desks were I think
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we had to actually have new desks as well, because
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these huge monitors and keyboards and towers or computer towers
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were being delivered by
the newly formed IT Department information Technology,
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and we were still used to going to a metal
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cabinet and drawing out files and bits of information.
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So how did colleagues react to that the introduction of it.
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I think it varied. As you know in any walk
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of life and yourselves, there will be those that you think,
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if the system's not broken, don't try and fix it,
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and others would be all over this new technology as
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though it's something to behold. I'm a middle of the
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road guy, and I slowly, I slowly adapted to it,
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as as as I've adapted to, you know, to any
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changes in the organization.
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I suppose a few people fell by the wayside and
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went out of the door at the same time as
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the typewriters were taken out to a skip exactly.
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I mean, if I remember we we we used, I
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used to use a builder for doing sort of odd jobs.
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And he was an ex refuse collector, a bin man,
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and he said he left that organization when they ruined
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the skill and the art of bin collections because he
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was used to putting a metal bin with a handle
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over his shoulder and taking it to the the bin.
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Lorry wheelibins came in and he lost all faith in
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the in the process.
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My first substantive job as a broadcast journalist was in
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a newsroom that had three computer terminals, as you've described,
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and then the olivety typewriter that the boss, the editor
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used because he couldn't get on with all of this nonsense.
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Never mind the fact that it was network, never mind
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the fact that we had all of the news scripts
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backed up on floppy discs. Remember those. Julian would hammer
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away at his typewriter, and the closer it got to
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a deadline, the more perforated the paper became right because
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he'd be hitting those keys with a purpose. And you
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could hold these scripts up afterwards to the window and
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see where the full stops and the commas had just
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gone straight through the paper. And if it was a
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really tight deadline. All of the o's would have gone
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through as well. So I'm familiar with it and the
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tension that kind of came with it. The young guy
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who was all forering introducing this technology and for the
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life of him, couldn't get the boss to see that
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he should be embracing it as well.
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It managers management's key, isn't it. Those that are resistant
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to change for whatever reason will cause some issues. But
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then those who are all about the change and not
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really about the past, sometimes they lose that connection to
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what has worked. So it's fine in that balance. What
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this department when I was in headquarters, so this is
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the arrival of information technology, we had something unique in
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this particular office, and we had a paper system of
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records from the Immigration Service and the UK Passport Authority,
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and we dealt with referrals information investigations relating to those topics,
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but we dealt with them in complete isolation. So that
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paperwork was unless we consciously shared it for a particular reason,
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it was kept in one department in a silo, you
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use the term silo. So it was really interesting because
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when I looked at what we'd collated over the years
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in terms of let's talk about passports, so passports, passport
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fraud and use of passports being docted, altered, etc. Would
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we would have records that come from the Peterborough Passport
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Office that would say we suspect this application is false,
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please investigate, and we would go and do that reply
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to them either confirming it's all genuine, there's just a
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mistake here, or were identify as there's been a rogue
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application made and deal with it accord. We would also
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have records of Nottingham based passports that had been recovered
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around the world that had been adopted that had a
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new photograph inserted. But again we would or we had
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been purely just collating and filing all this information rather
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than sharing it to the wider police organization. Having looked
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at this collated information, it was clear analyzing the intelligence,
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it was clear that there was something going off in
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terms of applications were going in to Peterborough Passport Office
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in person and then a significant number of them were
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then being recovered later with a new photograph inserted to
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skip forward within six months, which identified a criminal who
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was recruiting individuals to apply for their first passport for
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a fee. For an amount of money and they were
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taken to Peterborough the Passport office issued with their passport,
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they would hand it over for money and then it
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allowed the criminals to replace the photograph with another individual
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and then sold to Warder. And it was quite a
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large scale activity. It was only our department that was
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able to identify that because all the other activity was
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not being analyzed, recorded, checked, et cetera. So that to
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me is that early example of how the old system
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was failing. And subsequent to that, obviously things potentially could
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be could be a lot better. In fact, they all
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as we know, with passport applications.
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So just to be clear, this is a national activity,
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the passport scam, and the information was held in Nottingham
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and the Passport office in Peterborough had to communicate with
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Nottingham in order to flag up potential passport fraud. They
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had to go to Nottingham. They couldn't go anywhere else
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because that information wasn't shared with for example, Cambridgeshire Police
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or with the met or whatever precisely, and or it
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wasn't accessible to them. You'd share it, but it would
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take time. Nowadays it's accessible.
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And each fraud was an individual matter, rather being looking
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at a trend or a system looking at the profile
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of the applicants. So this wasn't rocket
science. This was
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just as you would allude to, genuine professional curiosity. What's
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going off here? Why why is this trend happening? Well,
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identifying the trend and then saying why is it happening?
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And then how do we solve it? How do we
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stop it?
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Was there a light bulb moment then when you realized
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that the it would allow you to collate intelligence in
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a way that would show those patterns.
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It wasn't so much it it just coincidentally was at
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the time of the arrival of it. This was yeah,
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this was this was basic, basic policing where an individual
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had the time to look and analyze, rather than subsequently
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where potentially it could analyze that for you.
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And there you are in your CID office with your
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smart new Windows ninety five computers and they're all networked
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I'm assuming their network. So you can share that information
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and you can share it well, could you share it
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just within the building or could you share it with
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your force? Or was it accessible to the other police
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forces across the United Kingdom?
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Then not at all, no that, so there.
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Were Chinese walls that prevented total accessibility or completely.
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I think it was another twenty years before intelligence systems
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were nationalized and accessible, and then they weren't accessible to everybody.
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They would have specific intelligence analyst and researchers who could
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access them for you. But progress was made, but it
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must have been over a twenty year period.
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And we've talked about the home system before. Just give
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me a quick summary of what homes is or was
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in case people have forgotten and how did homes fit
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into the picture overall of intelligence and this type of
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transition to digital.
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Well, again, the homes, the home office large major inquiry system,
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I think is the that the term is a system
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of investigating major crime in an
incident room that again
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has also been advanced using technology and is more accessible
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across departments. But it's still very much in isolation for
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a number of reasons really for obviously security of the
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of the data. So there's still some difficult decisions sometimes
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in what to release to the to the bigger intelligence picture.
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You know this it's in an ideal world to go
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back to that point, you know, in an idea world
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and everything would be secure, but accessible to the right people.
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But as you know from your organization, you know there
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are flaws to it, and there are difficulties in that.
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There's a need for confidentiality in a lot of cases,
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isn't there absolutely?
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I mean I do remember one one aspect and introducing
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the homes and major crime murder squad scenarios. It was interesting.
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So when I left this department with the passport activity,
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I was keen to improve the dissemination of intelligence that
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might be of value to the wider organization. And in
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two thousand and six, I believe there was an awful
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incident where a police officer was shot in Nottingham, PC
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Rachel Bown, and ultimately she tried to return to the
294
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job but it was too much for her. She was
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shot with a firearm in the abdomen after attending a
296
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routine incident in part of Nottingham. I wasn't directly involved
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in that investigation, but I recall that the suspect was
298
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identified I think within a couple of days, and it
299
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was an individual called Trevon Thomas who was from Trinidad.
300
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And what was apparent is that during that inquiry they
301
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somehow got a name or an idea of who it
302
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might be, and when they checked the system for Trevon Thomas,
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I'd submitted an intelligence report six years early. I think
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it was in two thousand that identified him, his passport number,
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the details that he'd come and he was at risk
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of overstaying in that period in two thousand. In fact,
307
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my intelligence was right because he had overstayed, and it
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was six years later that he ended up shooting PC
309
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Rachel Baun. So it's a simple example, but the point
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is that information might have still sat in a file
311
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in the office at headquarters, but someone, an officer, had
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taken the time to turn that into potentially useful intelligence
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to future investigations because of the suspected criminality of the individual.
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So there's the example for you.
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And Trevon Thomas was arrested. Actually he throw airport, wasn't
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He was trying to leave the country and they arrested him.
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Actually as he was at the gate at the airport,
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he was he was are you involved in that? Did
319
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you did you go to that or was that something
320
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that was handled.
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I wasn't involved in the investigation at all, but colleagues
322
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who were came back and they that they referenced how
323
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they quickly got quite a lot of information from that
324
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report that I put in six years before. So it
325
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just goes to show taking up little bit of time
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to disseminate information intelligence for in an ideal world if
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it's needed.
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Again, so you were an example of good practice. Now
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that we've got so much more information technology, the Internet,
330
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artificial intelligence at our fingertips. Does that mean that we
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do live in an ideal world that everybody is following
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best practice and your example from the Trevon Thomas case.
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Or are people still inclined to work in silos to
334
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keep their cards close to their chests? What's happening nowadays
335
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in policing in Britain.
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I guess it might not be silos anymore, but I
337
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guess departments within organizations look to protect themselves in terms
338
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of demand of work, and departments are under more and
339
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more pressure now, staffing levels, etc. So they might look
340
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to shield off stuff and almost become a silo by
341
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by default. There's an interesting example
going off at the moment,
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isn't there with the public inquiry into the Notting attacks.
343
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Yes, for sure, yes, this.
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Is a judge led public inquiry about you know, the
345
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actions of Valdo Calacane leading up to those awful deaths
346
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in June twenty twenty three when two University of notting
347
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students were killed along with a school caretaker, Ian Coates,
348
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and also severely injured were I think three other individuals
349
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by this man. And this inquiry is is showing that
350
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information through various agencies maybe isn't distributed in an ideal
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world for people to make proper judgments about people like Calacane.
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In fact, just this week the Inquiry has heard an
353
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example potentially of just this kind of thing happening back
354
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in May twenty twenty one, I think it was so
355
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two years before the Nottingham merge. Callakain had attempted to
356
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hand himself into mi I five at its headquarters at
357
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Thames House in central London, and according to evidence given
358
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to the inquiry, PC Graham Foster, who confronted callakin outside
359
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after he'd rung the buildings into coom, told the Inquiry
360
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that Callokaine had informed a member of security that he
361
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wanted to be arrested and to speak to the police.
362
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So this is two years before the murders. Now, Superintendent
363
00:27:34.039 --> 00:27:37.920
Lorraine Busby McVeigh of the Metropolitan Police told the inquiry
364
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that Callakaine was looked at by the Fixated Threat Assessment Center,
365
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a unit that examines threats from fixated individuals, but he
366
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didn't meet their threshold to be assessed further not at
367
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that point. We've discovered since that he was suffering from
368
00:27:56.400 --> 00:28:01.160
a number of psychiatric disorders. Buzzby mcvas that an intelligence
369
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report from FTAC regarding Calla Kaine's visit to Thames House
370
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was passed to Nottinghamshire Police the next day, the first
371
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of June, but that the force didn't then carry out
372
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their own assessment. Busby McVeigh said that was something she
373
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and I quote would have quite liked to have happened.
374
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I think that puts in a nutshell what we're talking about,
375
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doesn't it.
376
00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:34.000
It does, And I saw the comments from that video
377
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interaction with Calla Kain with the police in London, and
378
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a lot of the public were reading into it that
379
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that was another blunder, another opportunity missed. In fact, even
380
00:28:47.119 --> 00:28:50.119
the BBC News described it as more damning evidence of
381
00:28:50.200 --> 00:28:55.759
how Callakain could have been stopped. But my view is
382
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that when we think about what was he doing at
383
00:28:59.480 --> 00:29:03.359
m I five, the Security Service HQ of all places. Now,
384
00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:10.359
Paranoid schizophrenics can go through various phases of their schizophrenia
385
00:29:11.079 --> 00:29:15.079
in and out of psychosis, etc. And they can also
386
00:29:15.160 --> 00:29:19.680
be paranoid and think that they're being watched. So that
387
00:29:19.799 --> 00:29:25.880
interaction with Calacan was was not a blunder in terms
388
00:29:25.880 --> 00:29:34.000
of managing him. He was quite precise, clear, calm. He
389
00:29:34.079 --> 00:29:38.720
was behaving very oddly and that happens a lot. I
390
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:42.359
think the officer even alluded to that. The fact that
391
00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:45.599
the MET looked at his potential threat to the government
392
00:29:45.799 --> 00:29:51.039
or security buildings was fine, and the report then went
393
00:29:51.119 --> 00:29:54.920
back to Nottingham, but it didn't in itself, it didn't
394
00:29:57.480 --> 00:30:01.960
raise a real concern about Calacan. The question is, of course,
395
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:05.319
as if somebody was looking at Calakin as a whole
396
00:30:05.599 --> 00:30:08.200
and got that, it would have added to it. But
397
00:30:08.920 --> 00:30:16.039
Callakain's behavior had change, was periodically involved with stuff, and
398
00:30:16.079 --> 00:30:20.519
I think he went on later that year to be
399
00:30:20.599 --> 00:30:23.960
involved in a threat or an incident towards a fellow
400
00:30:24.039 --> 00:30:27.279
student at the university and that was dealt with as
401
00:30:27.480 --> 00:30:30.240
an internal matter at the university.
402
00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:34.079
So there's another agency involved there as well. I was
403
00:30:34.200 --> 00:30:39.279
thinking this was more the benefit of hindsight than it
404
00:30:39.440 --> 00:30:43.119
was blunders and institutionalized failings. But now you've brought in
405
00:30:43.160 --> 00:30:48.279
that extra element the university. It makes me wonder if
406
00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:54.519
this thinking had been joined up, perhaps the terrible crimes
407
00:30:54.759 --> 00:30:57.680
in Nottingham that Summer's Evening could have been avoided.
408
00:30:58.759 --> 00:31:02.640
Absolutely, and that obviously the Public Inquiry is looking into
409
00:31:02.680 --> 00:31:07.519
it exactly that, and I'm sure the term in an
410
00:31:07.559 --> 00:31:13.839
ideal world will be used again relating to that. I
411
00:31:14.400 --> 00:31:18.160
remember as well, if we're thinking about paranoid schizophrenia. I
412
00:31:18.599 --> 00:31:24.759
worked on a the Memoirs of a paranoid schizophrenic who
413
00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:28.480
I spent a lot of time with and worked on
414
00:31:29.480 --> 00:31:33.279
his memoirs, And he came from the Irish community. When
415
00:31:33.279 --> 00:31:36.240
he came he was born in Ireland and in the
416
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:42.480
nineteen seventies as a child he was already developing some
417
00:31:42.519 --> 00:31:47.039
mental illness and some schizophrenia. As a young man and
418
00:31:47.119 --> 00:31:49.599
he became very paranoid, and he believed he was being
419
00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:53.880
watched by the security services because of the Irish troubles
420
00:31:53.920 --> 00:31:59.400
and the situation that was happening. Then. So this this
421
00:31:59.519 --> 00:32:07.200
paranoid and changes, you know, it changes with the circumstances
422
00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:11.839
and they adapt it to certain things. What kla Kan
423
00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:16.519
was doing at the Security Service, we don't appear to know,
424
00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:21.359
do we, And it certainly wouldn't have been He hadn't
425
00:32:21.359 --> 00:32:23.599
got anything particularly relevant to do, but he got it
426
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:27.400
in his mind maybe that he thought he was being watched,
427
00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:31.720
that he wanted to ask why. We don't know, But
428
00:32:32.279 --> 00:32:35.720
his behavior was odd. He was deemed not to be
429
00:32:35.759 --> 00:32:41.759
a threat to those establishments, and his behavior that was
430
00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:44.039
happening in Nottingham was something separate.
431
00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:48.359
I suppose. Maybe it's a little bit like working for
432
00:32:48.799 --> 00:32:54.000
an international news organization. You do encounter odd people who
433
00:32:54.160 --> 00:32:57.160
turn up at the door with stories, in my case,
434
00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:02.400
but in your case, with potential criminal activity, bizarre comments.
435
00:33:02.799 --> 00:33:05.720
It must be fairly routine, isn't it. How do you
436
00:33:05.759 --> 00:33:09.160
go about sorting the wheat from the chaff? You know,
437
00:33:11.160 --> 00:33:14.880
to coin a phrase, the harmless nutter from the person
438
00:33:14.920 --> 00:33:18.279
who's actually got the story to tell. The reason I
439
00:33:18.440 --> 00:33:22.519
mentioned this is because of you remember that the Jeremy
440
00:33:22.559 --> 00:33:26.440
Thorpe affair in the nineteen seventies. He was the leader
441
00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:29.440
of the Liberal Party and
he was eventually convicted of
442
00:33:29.960 --> 00:33:35.200
conspiracy to murder. But the first person who flagged up
443
00:33:35.720 --> 00:33:38.720
any kind of concern about Jeremy Thorpe. Was a guy
444
00:33:38.759 --> 00:33:41.480
called Norman Scott who told the police that Thorpe had
445
00:33:41.559 --> 00:33:44.160
arranged for his dog to be shot. Went into a
446
00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:47.319
police station and said, in a rather flamboyant way, you know,
447
00:33:47.400 --> 00:33:51.519
my poor little dog, he's going to have Jeremy Thorpe's
448
00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:56.559
going to have my dog shot. And the police looked
449
00:33:56.559 --> 00:33:59.079
at each other, as you can imagine behind the front desk,
450
00:33:59.119 --> 00:34:03.799
and here's another one. Must be a full moon. But
451
00:34:03.960 --> 00:34:09.320
of course what he was saying had a substantial kernel
452
00:34:09.360 --> 00:34:12.199
of truth to it, and thought went on, as I said,
453
00:34:12.280 --> 00:34:15.519
to be convicted. So yeah, how do you thought the
454
00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:24.440
real cases the Norman Scots from your average, everyday harmless Nutter.
455
00:34:27.280 --> 00:34:32.440
That is an excellent point because we've got within the
456
00:34:32.440 --> 00:34:36.039
police organization now there is another system which deals with
457
00:34:36.199 --> 00:34:39.480
threats to life and how to manage, minimize and keep
458
00:34:39.519 --> 00:34:46.960
people safe, which is sort of the first role of
459
00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:52.519
policing to protect life and property. But as you say,
460
00:34:52.559 --> 00:34:58.639
there are many many instances either by people with mental
461
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:08.199
health who or people who just say things aggressively ingest
462
00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:14.719
how do you interpret it? Comments suggestions of somebody who
463
00:35:14.760 --> 00:35:18.280
may be over risk to somebody, But it's more general
464
00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:24.519
rather than specific, So it's a minefield to manage people.
465
00:35:24.960 --> 00:35:29.920
And as we know, paranoid schizophrenks aren't always in a
466
00:35:29.960 --> 00:35:35.280
psychotic state, and those that make verbal threats on one
467
00:35:35.400 --> 00:35:38.559
day might be somebody completely different than the other.
468
00:35:39.599 --> 00:35:45.719
Okay, final question, do you think that policing manages intelligence
469
00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:51.159
better now than when you began your service in nineteen
470
00:35:51.199 --> 00:35:55.119
eighty five. Let's set aside the technical aspects of it.
471
00:35:55.559 --> 00:36:01.239
I'm thinking about institutional attitudes to intelligence. Do you think
472
00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:03.400
that the attitude has changed?
473
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:09.320
Yes? I do. It's a good question, though, and I
474
00:36:09.400 --> 00:36:12.760
think that in nineteen eighty five we were we the
475
00:36:12.760 --> 00:36:18.320
police were better at getting information. We're better at interacting
476
00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:23.320
with the public and with criminals. We spent more time
477
00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:26.039
with them, We had more conversations with them for a
478
00:36:26.119 --> 00:36:29.159
number of reasons. But we look people in the eye
479
00:36:29.199 --> 00:36:33.119
a bit more in those days, and the relationships with
480
00:36:33.159 --> 00:36:39.320
individuals was more fluid. Where we are better now is
481
00:36:40.280 --> 00:36:44.119
the recording and analyzing of the information and then converting
482
00:36:44.199 --> 00:36:49.800
into what would you say, actionable intelligence. But as good
483
00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:55.079
as our intelligence picture is now, it still needs actioning
484
00:36:55.079 --> 00:36:58.159
and it still needs dealing with. Can you give me
485
00:36:58.199 --> 00:37:02.840
some examples, yes, I think now one of the tools
486
00:37:03.679 --> 00:37:06.320
the police have that we never had in nineteen eighty
487
00:37:06.360 --> 00:37:11.280
five was the command and control system. Such a useful
488
00:37:11.320 --> 00:37:16.000
tool because it records or calls into the police about
489
00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:25.880
antisocial behavior, about domestic abuse, about drink driving, whatever it
490
00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:30.559
may be. And it's a database that has such a
491
00:37:30.639 --> 00:37:37.719
lot of information and is regularly tralled and provides intelligence
492
00:37:38.199 --> 00:37:43.880
and then evidence for subsequent inquiries in investigations. So yeah,
493
00:37:43.920 --> 00:37:50.800
that has changed tremendously. In the old days, police stations
494
00:37:50.840 --> 00:37:53.719
would have a lever arch file and any coll coming
495
00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:58.880
into that police station would be the call will be taken,
496
00:38:00.800 --> 00:38:04.480
a decision made whether to record an incident on a
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00:38:04.519 --> 00:38:09.159
piece of paper, give it a subsequent number, and put
498
00:38:09.159 --> 00:38:17.119
in a file for action. Very antiquated, very difficult to research.
499
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:20.599
Later it went nowhere other than a filing cabinet in
500
00:38:20.719 --> 00:38:24.960
that control room once it was signed off by the
501
00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:27.800
supervisors and management, and that.
502
00:38:27.719 --> 00:38:30.679
Would be a process that was familiar to offices in
503
00:38:30.760 --> 00:38:34.679
nineteen twenty five, just as it was in nineteen eighty five.
504
00:38:35.320 --> 00:38:39.960
Precisely now we may not be working in those silos
505
00:38:40.039 --> 00:38:44.480
particularly anymore, but there's still that risk of intelligence disappearing
506
00:38:44.519 --> 00:38:51.280
down a rabbit hole because departments maybe protect themselves, and
507
00:38:51.320 --> 00:38:56.320
it's whether somebody takes real ownership of an individual or
508
00:38:56.360 --> 00:38:58.800
of a case, and that's key.
509
00:38:59.760 --> 00:39:01.760
It's the same in journalism. A lot of what you're
510
00:39:01.800 --> 00:39:05.599
saying is resonating with me about so much information coming
511
00:39:05.679 --> 00:39:08.719
in on a screen, people sitting in an office, not
512
00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:11.800
going out, not using shoe leather, not talking to people
513
00:39:11.880 --> 00:39:14.000
face to face, the whole idea that you can do
514
00:39:14.119 --> 00:39:17.039
all of this on a teams meeting or on a spreadsheet.
515
00:39:17.320 --> 00:39:20.920
We call it air conditioned journalism because reporters no longer
516
00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:25.199
go out and report. And yet what I tell my
517
00:39:25.400 --> 00:39:27.920
students is that that's the one thing you've got to
518
00:39:27.960 --> 00:39:30.559
do is to go out and learn to interact with people,
519
00:39:30.599 --> 00:39:33.280
to talk to people total strangers, to be able to
520
00:39:33.360 --> 00:39:37.840
develop conversations. And the best place of doing it, I say,
521
00:39:38.719 --> 00:39:42.360
is the good old English public house, which maybe is
522
00:39:42.400 --> 00:39:46.800
where we're heading now having completed this episode of The
523
00:39:46.840 --> 00:39:49.800
Detective's Files True Crime Tales with Jack Morrel.
524
00:39:50.199 --> 00:39:52.480
The truth is out there, Simon, and we're going to
525
00:39:52.519 --> 00:39:53.840
find it excellent.
526
00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:57.760
Thanks so much again, it's fascinating talking to you about
527
00:39:57.800 --> 00:40:02.000
your decades of experience as a copper and a detective
528
00:40:02.599 --> 00:40:05.719
in Nottingham. And thank you for listening. I hope you've
529
00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:08.719
enjoyed it. We've gone down a few rabbit holes this time,
530
00:40:09.079 --> 00:40:12.599
but I'm sure you'll agree with me that the information
531
00:40:13.079 --> 00:40:16.840
that we've been able to discuss is utterly fascinating and
532
00:40:16.920 --> 00:40:19.800
a record of not just how things used to be,
533
00:40:20.400 --> 00:40:24.079
but how things are now and possibly where they're going
534
00:40:24.079 --> 00:40:27.400
in the future. We'll see you again next time.