Policing Authority concerned 'high rate' of failings in homicide probes could be replicated elsewhere

Publishing a commentary on the internal Garda review of 41 homicide investigations between 2013 and 2015, the authority's outgoing chair Josephine Feehily described this position as “worrying”.

The Garda Homicide Investigation Review Team (HIRT) was set up two and a half years ago after two civilians within the Garda Analysis Service raised concerns regarding the classification of homicides.

HIRT's sixth and final report was provided to the authority last month. Its work led to the reclassification of 12 of the 41 cases as homicides.

The authority's commentary said the review also found that 28 cases (70% of all cases) had at least one “investigative issue”, ranging from minor issues to ones that were a “cause for concern”.

It said these issues were similar to issues in other cases that had been found not to be in compliance with obligations regarding investigations under Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights, covering the right to life.

Serious failings identified include:

• Exhibits not being preserved from crime scenes or from hospitals, including clothing of injured or deceased people and CCTV footage;
• Exhibits not being submitted for forensic analysis in a timely manner;
• Exhibits not being secured stored;
• Witness statements not being taken from all concerned parties;
• Witness statements not being taken in a timely manner, including from key witnesses;
• New lines of inquiry not followed up in a timely manner, particularly when they are pertinent to the investigation;
• Audio of 999 calls not obtained or not transcribed properly;
• House to house questionnaire (from crime scenes) not completed;
• Detained person's photograph and/or fingerprints not taken.

The review said these failings did not affect the outcome of the investigations and many people were successfully convicted – a finding the authority accepted.

The authority said that “disappointingly”, further work by the HIRT found a small number of cases in 2017 also had investigative issues and that classification issues were found as recently as 2018.

'A high hit rate'

The HIRT said misclassification issues could continue until the 21 recommendations it was making were implemented in full.

Ms Feehily said it was “inherently worrying” that investigative issues were found in 28 of 41 cases, saying “that's a high hit rate”.

She said the HIRT said that if they looked at a wider sample of homicide investigations they could have found the same failings.

She said that if investigative failings could be found “to such a high frequency” in cases of the most serious crime possible, the taking of a life, which she said had the highest detection rate, then they could be replicated in investigations into other crimes.

She said:

It worries us if these behaviours exist in the organisation, such as [not taking] witness statements, to what extent in the cases where the detection rates are very low are those behaviours present?

The new authority chair, Bob Collins, said the possible wider existence of these investigative failings is “one of the fallout issues that will be the subject of continuing discussion”.

He said what was particularly worrying was the “absolute certainty” of senior gardaí before the review started that all 41 investigations were Article 2 compliant, given Commissioner Harris said at last month's public meeting that he was not qualified to make that determination.

Mr Collins said this could be an “intelligent reluctance” on the Commissioner's part to give “a blanket of comfort”.

Ms Feehily said it was an issue for the authority to establish were the investigations Article 2 compliant and that the authority “would consider what to do about that”.

Authority chief executive Helen Hall said the Article 2 issue “still needs to be answered” and that they would examine it next year.

Mr Collins said one of the key tasks of the authority next year is to ensure that “implementation of the recommendations is pursued vigorously and effectively”.

Both he and Ms Feehily commended the thoroughness and frankness of the HIRT report, which was led by Chief Superintendent Brian Sutton.

They commended the training of 200 gardaí to conduct peer reviews of investigations, noting the intention of the Commissioner to build peer review as an automatic feature of the system.

In a statement, Garda HQ said it was committed to implementing the 21 recommendations of HIRT.

It said five have already been completed, including issues relating to training, prioritisation of taking statements from key and vulnerable witnesses and exhibit management.

It said a further five would be completed by February 2020, five would be addressed with the rollout of the long-awaited Investigation Management System, with the remaining six involving legal issues and the input of other agencies.

'Seriously honest evaluations'

Commissioner Harris said: "The Policing Authority’s positive comments on the quality of the HIRT report and its candour are to be welcomed. This review is a further demonstration of the ability of the Garda organisation to professionally examine internal issues in conjunction with appropriate oversight.

"Our focus now is to implement the HIRT’s recommendations to ensure public confidence in the quality and standard of Garda investigations.”

Asked has the Garda organisation changed over the last five years, Ms Feehily said “evolved” was a better word.

“It's a landscape that has been changing and changed quite significantly – driven by legislation, by oversight and by some internal dynamics – it is a growing organisation,” she said.

Mr Collins said the quality of internal garda reviews had improved and, in addition to the HIRT report, pointed to two recent internal inquiries in public order.

He said these “seriously honest evaluations” gave a degree of confidence of a “more mature attitude” towards analysis and self-reflection in the organisation.

Ms Feehily said the lesson she had learned over her tenure was the need for oversight to be “persistent” and to “continually verify and evidence implementation following commitments”.