Met overhauls threat procedures

12 April 2012

The Metropolitan Police force has overhauled its response to information that someone's life is in danger after a report found serious shortcomings in its procedures.

Sir Anthony Burden, Chief Constable of South Wales Police, was appointed to conduct a review of the circumstances surrounding the death of Jason Fearon, 26, who was shot dead after leaving a London nightclub in April 2003.

The force admitted that Sir Anthony's review has led to a series of measures which, had they been in place in April 2003, "would have enabled the Metropolitan Police to better respond to the intelligence received before the shooting".

The Guardian reported that in the review, Sir Anthony stated the murder would probably have been prevented "if a proportionate police response had been provided to match the threat level that existed".

Just five days before Mr Fearon was killed, Scotland Yard was passed information naming the target - one of Mr Fearon's associates - and giving the venue for the planned shooting.

Mr Fearon was a passenger in a car with the intended victim and died when the attackers, who have never been caught, fired at the moving vehicle from the window of their car.

The information was passed to black on black gun crime unit Operation Trident, which concluded a full operation "could not be mounted on the information received".

When the murder took place there was a single marked, but unmanned, police car parked outside the Turnmills nightclub in Clerkenwell, with two unarmed officers nearby.

During the review it emerged that different departments used different standards to assess the same intelligence, so the force has now established a "single policy for handling intelligence of threats to human life".

In addition to Sir Anthony's review, the Met Police is conducting an internal inquiry supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, to examine the circumstances surrounding Mr Fearon's death.

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