Lessons in policing from tragedy

Last week, I wrote about the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London, which caused the deaths of 72 people.

I drew out various failures, including:

🚦 Weak third-party management

🚦 Conflicted advisors

🚦 Toxic middle managers

🚦 Poor crisis management and preparation

🚦 Incentives

🚦 A lack of transparency (the report took ~7 years!)

🚦 The lack of consequences

I’d like to focus on this last bit. Three of the providers of incendiary or toxic cladding (which led to needless deaths) remain not just unaccountable but still receiving government contracts. This is perhaps not a surprise given the recent corruption in central and local UK government (and yes, I can support that not even vaguely libelous allegation with myriad examples, not least COVID-19 contracts).

But most of us are not awarding large contracts. We are charged with policing and preventing wrongdoing, so let’s focus on that.

The two detectives in charge of the investigation, Stuart Cundy and Garry Moncrieff, gave an all-access interview to The Times last week (article here, behind a paywall for most, alas). That’s unusual.

Why? As I understand it, the Met Police are on a PR exercise after they could not properly investigate the multi-headed disaster that led to the tragedy. This is hardly news. A glance at prosecutions for economic crimes (fraud to bribery) or other integrity-adjacent legislation from the UK (e.g., the Modern Slavery Act) suggests that under-resourcing, politics, skill issues, and overwhelm (among public prosecutors) undermine the noble intentions of such Acts.

At an organisational level, are we doing better? It seems so. As the chart above, from our fraud prevention scorecard, indicates, we’re doing best at managing reporting and whistleblowing. Specifically, concerning investigative capacity, three-quarters of respondents are confident in the robustness of investigative procedures (see below).

What lessons might you share and teach the police then?

If you’re not feeling confident about your investigative capacity (maybe one of the 25%), don’t worry. That’s a good thing. It’s a sign of self-awareness. I’ve led or participated in hundreds of investigations. I’ve anxious at the beginning of all of them. Investigations deserve the respect of a little apprehension. The good news is they lend themselves to simple frameworks, procedures, and checks. If you’d like a no-obligation quick run through what I’d consider the 5-7 fundamentals of investigations, let me know (by reply or book some time here).