Nottinghamshire Police have asserted that the 2023 attacks, which resulted in three fatalities, were neither "reasonably foreseeable nor preventable." These statements were made at a public inquiry examining the events and the actions of authorities leading up to the killings. Valdo Calocane, who had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, fatally stabbed Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar, and Ian Coates, and also attempted to kill three other individuals on June 13, 2023.
During the inquiry, John Beggs KC, representing Nottinghamshire Police, argued that police "cannot manage dangerous paranoid schizophrenics." He urged the inquiry chair, retired senior judge Deborah Taylor KC, to avoid viewing any police errors or omissions as missed opportunities to prevent the tragedy. Beggs stated that the pertinent question is whether there was a "missed opportunity to do what precisely?"
Nottinghamshire Police have consistently maintained that even if an outstanding arrest warrant for Calocane had been executed prior to the attacks, it was unlikely to have prevented them. This position has been contested by the families of the victims, who have described such suggestions as "cowardly and insulting."
Calocane pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and three counts of attempted murder. In January 2024, he was sentenced to a hospital order. Following his sentencing, revelations emerged regarding a series of failings by various authorities, including the police, which prompted the affected families to call for a statutory public inquiry. The judge-led inquiry, which began in February, has detailed Calocane's previous interactions with police and the circumstances surrounding the failure to execute the outstanding arrest warrant.
Beggs suggested that the likely outcome, had the warrant been executed, would have been a "low-level to high-level community order." Some family members reportedly left the hearing room as his statement was delivered. The police force had previously engaged with Calocane on approximately 10 to 11 occasions between 2020 and 2022. The inquiry aims to scrutinize these interactions and broader systemic issues.