Nicola Bulley: Police told to adjust messaging in search for missing mum to stop people ‘taking things into own hands’
Investigators should shift its messaging to the public and have an open mind during their search for missing mum Nicola Bulley, a former senior detective has told Sky News.
Officers have spent more than two weeks searching for Ms Bulley, who disappeared on 27 January close to the River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, focussing on the 10 minutes between her last sighting, and her dog being found alone.
Underwater teams have scoured the river, while others have asked for dashcam and other footage to be turned over in the hunt for Ms Bulley.
People have also turned up in the village to join the search, with a dispersal order put in place after some risked their safety by looking in derelict and abandoned buildings.
Speaking to Sky News, former detective chief inspector Simon Harding said Lancashire Police needed to change the way it speaks to the public, to “reassure other people and stop people going to that scene and taking things into their own hands”.
“It can hinder quite a lot. It really can.
“I think the difference here is that you don’t have a cordoned off area where you can do your own enquiries in your own time and there would be all sorts of tests you would want to do in that river.
“There are police divers… who are experts themselves – they don’t necessarily need other people.
“But now come out and say, ‘we’ve done this, we have done this CCTV, we’ve done this researching’ to stop people.
“It’s the messaging, which is the problem for me.”
Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts
Read more:
Partner ‘convinced’ Nicola not in river
Specialist team pulls out of search
Images of mum on day she vanished
Retracing dog walker’s journey
Messages of hope tied to bridge
Police are putting their ‘eggs… into one basket’
Mr Harding also added the police need to have an open mind as to what might have happened to Ms Bulley, describing the officers saying they think she fell in the river as “the eggs… going into one basket”.
He also told Sky News he does not believe Ms Bulley’s family trusts the police when they say the most likely hypothesis is that she fell in the river.
“If you tell a family, and you would be telling the family everything that you had, the facts that you had – that she was in that river – they would be satisfied with that because as a senior officer, you’d be telling them that, and they would trust you about that,” he said.
“But the family haven’t got that trust – they don’t believe that.”
‘Most likely scenario’
In a statement to Sky News, Lancashire Police said: “Since Nicola went missing over two weeks ago, we have done an unprecedented amount to try and find her.
“This has involved a dedicated team of more than 40 detectives looking through hundreds of hours of CCTV and dashcam footage, speaking to numerous witnesses, carrying out digital enquiries and examining literally hundreds of pieces of information submitted by the public.
“Specialist resources from the police and other agencies including underwater search teams, drones, horses, dogs, and the police helicopter continue to comb the River Wyre and surrounding area down and out into the sea.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Search for Nicola expands to coast
“We have also consulted with a number of national experts in their field, including environmental and tidal experts. We also carried out an extensive land search and the search of some properties around the area Nicola went missing.”
The force said it “stressed that we continue to keep an open mind about what might have happened to Nicola” and that potential scenarios were being looked at to eliminate them.
However, it added: “Based on all of the vast amount of work we have done up to now we continue to believe the most likely scenario is that Nicola has fallen into the river for some reason, but we have a dedicated team who are continuing to investigate all possibilities thoroughly.
“It remains the case at the present time that there is no information/evidence in all the exhaustive enquiries we have made that suggests any crime has been committed or that there is any third-party involvement in Nicola’s disappearance, but the investigation is ongoing.”
UK
Urgent letter to home secretary over violence against women and girls strategy – as it omits child abuse
Ten child protection organisations have written an urgent letter to the home secretary expressing concern about the omission of child sexual abuse from the government’s violence against women and girls strategy, following a Sky News report.
Groups including the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and The Children’s Society wrote to Yvette Cooper to say that violence against women and girls (VAWG) and child sexual abuse are “inherently and deeply connected”, suggesting any “serious strategy” to address VAWG needs to focus on child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The letter comes after Sky News revealed an internal Home Office document, titled Our draft definition of VAWG, which said that child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “explicitly within the scope” of their strategy, due to be published in September.
Poppy Eyre when she was four years old
Responding to Sky News’ original report, Poppy Eyre, who was sexually abused and raped by her grandfather when she was four, said: “VAWG is – violence against women and girls. If you take child sexual abuse out of it, where are the girls?”
The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, which is funded by the Home Office and a signatory to the letter, estimates 500,000 children in England and Wales are sexually abused every year.
The NSPCC “welcome” the government’s pledge to halve VAWG in a decade, but is “worried that if they are going to fulfil this commitment, the strategy absolutely has to include clear deliverable objectives to combat child sexual abuse and exploitation too”, the head of policy, Anna Edmundson, told Sky News.
Poppy is a survivor of child sexual abuse
She warned the government “will miss a golden opportunity” and the needs of thousands of girls will be “overlooked” if child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “at the heart of its flagship strategy”.
The government insists the VAWG programme will include action to tackle child sexual abuse, but says it also wants to create a distinctive plan to “ensure those crimes get the specialist response they demand”.
“My message to the government is that if you’re going to make child sexual abuse a separate thing, we need it now,” Poppy told Sky News.
Read more from Sky News:
Why Donald Trump believes he ‘deserves the Nobel Peace Prize’
Bank holiday temperatures to climb close to 30C before rain arrives
Rape Crisis, which is one of the largest organisations providing support to women in England and Wales, shares these concerns.
It wants plans to tackle child sexual abuse to be part of the strategy, and not to sit outside it.
“If a violence against women and girls strategy doesn’t include sexual violence towards girls, then it runs the risk of being a strategy for addressing some violence towards some females, but not all,” chief executive Ciara Bergman said.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government is “working tirelessly to tackle the appalling crimes of violence against women and girls and child sexual exploitation and abuse, as part of our Safer Streets mission”.
“We are already investing in new programmes and introducing landmark laws to overhaul the policing and criminal justice response to these crimes, as well as acting on the recommendations of Baroness Casey’s review into group-based Child Sexual Exploitation, and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse,” they added.
UK
Man and boy arrested on suspicion of arson after restaurant fire leaves two in critical condition
A 54-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy have been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after a restaurant fire in east London on Friday.
Three people were taken to hospital in a life-threatening condition after the fire at the Indian Aroma in Ilford.
Two remained in a critical condition on Sunday morning, according to the Metropolitan Police.
The restaurant suffered extensive damage in the blaze.
Two further victims are thought to have left the scene before officers arrived, Scotland Yard said.
Woodford Avenue from above. Pic: UK News and Pictures
Police are still trying to identify them.
CCTV footage seen by the PA news agency appears to show a group of people wearing face coverings walk into the restaurant and pour liquid on the floor.
Seconds later, the inside of the restaurant is engulfed in flames.
“While we have made two arrests, our investigation continues at pace so we can piece together what happened on Friday evening,” said the Met Police’s DCI Mark Rogers.
“I know the community [is] concerned and shocked by this incident.
The moment the fire broke out.
“I would urge anyone with any information or concerns to come forward and speak to police.”
Hospital porter Edward Thawe went to help after hearing screams from his nearby home.
He described the scene as “horrible” and “more than scary and the sort of thing that you don’t want to look at twice.”
He said: “I heard screaming and people saying they had called the police.”
Read more from Sky News:
Pro-Palestine Australians protest after week of tension with Israel
‘I’m deprived of my UK citizenship but I’m not a convicted terrorist’
Ghislaine Maxwell was given ‘platform to rewrite history’
The 43-year-old said he saw a woman and a severely burned man who may have been customers.
Another witness, who did not want to be named, said he saw three “severely burned” people being doused by the emergency services and given oxygen.
“I can only imagine the pain they were going through,” he said.
On Saturday, the London Ambulance Service told Sky News: “We sent resources to the scene, including ambulance crews, an advanced paramedic, an incident response officer and paramedics from our hazardous area response team.
“We treated five people for burns and smoke inhalation. We took two patients to a major trauma centre and three others to local hospitals.”
The police investigation is continuing.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment11 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024