Police constable admits mistakes were made during Valdo Calocane assault probe
It's as the Nottingham Inquiry continues into the deaths of three people
A probationary police constable has apologised for failing to spot that triple killer Valdo Calocane was already wanted under an arrest warrant when he assaulted two warehouse workers.
Pc Libbie-Mae Taylor told a public inquiry into the June 2023 Nottingham attacks that she had not “absorbed” computerised records showing Calocane was subject to the warrant from the previous year.
A public inquiry into the fatal stabbings of University of Nottingham undergraduates Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and grandfather Ian Coates, 65, has heard the warrant was issued in September 2022 after Calocane was charged with assaulting an emergency worker but failed to appear in court.
Calocane then attacked two members of staff while working at the warehouse on May 5 2023, a month before he killed three people and attempted to kill three other victims in three different areas of Nottingham.
Pc Taylor told the inquiry on Wednesday that she had completed just 12 shifts and was accompanied by a “tutor” Pc when she attended reports of the double assault at the warehouse near Kegworth in Leicestershire on May 5.
She was called to the scene after Colocane, whose full name was not known by his immediate managers, punched a male colleague in the face and pushed over a female co-worker, injuring her knee.
Answering questions from counsel to the inquiry Rachel Langdale KC, Pc Taylor said she had “docked” but not saved body-worn video including the complainants’ initial accounts.
The footage did not show Calocane, who had left after being confronted by on-site security teams.
Asked why her body-worn footage had not been saved, Pc Taylor told the inquiry, sitting on central London: “I think, at the time, I was too literal in thinking it’s not evidential because it didn’t show anything.”
Pc Taylor said she was unaware that “docked” footage was deleted after 31 days and “unfortunately that’s what happened”.
The officer accepted that if Calocane had been cautioned for the warehouse assault it would have been discovered that he was wanted on a court warrant.
Ms Langdale told the inquiry that an audit of Leicestershire Police computer records showed that Pc Taylor twice clicked on records on May 24 2023, which showed Calocane was already wanted on a court-issued warrant.
The officer, who said she should have gone to the warehouse to chase up the accounts of victims, said of the computer records: “If I did click on it then I have not absorbed that information.
“It’s a simple task that should have been done and it wasn’t and it was a mistake.
“I think in this incident I made mistakes. I think that we’ve all admitted… accepted that we’ve made these mistakes. I can only apologise for making those mistakes.”
After it was put to her that “right from the beginning” there had been an opportunity, given what was on police records, to have arrested Calocane, Pc Taylor added: “I accept that I didn’t look and it was a missed opportunity.”
Pc Connor Amos-Perkins, who was Pc Taylor’s tutor, told the inquiry he should have checked on Calocane’s background.
“I should have done that,” he said. “That was my fault. I hadn’t double-checked that. I didn’t know anything about this warrant, it’s my oversight.”
Calocane, who admitted manslaughter and attempted murder, is detained indefinitely in a high-security hospital after prosecutors accepted his not guilty pleas to murder at his sentencing at Nottingham Crown Court in January 2024.