Report finds force was ‘institutionally corrupt’ in investigation of 1987 death of private detective
Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, has been personally censured for hampering an inquiry into police corruption in the long-running Daniel Morgan murder case.
The report of an independent panel inquiring into his death in 1987 found that the Met was “institutionally corrupt” in its handling of the case and accused the force of placing concerns about its reputation above properly investigating. It said the Met misled the public and Morgan’s grieving family.
It said the Met delayed handing over vital documents, which then delayed the work of the panel, which was set up in 2013 but is only able to report now, eight years later.
The report criticised access it had to a police sensitive database, called “Holmes”: “The panel has never received any reasonable explanation for the refusal over seven years by [then] Assistant Commissioner Dick and her successors to provide access to the Holmes accounts to the Daniel Morgan independent panel.”
This, the report says, “caused major delays and further unnecessary distress to the family of Daniel Morgan”.
