A report by a police watchdog on Thursday criticized London's police force for failing to learn enough from the 2016 case of serial killer Stephen Port to prevent similar
crimes from happening again.
The review stated that the police had not recognized the connections between the murders until it was too late, despite obvious similarities. The report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services called for action to improve poor training, inadequate crime analysis processes, and unacceptable record-keeping.
The Met, which was found last month to be institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic, has vowed to consider the recommendations. Despite some improvements since the Port case, the report revealed that police officers at the Met still rely on luck to identify links between deaths at a local level. Recommendations included increasing the use of intelligence officers responding to deaths. Photo by Bob Jenkin, Wikimedia commons.