Police watchdog staff comments on Nottingham stabbings inquiry ‘inhumane’

Police watchdog staff who described an inquiry into the 2023 Nottingham stabbings as “politically motivated” are “disrespectful and inhumane”, the mother of one of the victims has said.

Investigators from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) are said to have told Leicestershire Police officers who failed to arrest Valdo Calocane a month before he killed three people that their disciplinary case was “being driven by the families of the victims”.

The officers have made a complaint about the conduct of the IOPC investigators who interviewed them initially, it has been reported.

Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, were fatally stabbed as was 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates.

Emma Webber, Mr Webber’s mother, said the comments made her feel “pure horror”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said: “This bombshell that the officers themselves have now made a formal complaint with regards to their investigation and interviews in the investigation itself, it’s just mind-blowing.

“It’s indicative of the whole sorry, terrible, tragic mess and the car crash of our institutions.

“How disrespectful and inhumane is that, you know? To think that it is politically driven.

“We just want the truth and people that just didn’t do their jobs properly or failed or were neglectful, they must be held to account.

“I don’t trust anyone, I don’t trust the IOPC. I have no faith in them as a body to do the jobs properly.

“At the heart of this we’ve lost our child, and it’s entirely preventable.”

Ms O’Malley-Kumar’s father Dr Sanjoy Kumar called for Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and the IOPC’s director general to provide answers.

“I first want to say that all of us as families really respect police officers and the really tough job that they do every day to keep our nation safe. The few who don’t they need to be investigated properly by the IOPC,” he told Times Radio.

“The people who police, the police, need policing. So what, we need an investigative body to investigate the investigative body? This is getting slightly silly.

“If this person truly had coaxed the officers into knowing that all that they were going to get is a bit of a slap on the wrists, as it were… Why hasn’t this man been sacked?

“When is it in our country that we are going to start taking true accountability?”

An IOPC spokesperson said: “We are aware of allegations made about IOPC staff by Leicestershire Police officers who are subjects of an IOPC investigation.

“The allegations involved comments alleged to have been made about that investigation.

“We are treating this matter extremely seriously and have commissioned an external party to investigate them alongside other complaints about the investigation made by the families of the victims.

“We will continue to provide the families with regular updates as these matters progress.”