A police force has said the Nottingham attacks were not “reasonably foreseeable or preventable”, a public inquiry has heard.
Valdo Calocane – who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020 – stabbed to death Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates, and tried to kill three others in a spate of attacks on 13 June 2023.
Nottinghamshire Police dealt with Calocane on 10 or 11 occasions between 2020 and 2022, but John Beggs KC – representing the force – said police “cannot manage dangerous paranoid schizophrenics”.
At the Nottingham Inquiry, external – which has been examining the attacks – Beggs challenged the idea that any police mistakes before the killings were missed opportunities.
Calocane admitted three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and three counts of attempted murder.
Following Calocane’s sentencing to a hospital order in January 2024, a series of failings by authorities emerged, including the police, which led to calls by the affected families for a statutory public inquiry.
The judge-led inquiry began in February this year, and laid bare the extent of failings in Calocane’s care and his previous interactions with police, including the failure to execute an arrest warrant for Calocane, which was still outstanding at the time of the attacks.
The inquiry, which is being led by retired senior judge Deborah Taylor KC, is in its second day of closing submissions.
Addressing Taylor on Wednesday, Beggs said: “We respectfully invite you to avoid the mindset that a mistake or an omission by an officer represents a missed opportunity to prevent this tragedy.
“The appropriate question might be – missed opportunity to do what precisely?
“The police cannot manage dangerous paranoid schizophrenics.”
Nottinghamshire Police has maintained throughout its evidence that if the warrant had been executed, it was unlikely to have prevented the attacks from happening.
“The criticism of our failure to execute that warrant is entirely justified,” Beggs said.
“What isn’t justified is the assumption that that failure represented a missed opportunity to prevent the attacks.”
That view has been disputed by the bereaved families, including their legal representative, Tim Moloney KC, who previously said any attempt to suggest arresting Calocane would not have made a difference would be “cowardly and insulting”.
Beggs said a “low-level to high-level community order, we suggest is the likely outcome”.
Some members of the bereaved families left the hearing room as Beggs continued.
