Police management of a Registered Terrorist Offender following his release from prison – Staffordshire Police, November 2019
On 29 November 2019, a Registered Terrorist Offender (RTO) travelled to London and killed two people and injured three others. He had been released from prison in December 2018 and four police officers from Staffordshire Police were involved in ensuring he complied with notification requirements under Part 4 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008.
We investigated the police involvement in the decision to allow the RTO to travel to London for an alumni event for a prison education programme. We obtained a significant amount of material from Staffordshire Police. We reviewed this information, identified key questions and sent them to Staffordshire Police. Staffordshire Police provided an organisational statement to address those questions. We interviewed the four officers involved with the management of the RTO. We also requested statements from Staffordshire Police Special Branch officers. We then reviewed the organisational statements provided by West Midlands Police and the Security Services for the purposes of the inquest.
We analysed various other documents including multi-agency meeting minutes, the relevant emails of officers involved in managing the RTO and statements and case records from staff in the National Probation Service. We reviewed material disclosed by other interested persons to assist with the inquests.
We completed our investigation in March 2021. We found no indication that any person serving with the police may have committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings. Staffordshire Police was not required to make any determinations because we were satisfied that the report did not raise any performance issues.
We waited until inquests were concluded in June 2021 before publishing any outcomes.
We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. We identified several areas of learning to the National Police Chiefs’ Council around training practices and current policies/ guidance for managing RTO’s.
We recommended specific training for those officers managing terrorist offenders in relation to the different types of offenders and the risks that they pose. We recommended that policies and procedures should cover the precise role and responsibility of the police force for each type of offender. They should include the duties of the officers in terms of the type of information that is shared with any involved agency. We recommended that police forces develop appropriate systems to assist with the implementation of these policies and procedures and capture of information regarding these offenders. These systems should support the effective management of Counter Terrorism offenders at a national level and between agencies. We also recommended guidance around appropriate mobile devices that can be used by convicted terrorist offenders, depending on the conditions to which they are subject.