Metropolitan Police chief defends the way Portuguese police handled initial investigation :-)

Thankyou Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe  

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/madeleine-mccann-metropolitan-police-chief-2482996

SIR Bernard Hogan-Howe said it would have been 'very difficult' in the beginning for police in Portugal to determine whether or not it was a serious crime they were dealing with.

METROPOLITAN Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has defended the way Portuguese police handled the initial investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The country's most senior officer said it would have been "very difficult" for officers in Praia da Luz to know whether they were dealing with a serious crime immediately after the little girl vanished.

Speaking on LBC 97.3 this morning, he said: "I think sometimes these things at the beginning can be very difficult to deal with, you don't know exactly if the child has just wandered off. It can be very difficult to know if you've got a very serious crime.

"I'm sure for them that must have been a challenge. Anybody can go back after two, three, five, six years and say 'why didn't you do that'?

"That's easy in hindsight.

"We don't like it when it happens to the Met, and I'm certainly not going to do it to the Portuguese. What I'm determined to do is to work together to make sure we've got the best chance to now try to get to the bottom of this terrible tragedy.

"There is a poor family there who've got the torture of not knowing whether their daughter is alive or not."

He said the discovery of two blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls living with Roma families in Ireland and Greece has not had any "direct impact" on the investigation, but added: "It looks like there's a possibility that around the world there are occasions when people steal children and keep them.

"And I'm sure in one sense that's what the McCanns must be hoping, that at least their child is alive.

"The other possibility is that sadly she's not alive, and either way we want to try and end the torture that they're going through."

Scotland Yard is now running its own investigation into what happened to Madeleine, who went missing from a holiday apartment on May 3 2007 as her parents dined at a nearby tapas restaurant with friends. The Portuguese inquiry was shelved in 2008.

Refreshed appeals were made last week as part of the British investigation, with Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood appearing on television in the UK, Holland and Germany.

He revealed that his team had discounted a previous sighting by the McCanns' friend Jane Tanner, which was thought to be an abductor carrying Madeleine away and had been put at the centre of the Portuguese investigation.

His team managed to track down the man - an innocent British holidaymaker - and instead decided to focus on a second suspect who was also seen with a child in his arms.

Officers also said they would like to trace a number of fair-haired men who were seen lurking near the apartment at the time, and are looking at a surge in burglaries in the area as well as bogus charity collectors.

An appeal is due to air on Irish television later this month.

Great to see support for the PJ  

Thank you Margaret.  

And thank you Sir Bernard.  

I'm sure you know that this will mean a lot to the Portuguese police (and ex-police) and Portuguese people in general.

And it sure means a lot to us too.

Great to see this being reported and about time some professional courtesy is shown to the PJ.

Thank you for postingbMargaret.

At long last  Pity it wasn't said 6 years ago!

Bloomin' brilliant! No more botched investigation and no more criticism of Dr Amaral!  

well take my hat off to the Fundraiser-in-chief. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, not before time.

Thank for bringing this good news Margaret xx


So glad to see this in print at last ...and not before time..I might add.

Well, I would say that is long overdue!! I just hope Sky News and the rest of the U.K. press headline these remarks.

Better late than never. Good on him for saying that. It's sure to anger Mr & Mrs McC.

Better late than never. Good on him for saying that. It's sure to anger Mr & Mrs McC.

Bernard Hogan Howe speaks! That's right! That's right! The PJ did NOT mess up... They made no more errors than any decent police force might have done in difficult circumstances. It was when the initial investigation was thrown off course, and someone else brought in to seemingly undo what Amaral and co had done, that things went badly wrong. Was it Rebello who was brought in after Amaral was pushed out? I can't remember.

I think too many people know too much, too many verifiable facts are now in the public domain, for this to be whitewashed in the end. The case may still go on for ages yet... I don't know for sure what happened to Madeleine, but I do know which way a lot of the evidence points (OK not enough evidence) so must a helluva lot of the policemen on this case, let alone the senior retired ones, some of whom post on websites like this one!

comperedna wrote:Bernard Hogan Howe speaks! That's right! That's right! The PJ did NOT mess up... They made no more errors than any decent police force might have done in difficult circumstances. It was when the initial investigation was thrown off course, and someone else brought in to seemingly undo what Amaral and co had done, that things went badly wrong. Was it Rebello who was brought in after Amaral was pushed out? I can't remember.

I think too many people know too much, too many verifiable facts are now in the public domain, for this to be whitewashed in the end. The case may still go on for ages yet...  I don't know for sure what happened to Madeleine, but I do know which way a lot of the evidence points (OK not enough evidence) so must a helluva lot of the policemen on this case, let alone the senior retired ones, some of whom post on websites like this one!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being optimistic....... 

mossman.... I have days when I get down about it and think the opposite. However, recently I have had more hopeful days than hopeless ones.

One way or another KM, and GM need to be able to get off the roundabout... whatever the result of the investigation. No more money should be tipped down the drain... unless there really is some big paedophile conspiracy behind it... which I very much doubt.

The book 'Madeleine' has pages of lovely family pictures of all of the Mccanns in all sorts of happy circumstances. I look at them from time to time and feel, as a someone with three grandchildren in one family with twins a similar distance apart, so sad that it happened.

This does not change one iota my evaluative thoughts on the case.

Isn't it fabulous, l couldn't believe my eyes when l saw it and came here to see if it was posted.

Blacksmiths latest blog is great news too...  Do you remember he closed the Bureau and apologised for barking up the wrong tree as it were?  Well he's reopening the Bureau and has got something to say about Mitchell soon...  Apart from likening him to a 'repulsive fattened bluebottle supping on dead and rotten meat.'

I thought even in Crimewatch they touched on the work the PJ and GNR were doing, they showed them searching and mentioned the case went on for a year - that is so much more time than most cases would get, in the UK or elsewhere.

These people have had so much help and money and PJ and SY and all the while trying to disseminate false leads and sightings via the UK press, promoting Bundleman etc.

I am glad they didn't throw PJ under the bus, and the next step I imagine even if we don't hear it will be the understanding amongst the officers involved at how hurtful and unhelpful the Tapas 9 and TM were to the investigation - simply saying we're discounting the "check" by Oldfield and the "sighting" by Jane is perhaps made diplomatic by the agent in charge but they have to be thinking, the PJ were no fools to do the same thing, had they not mislead the investigation it could have been further along.

I think seeing blond men at a resort is pretty normal, they probably were not local and were there on holiday. More efits to come? It seems like SY thinks this was in fact a "pedophile ring" or trafficking of some sort, which, even if that's not the case, makes me feel like these resorts with "listening services" are a bad and dangerous idea. Not that they had one here, but the idea that you can just leave kids unattended and someone will come by and listen occasionally seems very dangerous in that a lot can happen between times that isn't obvious by listening outside a door, as well as the fact that if these rings exist and want to take young kids this type of resort would be a good place to go, knowing you will have vulnerable kids being left and the listening things probably go at the hour and/or half hour so you have a timeline to get in and out, as well. Scary.

Great to see this printed! It was the McCanns themselves who botched the investigation from the beginning. I am sure the initial call to GNR was that a little girl had gone missing, rather than had been "abducted" as the T9 were pushing. Kids go missing all the time, but are usually found, and the GNR were responding to a robbery at the time. Further, the McCanns let everyone and their brother trawl through the apartment. Would they have done that if they really thought it was a true crime scene? The MW employees were suspcicious of the McCanns from the beginning for pushing the abduction angle, and in particular the Tanner sighting alone. The PJ treated the McCanns with the utmost respect, giving them the benefit of the doubt, despite all of the evidence to the contrary and their suspicions.
 
The only way to know for sure that this had truly been an abduction from the start, is if the McCanns were with their children at the moment Madeleine had been taken. Sadly, the McCanns had other plans, so this was not the case. The PJ were correct in pursuing all possibilities. SY are dead wrong if they are only considering the abduction theory.