Coroner Blasts Police Red Tape

THE coroner in the Harvey Nichols case yesterday attacked the police’s ‘obsession’ with buck-passing and red tape.

Paul Knapman said officers should ‘use their brains’ rather than ensure everything was done ‘by the book’.

His outburst came at the conclusion of the inquest on beauty consultant Clare Bernal, 20, who was shot dead by her former lover Michael Pech at the Knightsbridge department store in September 2005.

At the time, Pech, a Slovakian who had worked as a security guard at the store, was on bail awaiting sentence for harassment after threatening to kill Miss Bernal.

Dr Knapman, the Westminster Coroner, ruled that Miss Bernal’s murder ‘could not have been reasonably foreseen’.

But he said police wasted time with formfilling which merely provided ‘a scapegoat’.

Recording a verdict of unlawful killing, Dr Knapman said he would be writing to Scotland Yard’s director of strategy to urge him to cut the amount of time officers spent logging information.

Afterwards, Miss Bernal’s mother, Tricia, from Groombridge, East Sussex, said it was ‘beyond belief’ that Pech had been released on bail after threatening to kill her daughter.

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