CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

FAMILY LIAISON (until 6 May 1993)

26.1 One of the saddest and most regrettable aspects of this case concerns the family liaison between the police and Mr & Mrs Lawrence. The two officers who were given the task of liaising with the family were Detective Sergeant John Bevan and Detective Constable Linda Holden. DC Holden told the Inquiry that she had liaised with two families in murder cases before she joined AMIP. She had been given an award for the professional manner in which she dealt with a rape victim. Those occasions were apparently in or about 1991. DS Bevan had not had any previous experience of acting as a Family Liaison Officer.

26.2 The two officers were appointed to this task on Friday, 23 April, and they first visited the family on that evening. It has to be noted that DS Bevan was also in charge of a team in connection with the investigation of the murder itself. Both DS Bevan and DC Holden were later involved in the arrest and interviews of the suspects and much other general activity with the team.

26.3 It is most unfortunate that there was this combination of tasks. Apart from the fact that their activities in connection with the investigation might detract from concentration upon their role as Family Liaison Officers, there must be a risk that a combination of several tasks will lead to confusion.

26.4 Be that as it may there is no doubt but that the liaison between the two officers and the Lawrence family failed from the start. Both officers agreed during their evidence that this was so. Neither could give a satisfactory explanation for the cause of the breakdown. They both said that the liaison did not so much breakdown, but that it never got off the ground. 

26.5 In addition to the task of family liaison with Mr & Mrs Lawrence, DS Bevan, with DC Holden, were made responsible for liaison with Mr Brooks. There is no need to go into the detail of that liaison since Counsel for Mr Brooks rightly indicated that there was no complaint in connection with that part of DS Bevan's activities. DS Bevan seems to have struck up a reasonable relationship with Mr Brooks, and to have kept regular contact with him during the time he was connected with him. From time to time there were disagreements between them, and they became somewhat fed up with each other, during what must have been a somewhat difficult relationship. By and large that part of DS Bevan's work could not be criticised. It is important to realise that the two officers were given this multiplicity of tasks during the relevant weeks. It must be partly because they were involved in these varying activities that their job as Family Liaison Officers to the Lawrence family suffered.

26.6 Nothing was more important, as we see it, than that the police should establish a good and mutual relationship with Mr & Mrs Lawrence and those around them. It was a great disappointment to DS Bevan, and to DC Holden, that this was not achieved. 

26.7 When the family liaison began, DS Bevan did not know that there were guidelines in existence to assist officers in respect of family liaison. But he indicated that the title itself is "explanation of what is required and what is needed", namely that of a Family Liaison Officer. It seems to us that this is an over-optimistic approach. Everybody needs training in the various roles carried on in life, and police officers plainly need training if they are to be involved in sensitive family liaison. The fact that guidelines exist is evidence of this, and it is an initial criticism that untrained officers unfamiliar with the guidelines were allowed to take on this task. Neither DS Bevan nor DC Holden were truly able to get to grips with their delicate assignment. 

26.8 DS Bevan says that he tried everything that he could to communicate with Mr & Mrs Lawrence. Before the Inquiry and to the Kent police he repeatedly said that he "remained tremendously sympathetic" to Mr & Mrs Lawrence to this day and that if he could help them now he would do so, even though the relationship in 1993 was almost non-existent. DS Bevan stated that he had mulled over the matter for the five years that have elapsed, but he could really not indicate at all what went wrong. He did say that there was "a tremendous barrier to communication", but even with that indication he said that it was very hard to put his finger on exactly what it was. It is plain that he considered that "lots of outside bodies who wanted to make their own statement" had a considerable effect on the lack of communication. Very soon after the initial meeting both he and DC Holden were viewed with suspicion and mistrust. DS Bevan found this very sad. He was plainly never able to gain the confidence of Mr & Mrs Lawrence.

26.9 There is a detailed document setting out the "calendar" of attendance upon Mr & Mrs Lawrence by DS Bevan and DC Holden. The officers do not believe that it was composed by them. However, it does give an indication of the problems that occurred. For example, a note relating to 4 May indicates that DS Bevan attended with PC Fisher, the Race Relations Officer, when Mr & Mrs Lawrence's daughter, in front of a large number of people said "Why hadn't we caught the man who murdered my brother?" and then burst into tears.

26.10 It is apparent that from very early on Mr & Mrs Lawrence and Mr Khan on their behalf were seeking more information. Indeed, as has been stressed by both the police and by Mr & Mrs Lawrence's legal team, there was unusual correspondence between Mr & Mrs Lawrence and the police very early on in the investigation. Mr Khan wrote three letters demanding information on behalf of Mr & Mrs Lawrence, and Mr Weeden replied. In his letter Mr Weeden indicated that he would be happy to go to see Mr & Mrs Lawrence himself. In fact Mr Weeden never did go to see Mr & Mrs Lawrence in connection with family liaison. Mr & Mrs Lawrence indicate that there were obvious problems, and Mr Weeden should have tried to sort them out. Similarly it seems to us that DS Bevan and DC Holden ought to have been prepared at an early stage to indicate that they were not the appropriate people to carry on with family liaison. It is all very well saying that one must not give up trying to achieve success, but where family liaison is concerned it seems hopeless to continue if there is plain and obvious mistrust from the start.

26.11 Both from his long Kent interview, and in his evidence at this Inquiry, we formed the view that DS Bevan was an unusual man. His Kent interview betrays a strange use of words and language. In answers to Mr Kamlish we drew the conclusion that he was liable to say things which he did not entirely mean. For example, commenting upon arrangements which had been made on Saturday 24 April for Mr & Mrs Lawrence to view the body of their dead son at the mortuary he said that he felt "quite elated" at having assisted in achieving that visit. Furthermore, he said that Mrs Lawrence was "aggressive", and he used many words which were inappropriate. Mr Kamlish accepted, whilst cross-examining DS Bevan, that DS Bevan and DC Holden had gone into the job of family liaison with perfectly good intentions, and we accept that as well. The fact is, however, that neither of them fully appreciated the way in which the family might have misgivings about white police liaison officers from the start after their experiences at the hospital.

26.12 DS Bevan in common with other officers was not prepared to accept that the murder of Stephen Lawrence was purely a racist crime. It is difficult to understand how so many of the detectives working on this case were not willing to accept that this was so. Expression of that view at the public Inquiry did nothing to encourage Mr & Mrs Lawrence or indeed the black community to revise or review their opinions of police officers.

26.13 As to the large number of people who surrounded Mr & Mrs Lawrence in the very early days, they were described by DS Bevan as "hangers on". DC Holden said that she was not intimidated or upset by the numbers of people present. Both officers appear to have doubted the good intentions of those who surrounded Mr & Mrs Lawrence, to the extent that they both appear regularly to have asked people who were present to identify themselves, and to say from what organisation they came. Mrs Lawrence, in her statement, indicates that pressure groups did try to take a hand in the early days. For example she was not happy at the arrival on the scene of the Black Panther representatives, and Mr Khan wrote to Greenwich Action Committee Against Racial Attacks, the Greenwich based organisation, asking them not to attend and threatening them with proceedings should they do so.

26.14 To that extent it does appear that there were more people around Mr & Mrs Lawrence than they themselves wanted. But it is not the job of Family Liaison Officers to query the activities of the family in this respect. Many members of the family, and other well-wishers, attended at the Lawrence house. A member of the family kept a detailed diary in a notebook of the comings and goings of those who were there.

26.15 Family Liaison Officers in these circumstances must blend in with the wishes of the family, and not be put off by the attendance of individuals or indeed organisations who seek to assist the grieving family. This shows a lack of training and sensitivity in understanding the way in which a black family may react to the terrible circumstances in which Mr & Mrs Lawrence found themselves.

26.16 As to the information given to Mr & Mrs Lawrence, DS Bevan said that he made "continual reference to the amount of people working and the fact that we were all working very hard". DS Bevan said that it was "extremely difficult to know what actually I could tell them". The long and the short of it is that he ought to have been prepared to sit down and discuss in detail with Mr & Mrs Lawrence what were their anxieties and what information they were seeking. It seems to us that the indications are, both from what Mr & Mrs Lawrence say and from Mr Khan's letters, that Mr & Mrs Lawrence were not being given sensible or full information. DS Bevan said that police officers were "working on suspects", and that he did not want to prejudice any impending or possible prosecutions. This does suggest that he held back in the giving of information which might have assisted Mr & Mrs Lawrence's anxieties.

26.17 That Mr & Mrs Lawrence were anxious about the matter is indicated both by Mr Khan's intervention, and by the fact that Mr & Mrs Lawrence consulted their MP, Mr Peter Bottomley, as to the lack of information which was reaching them. Mr Bottomley seems to have gone to the Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, so that the matter was reported in the highest places. A letter to the Commissioner in June 1993 from Baroness Seear (representing the All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community) registered unease at the "lack of sensitivity on behalf of the local constabulary towards the Lawrence family".

26.18 DS Bevan furthermore found it difficult to deal with Mr Khan. He said to the Kent police that he was surprised at the intervention of a solicitor so early on in the investigation. He was surprised that "the victims needed legal representation". He thought to himself "What good is a solicitor going to do?" He regarded Mr Khan as "One more barrier to communication."

26.19 Again it is not the business of DS Bevan or DC Holden or indeed any police officer to criticise the arrival on the scene of a solicitor on behalf of Mr & Mrs Lawrence. That is another aspect of the case which the Family Liaison Officers had to accept, cope with and respond to positively.

26.20 Many things done by the two officers seem in essence to have made matters worse. Of course it is necessary that the background of a victim must be investigated. Some investigation of the background of Stephen Lawrence might have led to information assisting the murder case. In fact all the investigation showed that he was an admirable and highly regarded young man. Such inquiries are a standard feature of any murder investigation. Any such investigation must only be done with the utmost tact and the fullest explanation to the family. That the family gained the impression that their dead son was under suspicion is a condemnation of the approach in this respect.

26.21 Similarly, when a hat and gloves found at the scene were shown to Mr & Mrs Lawrence there should have been a very full explanation given that it was simply and solely the ownership of the gloves that was of interest to the officers. In the atmosphere of mistrust which existed it is perhaps not surprising that Mr & Mrs Lawrence's perception of the questions asked in connection with the gloves and hat was that some kind of suggestion was being made against their dead son. This was palpably not the truth, since it is the fact that everybody, including the two officers involved, agree that there was no shadow of suspicion against Stephen Lawrence. This displays the failure of the liaison officers to explain sensitively what they were doing. The officers were taken off their family liaison duties towards the end of May 1993.

26.22 Even the telephone communication between the liaison officers and Mr & Mrs Lawrence and Mr Khan led to problems. Both officers used their own mobile telephones privately in order to help their liaison with the family. Indeed DS Bevan bought his mobile telephone expressly for this purpose. DC Holden already owned her own mobile telephone. Their intentions in this respect were plainly very good and intended to be helpful. But Mr & Mrs Lawrence found it difficult to get through on the telephone, and they believe, perhaps wrongly, that the officers were casual in their preparedness to talk to them, even on the telephone. Furthermore there was some reluctance to speak to Mr Khan on the telephone, although certainly DC Holden did give her mobile telephone number to Mr Khan himself.

26.23 When it was suggested that there should be visits to the incident room, in order to assist Mr & Mrs Lawrence's understanding of what was going on, a senior officer indicated that Mr Khan should not be allowed to attend. DS Bevan and DC Holden said that this was not their decision. It seems likely that they knew that the decision had been made. Certainly this exclusion of Mr Khan, Mr & Mrs Lawrence's adviser and solicitor, did not help relations between the police and Mr & Mrs Lawrence, and was inexcusable.

26.24 From time to time Mr & Mrs Lawrence did indicate that they did not wish to be disturbed or contacted. This they were perfectly entitled to do, and their wishes in this respect cannot diminish the justifiable criticism of the family liaison.

26.25 It is plain from the policy file and the entries made by Mr Weeden, that the senior officers realised that it was important that proper information and support was directed to the family of Stephen Lawrence and, indeed, Mr Brooks. Mr Weeden's entry for 28 April shows that he wished to "Ensure that victim liaison is focused firmly on the Lawrence and Brooks families but not diluted or deflected in effect by various intermediaries who have now claimed to represent the family." This shows good intentions, but it also perhaps shows that the police view was that those surrounding Mr & Mrs Lawrence were to some extent an obstacle. This is not a justifiable attitude for the police to adopt. The family of Stephen Lawrence had to be taken as they were found, and as they chose to behave. They were entitled to demand to be dealt with as they were and according to their own needs.

26.26 DC Holden's view of the problems which arose coincided closely with that of DS Bevan. She did not see Mrs Lawrence on the first day, because Mrs Lawrence was upstairs in the bedroom, and there had been a prescription of tranquillisers given to her by her GP. DC Holden did speak to Mr Lawrence, and she indicated that she tried to explain to him what the role of the Family Liaison Officers would be. But early on in her evidence she said that there were "so many outside agencies from different sort of parties that I felt was sometimes giving their points of view that you couldn't really get a close relationship with the family because there seemed to be a lot of barriers put up".

26.27 Furthermore DC Holden felt that Mr Khan was interposing himself between the family and the family liaison team so that this in itself created some kind of barrier. DC Holden said that she and DS Bevan tried as hard as they could to get a working relationship with the Lawrence family. It is wholly apparent that this was never achieved. DC Holden said that the problems were discussed at regular meetings with senior officers, and that the senior officers simply told the team to do their best and to keep on trying. This was an inadequate response by those officers.

26.28 The accusation made against DC Holden by Mr Kamlish was that she and DS Bevan had been "patronising" either intentionally or unintentionally. She said that she and DS Bevan were "Absolutely straight down the line with the family. Whatever they needed to know we told them." DC Holden added that Mr Lawrence did not seem to understand the procedure, and that was why the family were going to appoint a solicitor to assist. There was plainly some frostiness in connection with Mr Khan, and DC Holden was prepared to say that she had not given him her own mobile telephone number. It was apparent, when a document was shown to her, that this was wrong. Even if there were a personal problem and some distrust between DC Holden and Mr Khan that had to be overcome. Mr Khan was acting on behalf of Mr & Mrs Lawrence and the family liaison team had a duty to do their best to get on both with the family and their representatives.

26.29 DC Holden followed what in a sense appears to be the party line in connection with motive for this terrible crime. She seemed determined to stick to the proposition that she could not say what the motive of the young men involved was. It is clear that this was a racist crime committed by this group of white youths. They might have committed crimes against white people as well, but the facts of this case show with crystal clarity that this was purely a racist killing. As we have indicated before, the expressions used and the determination to water down the racist element of the killing offends Mr & Mrs Lawrence and the community, black and white.

26.30 DC Holden was the person who actually took the hat and gloves to Mr & Mrs Lawrence. She says that when she talked to them about the hat and gloves, and they said that they did not belong to Stephen, "that that was the end of the matter". It is accepted that there was never any positive suggestion that Stephen Lawrence might have been involved in nefarious activity, but the fact that Mr & Mrs Lawrence's perception was that this was so must demonstrate that the matter was not dealt with properly and as sensitively as it should have been.

26.31 DC Holden repeated, as had DS Bevan, that she and DS Bevan used to have conversations about their problems and meetings with senior officers to try to find ways of building up the relationship with the family. There is thus plainly material here for criticism of the senior officers, since if they knew that the relationship was as bad as it evidently was, immediate and comprehensive steps ought to have been taken to change the system. There were people, such as Noel Penstone, and Mrs Ros Howells and others who must have been readily available to help to cement a reasonable relationship very early on. The longer the difficulty and mistrust lasted the less likely was it that the matter would be remedied.

26.32 A fresh approach and a fresh team ought to have been put into the role of family liaison very early on. As we have already indicated Mr Weeden's letter of 27 April 1993 expressed his own personal grief at Mr & Mrs Lawrence's loss and encouraged them to deal with DS Bevan and DC Holden, and suggested that he was prepared to visit them at any time that they wished. In fact it was incumbent upon the SIO to take the initiative as soon as he heard that the family liaison was so unsatisfactory. We are not satisfied that the family liaison officers devoted enough effort to overcoming what they saw as obstacles. They too readily stepped back from a situation simply because it was unfamiliar to them. More reprehensible is the failure of the senior officers, particularly Mr Weeden, to address the situation. It was evidently quite clear to Mr Weeden from an early stage that there were difficulties which demanded his personal intervention, apart from the common courtesy of meeting the family as the SIO in any event. Such intervention did not occur. It is difficult to understand Mr Weeden's inactivity in this regard and certainly it has to be a focus of major criticism. Indeed, as we say in Chapter 14 we conclude that this attitude betrayed unwitting racism.

26.33 There was a press conference on the day after the murder, and Mr Lawrence had some short contact there with Mr Crampton who was at that time the SIO. But plainly Mr Crampton was in charge for such a short time that he may not have been able to divine what was going wrong with the family liaison.

26.34 When DC Holden was cross-examined by Ms Sikand, on behalf of the CRE, she stuck to her answers in connection with the racist motivation of this terrible crime, although Ms Sikand pointed out that even now her currently expressed view is not in conformity with the Association of Chief Police Officers' current definition of racially motivated crime or the MPS guidance manual of 1997.

26.35 All in all the family liaison aspect of this case is much open to criticism. Ultimately on 6 May Mr Ilsley took over the role. By then serious damage had been done to the relationship between Mr & Mrs Lawrence and the police, and no proper steps were taken to "mend the fences" during the early weeks after the terrible murder of Stephen Lawrence. As will be seen the start of the family's dealings with Mr Ilsley was itself far from auspicious.

26.36 During her evidence Mrs Lawrence was asked specifically whether racism had played its part in preventing a reasonable relationship being built between the family and the liaison officers. "Racism is something you can't always just put your finger on", she replied. "Racism is done in a way that is so subtle. It is how they talk to you ..... It is just the whole attitude ...... It was patronising the way in which they dealt with me and that came across as being racist." We accept, as did Counsel for the Mr & Mrs Lawrence, that the officers' intentions were good. Mrs Lawrence herself accepted in answer to Mr Egan's questions posed during her evidence, that DC Holden on 20 April took the trouble to deliver a birthday card to her daughter who was away on an outward bound course. Mrs Lawrence said that this was done because DC Holden "wanted to be helpful". Regrettably the liaison as a whole failed, despite the good intentions of the officers involved.

26.37 Plainly Mr & Mrs Lawrence were not dealt with or treated as they should have been. Their reaction and their attitude after their son's murder were those of a grieving family. The fact that they were in their eyes and to their perception patronised and inappropriately treated exhibits plain but unintentional failure to treat them appropriately and professionally within their own culture and as a black grieving family. DS Bevan and DC Holden will for ever deny that they are racist or that the colour, culture and ethnic origin of the Lawrence family played any part in the failure of family liaison. We are bound to say that the conclusion which we reach is inescapable. Inappropriate behaviour and patronising attitudes towards this black family were the product and a manifestation of unwitting racism at work. Coupled with the failure of the senior officers to see Mr & Mrs Lawrence and to sort out the family liaison we see here a clear example of the collective failure of the investigating team to treat Mr & Mrs Lawrence appropriately and professionally, because of their colour, culture and ethnic origin.

We welcome your comments on this site. Prepared 24 February 1999