A coroner has raised alarm about how failures by the Metropolitan police and the probation service contributed to the murder of Zara Aleena and could lead to more deaths.
Jordan McSweeney killed the 35-year-old aspiring lawyer as she walked home from a night out in Ilford in the early hours of 26 June 2022, nine days after he was released from prison on licence.
In a report addressed to the home secretary, the justice secretary, Met commissioner Mark Rowley and others, the East London area coroner Nadia Persaud warned that similar deaths would occur unless services improved.
She expressed serious concerns about the rejection by senior officers in the Metropolitan police service (MPS) of internal criticism over the handling of the case.
In June, an inquest into Aleena’s death concluded that evidence about McSweeney’s possession of weapons and threats to others should have led to him being rearrested after his release. But it found that attempts to rearrest him were impeded by inaccurate data, a lack of professional curiosity, and failures to follow up.
Persaud said a rapid review of the case by the Met’s directorate of professional standards (DPS) lacked rigour and a more detailed investigation should have been carried out. But the review still made “valuable findings” about failures in the force’s handling of McSweeney.
Persaud said she was concerned that these findings were “rejected by more senior officers in MPS”.
The report said: “There were clearly learning points for the police constables, police sergeants and the local intelligence team. The MPS rejected the DPS recommendation for reflective learning, ‘as there was no failing in performance or conduct’. It is of concern that the threshold for reflective practice is set too high.”
Persaud also warned that understaffing and excessive workloads in the probation service, highlighted in the case, would also lead to more avoidable deaths.
She pointed out that probation staffing levels in the unit responsible for McSweeney were at 61% in 2022 and had now fallen to just 58%. Persaud said such understaffing would lead to poor assessments about risks posed by offenders like McSweeney.
The coroner said: “The inquest heard that this is a national problem and that there are other probation delivery units that have even lower levels of staffing.
“As staffing levels are so stretched, there may be reticence of junior probation officers to trouble the senior team,” she said.
She added: “The understanding around risk assessment was poor, at all levels of staffing.”
She also highlighted poor intelligence sharing between the police and probation service. Her report said: “There were multiple intelligence logs and records that should have been obtained by them [McSweeney’s offender managers].
“The logs included findings of possession of weapons, drug taking, threats to harm others and a sustained assault on a servery worker using an improvised weapon. This information was not gathered and shared appropriately.”
Damning findings by the chief inspector of probation, published last year, set out a catalogue of errors by probation officers before McSweeney carried out the brutal attack on Aleena.
In her report, Persaud also raised concerns around a possible “societal acceptance” of stalking behaviour.
At least two other members of the public were followed by McSweeney before he attacked Aleena, but this was not brought to the attention of the emergency services. “The members of the public appear to have seen the offender and appear to be aware that he was following them,” she said. “I am concerned that there is a societal acceptance that such conduct does not need to be reported.”
In a statement released in June, Aleena’s aunt, Farah Naz, said the family remained “devastated by our enormous loss”. She said: “Her brutal murder could and should have been prevented. It is clear from the evidence we have heard that there are significant issues of under-resourcing across the system.”
