THE father of Jamie Dack today described the investigation into a vicious assault on his son in the weeks before he was tortured and murdered by a gang in Southampton as haphazard, complacent and showing a lack of common sense.
Eddie Dack spoke out after an independent investigation ruled that eight police officers and one member of police staff had a case to answer for misconduct.
They were guilty of "a catalogue of basic failings" in the run-up to the brutal murder, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found.
Speaking from his Totton home to the Daily Echo, Eddie criticised officers for not properly looking into and acting upon reports his son had gone missing – and subsequent claims by three people that he had even been killed.
He described how the 37-page report from the IPCC, which he received the night before his sons killers were jailed for life this week, made "depressing reading".
But he also was keen to distinguish between those officers and the team of detectives who successfully investigated Jamie's murder and brought his killers to justice saying he could not fault them, had nothing but praise for them and they had given 100 per cent.
Eddie said: "You can't help but think things might have been different if it had started out properly and they had investigated properly.
"There seems to have been a snowball effect triggered by Nicholls not being identified as a suspect.
"Had they have investigated properly in the first place Nicholls might well have been in prison today for assault rather than the murder of Jamie."
Eddie had not been able to summon the will to read the IPCC report before he watched Lee Nicholls, Ryan Woodmansey, Donna Chalk and Andrew Dwyer-Skeats jailed for a total of 121 years on Wednesday.
They were told by a judge who handed them life sentences that they may never be free unless they can convince a parole board they are safe to be let out.
Since then he has tried to digest its contents, which have not yet been made public, which he says show that numerous officers within Hampshire police failed to do their jobs properly.
Among them was one PC who did not note down that Nicholls was a suspect in a grievous assault on Jamie on March 21 last year, in which he was left unconscious and had his phone stolen.
Nicholls carried out that attack and his name was given to police but never made it into their system.
The independent report also criticised the way in which Hampshire police dealt with and responded to reports that Jamie was missing.
Eddie said: "They actually had three different people telling them Jamie had been beaten to death but it seems to have been totally disregarded.
"The inspector who looked at that seems to have come to the conclusion that this wasn't the truth.
"They basically put Jamie down as medium risk rather than high, in spite of that happened to him three weeks earlier, and in spite of three people telling them he was dead.
If that had been different, if they had gone to Bevois Mews, they would have found his body. It might have been too late to save him but at least we old have got to say goodbye which was something we were robbed of when his killers burnt his body."
Eddie added: "The whole report makes very depressing reading. It has marred a week in which we have seen very good sentences and justice for my son. It is really hard to take in."
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