The head of Leicestershire Police has apologised over a missed arrest warrant a month before Valdo Calocane killed three people
It's as the public inquiry into the Nottingham attacks continues
The head of Leicestershire Police has apologised at the public inquiry into the Nottingham attacks over the standard of his force’s inquiry into a warehouse assault a month before the killings.
Leicestershire’s temporary Chief Constable David Sandall, who was appointed to the role in March 2025, told the hearing that many changes to the force had been made to improve its processes.
Mr Sandall gave his evidence to the inquiry after that of three junior officers who were involved in handling allegations of assault made against Valdo Calocane by his co-workers at a warehouse in 2023.
They included a probationary police constable who apologised for failing to spot that Calocane was already wanted under an arrest warrant issued in September the previous year.
Pc Libbie-Mae Taylor told the inquiry into the June 2023 Nottingham attacks that she had not “absorbed” computerised records showing Calocane was subject to a warrant ordering him to be arrested and held in custody to appear in court.
The 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 after Calocane was charged with assaulting an emergency worker but failed to appear in court.
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 2023.
She was called to the scene after Calocane, 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.
The inquiry was told that an audit of Leicestershire Police computer records showed that Pc Taylor twice clicked on the arrest warrant records on May 24 2023.
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 can only apologise for making those mistakes.”
Answering questions from counsel to the inquiry after Pc Taylor and the two other junior officers gave evidence, Mr Sandall was told he would not be asked questions about the trio as they are subject to an ongoing investigation by the police watchdog.
Mr Sandall said that on May 5 2023 Leicestershire Police received around 1,950 calls for service, compared with an average of around 1,500.
“That May and June were extremely busy for us,” Mr Sandall said.
Asked if, even today, his force was able to meet the demand it faces in the way he would wish it to, Mr Sandall added: “As I answer that… I want to be really clear with the inquiry.
“We’ve acknowledged that the officers hadn’t met the standard of investigation that we would want. We acknowledge that as an organisation and I apologise for that.
“But in relation to your actual question, no, I don’t think we have the resources that we require to meet the demands that we face, and that’s not something I’m just saying to this inquiry.
“That is something I’ve publicly said…. in recent months.”
Agreeing with counsel that levels of demand meant he had to “prioritise” both at a force level and an individual officer level, the temporary chief constable said the force had invested in a new tutors’ course and had new processes and posts.
He told the inquiry: “We’ve also invested in trying to improve our standards of investigation through something called Operation Forefront, and that includes new apps, new manuals to try and really give practical advice to our officers.
“What we’ve really focused on is around the young workforce.”
With 800 new officers joining the 2,242-strong force, and 500 experienced officers leaving the service between 2021 and 2024, by 2023 40% of the workforce had under five years’ service, the inquiry heard.
Around 15% of the force’s incidents of all types involved a mental health marker, Mr Sandall said.
In his evidence, the police chief also said £23 million had been taken out of the force in the past three years, with further cuts required this year and next.
AI was being used “in a safe way” to try to take pressure off response officers, with a form relating to handcuffing a suspect now taking seven rather than 20 minutes to fill in.
“We’ve got less police officers, police staff, and PCSOs than we had in 2010, but we have far much more demand, calls for service and complexity,” he said.
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.
The inquiry continues on Thursday.