Britain’s biggest police force has been accused of a “betrayal of the public” and continuing to “lack candour” in its statements over the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.
Betrayal
The Metropolitan Police were accused of institutional corruption by an independent panel over the 1987 killing, which has remained unsolved despite at least four police investigations and an inquest. Father-of-two Morgan was murdered with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, South-East London, in March that year, and his killer has never been brought to justice.
On 14 July, chairwoman of the panel Baroness Nuala O’Loan told the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee that public statements made by senior officers following the panel’s report were “most disappointing”.
Met commissioner Cressida Dick, assistant commissioner Nick Ephgrave, and deputy commissioner Stephen House were all defiant and refused to accept the finding of institutional corruption.
“Institutionally corrupt”
The report said:
Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.
Baroness O’Loan told the committee:
We have found the Met to be institutionally corrupt and the responses by senior officers to the report have been most disappointing.
The public statements which we have heard from the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner (and) Assistant Commissioner in the days following the publication illustrate exactly the problem we have been describing.
The peer said senior officers “have continued to lack candour” in their public statements even after the publication of the damning report.
Baroness O’Loan said “incompetence and corrupt acts” had hampered all the investigations into Morgan’s death. She said:
The Met, as an organisation, has not responded honestly to the public and to the family about the serious failures including incompetence and corrupt acts in the murder investigations over the past 34 years
She added:
The Metropolitan Police has placed concern for its reputation above the public interest.
There has been dishonesty for the benefit of the reputation of the organisation and that is institutional corruption, and the statements made on behalf of the Met have continued to lack candour, even after the publication of our report when they referred specifically only to the failings in the first investigation.
She further stated:
This is a betrayal of the family, and it’s also a betrayal of the public and of good, honest officers. And it will diminish trust.
