The worst thing a parent can go through had already happened to Christina Durand. Her son Steven disappeared and she had no idea if he was even alive.
But what the mother, now in her 70s, didn’t realize was that things were about to get worse in the coming months and years.
“I just feel like they didn’t care at all, like I was left on the shelf,” she said The Independent. “I used to go down to the police station every day because my son was crying. They let me down many times.”
Steven, then 31, was due to travel from his sister’s flat to his home in Preston on October 19, 2018, the day he went missing. He had lost his phone so all he had on him was the bus ticket.
After Ms Durand reported Steven missing, Lancashire Constabulary issued public appeals for the 31-year-old, who Ms Durand said was known to officers as he suffered from mental health issues. But they misidentified his ethnicity twice, describing him as white when he is mixed race.
Steven Durand disappeared at the age of 31. Police misidentified his ethnicity twice, describing him as white when he is mixed race (Christine Durand)
Christine Durand believes her son could have been found if the police had handled his case better (Christine Durand)
“Everything we asked the police to do, they did the opposite,” Ms. Durand said, citing moments like the police breaking down Steven’s apartment door when he told them he had a spare key.
“I think the police are racist – I think they didn’t care about my son because he was mixed race.”
The pensioner, from Leyland, believes her son, “The best person you could ever meet”, could have been found if police had handled the investigation better.
A lower proportion of black (31 per cent) and Asian (35 per cent) missing people are found by the police than white people (39 per cent), according to research by the charity Missing People.
The report also found that black and Asian children are more likely to be absent for longer periods of time than white children. One in five of all missing incidents involving black children lasted more than 48 hours, compared with 14 percent for Asians and 13 percent for whites.
Missing People has now launched its new SafeCall service, a national lifeline designed to support the 72,000 children who go missing in the UK each year. The Independent reached its fundraising target of £165,000 last month, allowing the free, confidential, 24/7 service to be created.
Ms. Durand says the police “let me down many times” (Christine Durand)
Evidence Joel’s experience echoes Ms. Durand’s.
Ms Joel’s son Richard Okorogheye, then 19, went missing from Ladbroke Grove, London, on March 22, 2021. Ms Joel, 43, said she reported Richard, who suffered from sickle cell syndrome, to police as missing the next day, telling them he had left home without his medication.
But the 43-year-old claimed officers did not treat her concerns with urgency and described the investigation as a “disaster”, claiming she was told “Don’t worry, he’ll come home” and even “If you can’t find your son, how do you expect us to?”
Richard was found dead in Epping Forest, London on 5 April 2021.
Richard Okorogheye, then 19, went missing from Ladbroke Grove, London on 22 March 2021 (Joel Evidence)
Ms Joel believes her son could have been found alive if the investigation had been handled properly. “I felt like everything was ruled by discrimination and racism,” the nurse said. “Every day I have to go through this agony in my heart, knowing that maybe something could have been done, but nothing was done. I remember having sleepless nights, walking barefoot from my house to Ladbroke Grove police station, crying, asking them to find my child.”
The Metropolitan Police apologized to Ms Joel for providing a level of service “not at a level that the public would expect from us”, but did not admit to any discriminatory treatment. An investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) identified several police failings and described the level of service Ms Joel received as “unacceptable”, but found that “the evidence did not indicate that any delay in improving Richard’s risk level was due to his or Ms Joel’s race”.
In Ms Durand’s case, she made a complaint and an internal investigation by Lancashire Constabulary found there was “insufficient evidence” that Steven had been discriminated against on the basis of his race or mental health. The force declined to comment on this.
The force also disputed her claims about the door being broken down, but the IOPC upheld Ms Durand’s claim after a review of her complaint. He added that the police officer apologized for misidentifying his ethnicity.
Evidence Joel believes her son would have been found alive if the force had acted properly (Evidence Joel)
Despite Mrs Joel telling the force that Richard, who suffered from sickle cell syndrome, was vulnerable and away from home without his medication, she accused officers of failing to treat her concerns urgently (Joel Evidence)
Josie Allan, head of policy and partnerships at Missing People, said the charity had heard from several families who felt discriminated against because of their race.
Explaining why investigations could reach competing conclusions, she said “underlying systemic bias” will affect police responses, but its “insidious” nature makes it difficult to identify.
“There are inherent problems in being able to identify discrimination in the complaints process,” she said. “We know the data shows there are disparities for missing black people, so there is a gap between the evidence of the disparities and the recognition of them… The data and the large number of families expressing concern should raise very serious concerns within the police that there is a pattern.”
She noted that the IOPC had recently revised its guidelines in efforts to improve the “problematic” handling of discrimination complaints.
In 2021, the Home Affairs Committee’s “Macpherson: 20 years of inquiry” suggested that police services had largely failed to overcome problems and perceptions of institutional racism following the initial inquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence, which found consistent evidence of “over-policing” and “under-protection” of ethnic, Asian and minority communities.
Speaking about Steven’s case, a spokesman for Lancashire Constabulary said: “We carried out extensive inquiries involving CCTV, telephone, open land and waterway searches, inquiries with associates, witnesses, health agencies and financial checks and numerous media appeals before the decision to shelve the investigation.”
The force said sometimes “difficult” decisions have to be made, such as shelving a case, but “any new information will be fully investigated”.
A Met Police spokesman said: “When Richard went missing in 2021, hundreds of officers worked tirelessly for 15 days as part of an extensive search which also included specialist search teams, dogs and horses and colleagues from Essex Police before his body was sadly found.”
They said the force had accepted all the IOPC’s recommendations from its 2022 inquiry and had “made a significant number of changes to the way we respond from the moment a person is reported missing”.
“This includes putting more emphasis on engaging with the person who reports a person missing so we can better understand the risks they face,” they added.
Please donate now at The Independent and Missing People’s SafeCall campaign, which raised £165,000 to create a free, nationwide service to help vulnerable children find safety and support
For advice, support and options if you or a loved one goes missing, get in touch safecall.org.uk