Steven Durand: ‘Police got my son’s ethnicity wrong twice – I blame them for why he’s still missing seven years later’
The worst thing a parent can experience has already happened to Christine Durand. Her son Steven was missing and she had no idea if he was alive.
But what the now 70-year-old mother didn’t realize was that things would get worse in the months and years to come.
“I feel like they don’t care at all, it’s like I was left on the shelf,” he said Independent. “I had to go to the police station every day crying for my son. They let me down many times.”
Steven, then 31, was supposed to travel from his sister’s house to his home in Preston on October 19, 2018, when he disappeared. He had lost his phone, so all he had was his bus ticket.
After Ms Durand reported Steven missing, Lancashire Constabulary issued a public appeal for the 31-year-old, who Ms Durand said officers knew was suffering from mental health problems. But they misidentified his ethnicity twice, describing him as white when he was mixed race.
“Whatever I asked the police for, they did the exact opposite,” Ms. Durand said, citing moments such as the police breaking down the door to her apartment when Steven told them he had a spare key.
“I think the police are racist; I think they didn’t care about my son because he’s mixed race.”
The Leyland pensioner believes his son, “the kindest person you could ever meet”, could have been found if police had carried out the investigation better.
According to research by the charity Missing People, missing black (31%) and Asian (35%) people are less likely to be identified by police than white people (39%).
The report also found that Black and Asian children were more likely to be missing for longer periods of time than white children. One-fifth of missing cases involving black children last longer than 48 hours; This rate is 14 percent for Asians and 13 percent for whites.
Missing People has launched its new SafeCall service, a national lifeline designed to support the 72,000 children in the UK who go missing each year. Independent It reached its fundraising target of £165,000 last month, enabling the creation of a free, confidential and 24-hour service.
Evidence: Joel’s experience mirrors Ms. Durand’s.
Ms Joel’s son, Richard Okorogheye, then 19, went missing from Ladbroke Grove in London on March 22, 2021. Miss Joel, 43, said she reported Richard, who has sickle cell syndrome, missing to police the next day and said he was away from home without his medication.
But the assertive 43-year-old said officers did not address his concerns urgently and described the investigation as a “disaster”, saying he was told: “Don’t worry, he will come back home” and even asked: “How can you expect us to if you can’t find your son?” He claimed that it was said.
Richard was found dead in Epping Forest, London, on 5 April 2021.
Mrs Joel believes her son could have been found alive if the investigation had been conducted properly. “I felt like everything was driven by discrimination and racism,” the nurse said. “Every day I have to live this pain in my heart, knowing that maybe something could have been done but nothing was done. I remember having sleepless nights, walking barefoot from my home to Ladbroke Grove police station, crying, begging them to look for my child.”
The Metropolitan Police apologized to Ms Joel for providing a service “to a level that the public could not expect from us” but denied any discriminatory treatment. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation found numerous police failings and described the level of service Ms Joel received as “unacceptable”, but found that “the evidence does not indicate any delay in escalating 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 because of his race or mental health. Power declined to comment on this matter.
Police also disputed her claims that the door had been broken down, but the IOPC upheld Ms Durand’s claim after reviewing her complaint. He added that the police force apologized for mischaracterizing his ethnicity.
Missing People’s head of policy and partnerships, Josie Allan, said the charity had heard from many families who felt discriminated against because of their race.
Explaining why investigations can come to conflicting conclusions, he said “underlying systemic bias” would influence police responses but its “insidious” nature made it difficult to detect.
“There are inherent problems with being able to detect discrimination in the complaint process,” he said. “We know that the data shows there are disparities among missing black people, so there is a gap between the evidence of inequalities and the acknowledgment of them… The data, and the large number of families voicing concerns, must raise very real concerns that there is a pattern within the force.”
He noted that the IOPC had recently revised its guidance in efforts to improve its “problematic” handling of discrimination complaints.
In 2021, the Home Affairs Select Committee report ‘Macpherson: 20 Years in Investigation’ suggested that police services had largely failed to tackle issues and perceptions of institutional racism following the initial investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence; this investigation found consistent evidence of “over-policing” and “under-protection” of Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
Referring to Steven’s case, a spokesman for Lancashire Constabulary said: “We carried out extensive investigations involving CCTV, telephone, searches of open land and waterways, inquiries into business associates, witnesses, health authorities and financial controls, and numerous media appeals before the decision to archive the investigation.”
Police said sometimes “difficult” decisions had to be made, such as archiving 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 involving specialist search teams, dogs, horses and colleagues from Essex Police before his body was sadly discovered.”
They said the force had accepted all of the IOPC’s recommendations from the 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 placing greater emphasis on contacting the person who reports someone missing so we can better understand the risks they face,” they added.
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