| The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry | |||
CHAPTER TWO SINCE THE MURDER 2.1 Those violent seconds in 1993 have been followed by extraordinary activity, without satisfactory result. From the Lawrence family's point of view there has been a sequence of disasters and disappointments. 2.2 Prolonged police investigations, in two distinct phases, produced no witnesses other than Mr Brooks who could properly purport to identify any of the attackers. Other sound evidence against the prime suspects, or against anybody else, is conspicuous by its absence. Even now after the unprecedented publicity of this Inquiry nobody has come forward to advance the case. 2.3 Three of the prime suspects were taken to trial in 1996 in a private prosecution which failed because of the absence of any firm and sustainable evidence. The trial resulted in the acquittal of all three accused. They can never be tried again in any circumstances in the present state of the law. 2.4 Two other suspects were discharged at the committal stage of the prosecution in 1995. Upon the existing evidence there is no prospect of them being prosecuted again. General publicity and comment over the last five years which assumed their guilt would in the absence of most compelling fresh evidence mean that no Court would countenance such a trial. 2.5 The Inquest jury returned a unanimous verdict after a full hearing in 1997, that "Stephen Lawrence was unlawfully killed in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths". 2.6 The Police Complaints Authority (PCA) engaged the Kent Police (Kent) to investigate Mr & Mrs Lawrence's complaint that the first Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) investigation had been bungled. The Kent Investigating Officer's report runs to 459 pages. 19 officers spent a year investigating the complaint. The PCA Report roundly criticised many aspects of the MPS investigation. 2.7 At the request of Mr & Mrs Lawrence this Inquiry was established by the Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, the Home Secretary, in July 1997. 2.8 We sat for 59 days in Hannibal House hearing the evidence and submissions on Part 1 of our Inquiry, the investigation into "the matters arising from the death of Stephen Lawrence". We sat for 10 days to hear and to consider recommendations suggested to us by about 100 people and organisations in connection with Part 2 of our Inquiry, "to identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes". More than 12,000 pages of transcript were produced. The submissions of Counsel for represented parties alone ran to around 1,000 pages. Our aim has been to inquire into each and every issue raised by all represented parties. 88 witnesses gave evidence. 2.9 The attendant documentation is literally vast. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 pages of reports, statements, and other written or printed documents which have been surveyed and checked. Many have been used during our Inquiry. We express our gratitude to those who worked so efficiently to produce daily transcripts, and to display documents used during our hearings. 2.10 There is no doubt whatsoever but that the first MPS investigation was palpably flawed and deserves severe criticism. Nobody listening to the evidence could reach any other conclusion. This is now plainly accepted by the MPS. Otherwise the abject apologies offered to Mr & Mrs Lawrence would be meaningless. 2.11 The underlying causes of that failure are more troublesome and potentially more sinister. The impact of incompetence and racism, and the aura of corruption or collusion have been the subject of much evidence and debate. 2.12 We refer to these facts and figures not in order to gain sympathy as to the task which confronted us, but to indicate that this Report is an attempt to distil all that raw material rather than tediously to rehearse or repeat all that is contained in the transcripts and the volumes of documents. They are available should anybody wish to survey them. Anything other than a distillation would result in an unreadable Report of inordinate length. 2.13 The Report is in any event inevitably long and detailed. Those who are daunted by the full Report can turn at once to Chapter 46 which sets out a summary of our conclusions. The Chapters and narrative which make up the rest of our Report are written in order to follow approximately the order in which witnesses were called and issues were covered during our hearings. It is necessary that those most closely concerned should be able to see that our conclusions have been reasonably deduced from the evidence considered. There will be some overlap of issues and evidence, but we hope that this will not result in confusion. 2.14 It is to the credit of the MPS and its officers, many of whom are retired, that all those involved have co-operated fully with this Inquiry. It has been a chastening and unpleasant experience for those who have been subjected to rigorous cross-examination. But this has been necessary in order that the case could be thoroughly and perhaps sometimes brutally laid bare. We have had full assistance from all involved in the production of relevant documents and in the conduct of our Inquiry. We do not believe that in the end anything relevant has been held back. No party can justifiably complain that it has been denied full access to relevant material or representation in order to make its views known. 2.15 We believe that the immediate impact of the Inquiry, as it developed, has brought forcibly before the public the justifiable complaints of Mr & Mrs Lawrence, and the hitherto underplayed dissatisfaction and unhappiness of minority ethnic communities, both locally and all over the country, in connection with this and other cases, as to their treatment by police. 2.16 The Inquiry was not of course an inquiry into the general relationship between police and minority ethnic communities, and detailed examination of other individual cases would have been misplaced. Inevitably the Inquiry has heard many sounds and echoes concerning, for example, stop and search and the wide perceptions of minority ethnic communities that their cases are improperly investigated and that racist crime and harassment are inadequately regarded and pursued. 2.17 We believe that the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry has provided such publicity and such awareness of the problems directly and indirectly revealed that there is now a signal opportunity to deal with specific matters arising from the murder and all that followed. We believe that there should be a clarion call to seize the chance to tackle and to deal with the general problems and differing perceptions that plainly exist between the minority ethnic communities and the police. If these opportunities are not appreciated and used the Inquiry will have achieved little or nothing for the future. We do not pretend that our conclusions or recommendations will themselves solve these problems or ease these adverse and negative perceptions. We do believe that the debate about policing and racism has been transformed by this Inquiry, and that the debate thus ignited must be carried forward constructively and with imagination into action. 2.18 We stress one aspect of the case which has perhaps received less attention than it should. The very existence of a sub-culture of obsessive violence, fuelled by racist prejudice and hatred against black people, such as is exemplified in the 1994 video films of the five prime suspects is a condemnation of them and also of our society. These men are not proved to have been the murderers of Stephen Lawrence. We are unable to reach any such conclusion upon the evidence, and no fresh evidence is likely to emerge against them now. They remain however prime suspects. And the nature of them in 1994, and indeed during their limited testimony in 1998, must surely make us all determined that by education, family and community influence, proper policing, and all available means society does all that it can to ensure that the minds of present and future generations are not allowed to become violent and maliciously prejudiced. If these suspects were not involved there must have been five or six almost identical young thugs at large on the night of 22 April 1993 to commit this terrible racist crime. We must all see to it that such crimes do not and can not happen again. A high priority must be for society to purge itself of such racist prejudice and violence which infected those who committed this crime for no other reason than that Stephen Lawrence was black. 2.19 In his evidence during Part 2 of our Inquiry, Chief Constable Burden (South Wales Police) rightly impressed upon us that racism exists within all organisations and institutions, and that it infiltrates the community and starts amongst the very young. Recent research in Cardiff showed that 50% of the racist incidents considered by the Race Equality Council involved young people under 16 years old, and 25% of these incidents involved children between the ages of six and 10 years. The problem is thus deeply ingrained. Radical thinking and sustained action are needed in order to tackle it head on, not just in the Police Services of our country, but in all organisations and in particular in the fields of education and family life. 2.20 Lord Scarman, at page 135 of his Report relating to the Brixton disorders of 1981 said this:- "The evidence which I have received, the effect of which I have outlined ...., leaves no doubt in my mind that racial disadvantage is a fact of current British life ..... . Urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society .... racial disadvantage and its nasty associate racial discrimination, have not yet been eliminated. They poison minds and attitudes; they are, as long as they remain, and will continue to be a potent factor of unrest". It is a sad reflection upon the intervening years that in 1998-99 those extracted words have remained relevant throughout both parts of our Inquiry.
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