Yahoo Finance Mother of murdered sisters says Met’s apology for failings too late
The mother of two murdered sisters has rejected the Metropolitan police’s apology over failings in how it responded when they were initially reported missing, calling the force “incompetent and reprehensible”.
Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, were reported missing on Saturday 6 June 2020, the day before friends discovered their bodies in a park in Wembley, north London, after organising their own search party.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found that the Met failed to follow its missing persons policies, and the service the family received from the police was “unacceptable”, but it said it did not find bias to be a factor in the mishandling of case.
The Met offered to meet the sisters’ family to apologise for its failings but their mother, Mina Smallman, has criticised the sincerity of the force’s belated apology.
In a statement to the BBC, she said: “Sorry is something you say when you comprehend the wrong you do and take full responsibility for it, demonstrating that by taking appropriate, proportionate action – which to our minds is not going to happen.
“The investigation was not handled appropriately. The apology should have been done face to face and not nearly 10 months later.”
She added: “We’re not the only parties who suffered mental anguish at the hands of Met’s incompetent, reprehensible and blatant disregard of agreed procedures regarding missing persons.”
Smallman accused the on-duty call handler of making “inappropriate and manipulating assertions which led to cancellation of the missing persons report”. She said: “We’re also of the view that his unprofessional comments about the picnic suggests racial profiling, misogyny or classism.”
The former Met chief superintendent Dal Babu said he believed the police would have responded differently to the missing persons report if the sisters had been white.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I have to ask if this was a 40-year-old professional white woman in the same way that Bibaa Henry was a social worker, who ironically worked in Harrow where I was a borough commander, whether we would have had the delay or difficulties – quite frankly, I don’t think that would be the case.”
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Although the IOPC report concluded racial bias was not a factor in the Met’s “unacceptable” failings, Babu said he disagreed and that it was “very, very difficult” to give the specific evidence to prove it.
He added: “I think what we are seeing now is the impact of the constant cutbacks in policing. Any of us who have tried to report something to the police will know how difficult it is to register a crime or an incident.”
Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, told the Today programme he had spoken to Mina Smallman on Monday evening and that she was “clearly in absolute anguish” over the Met’s statement.
“She feels it is words, it’s not actions, it’s nothing that is going to change things for the future,” he said. “I think we have seen time and again in the Met, inappropriate behaviour not just in this case but in the handling in the misogyny we have seen in other cases in the way in which the Met responds, which is apparently with a deaf ear, when it comes both to women and people of colour.”
Danyal Hussein, 19, was found guilty of the sisters’ murders in July.
