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Police told man to walk two miles with a loaded gun
Ted Hynds and Terry Kirby26 Oct 2009
A man who found a loaded gun linked to a gangland shooting was told by Scotland Yard to carry it across south London to a police station.
John Leary came across the weapon in a playground where it had been abandoned days after the crime. But the Met refused his request for a plain-clothes officer to collect it from his home.
Today the force admitted major failings over the matter.
Disabled Mr Leary, 51, found the weapon inside a plastic bag near his home on the Hemans estate in Stockwell. Speaking for the first time since the find, he said: "I was going to hang the bag on the railings until I felt its weight. When I looked inside there was a big revolver, a passport and some cash. It had a long barrel and I could see the chambers were loaded. There was no question of leaving it where kids play."
Immediately after finding the revolver he was confronted by gang members who tried to get him to hand it over. But he refused and called police.
Officers suggested they send a patrol car to his house, but he refused for fear of reprisals from the gang members who had seen him carry the bag away. "I told them it was more than my life was worth," said Mr Leary.
Police then advised him to go to his local station, in Larkhall Park, Wandsworth Road, but it was closed. He had to travel 2.5 miles into Clapham to Lavender Hill police station, where an officer agreed to receive the weapon. Mr Leary was taken into the Met's witness protection programme after the gang continued to target him, offering him £3,000 for the gun. They later subjected him to death threats and intimidation, forcing him to flee to his son's home.
Detectives linked the gun to a gang shooting five days before it was found, and the inquiry was taken over by Operation Trident. Mr Leary - who still suffers leg injuries sustained in an unrelated attack a decade ago - later picked out two people at an identification parade. But the Crown Prosecution Service ruled out a court case as the gun could not be linked to an individual.
The incident took place in 2005 but Mr Leary said he had spoken out for the first time now because he had been "bitterly let down" by the police and Lambeth council. "It beggars belief the police showed no urgency in collecting this gun after I'd put myself in danger. And the council were no better," he said.
Lambeth accepted a police request to rehouse Mr Leary, but have only offered a smaller one-bedroom flat. They have also threatened to evict him because he took on the lease of his son's home after spending more time there to escape the death threats.
Mr Leary's MP, Kate Hoey, said: "I was appalled by the treatment. He did a great public service and it is shocking he was not immediately moved out when the gang threatened him."
An eviction hearing brought by the council last week at Wandsworth county court was adjourned after the judge criticised its housing policy.
A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said today: "We fully accept Mr Leary was given the wrong advice. It was wrong to ask him to walk the streets with a gun in the bag, because it could easily have led to his own arrest."
A Lambeth spokesman said Mr Leary had been assessed as requiring only a one-bedroom property since his children no longer lived at home.
Reader views (27)
the police only want to know when or if the gun is used to kill someone and lambeth council is very disgraceful they only want to grab our council tax for nothing they are very useless .
- Lorna, london, 10/02/2010 20:30
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police have a difficult job - they get it wrong 1% of the time & everyone focuses on that 1 error instead of all the times they get it right. Don't knock them too hard or they may not be there in your hour of need - we need to support them, not knock them, their job is hard enough already
- Pb, london, 29/10/2009 01:40
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Tony Blair promised that all handguns had been removed from our streets after the 1997 handgun ban.
Here is the proof.
- Michael Boughton-Fox, Cambridge England, 27/10/2009 16:32
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I'm sorry - perhaps I've missed something here. Isn't this something that happened the best part of 5 years ago? And everyone is commenting as though it was a current affair?
...talk about squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube!
Sure it's bad form, what they made the guy do - all that time ago! They admit it was wrong. That usually means they are doing or have done something about the possibility it would happen again in case you haven't figured it out.
Also, the man was forced out of his home by the threat of violence was he? That means that it would have made no difference if uniformed police had come to his house to get the weapon in the first place, people. Try reading the whole article, rather than just the good bits before your usual dumping on the police at every opportunity.
- Rogan, Irving, 27/10/2009 14:11
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Remember the poor man who was walking in the street carrying a chair leg who was shot a few years ago?
- Peter, Watford UK, 26/10/2009 19:51
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what is the world coming to,this man tryed his best and has just been let down so badly by the police,we would all like to think,and as a mum myself,that if i was to find this gun,or an adult was to find the gun thay would do the same?a gun in a playground,scary?why did thay leave ths poor man with this gun?and when he ask the them for help,why did the police not give him the protection he needed,we have very bad gang culture in london,and a little help off the police would be a start,i hope this man get's some help now because it look's like he was only trying to do his best.
- Maya Hay, hounslow, 26/10/2009 19:35
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who are these metropolitan police at the top now, they are scary in the way they can never see ahead with their actions.
Is it that they are so tied up with the scare tactics on terrorism on the mainland and how to keep the public alert..whoops, I meant scared of going out, that they have no time for thought prior to action..or in most cases inaction.
They worship guns, speed, load noise where ever possible, hitting people, woman if possible with last resort devices.
they hate the publics right to march in favour of or against anything.
they are becoming more right wing day by day.
Some of us have used guns under fire, walked past vehicles on a daily basis not knowing which one is going to blow-up.
- Charles Campbell-Wood, oxford, 26/10/2009 19:18
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This must have been a nightmare for Mr Leary. It's really awful. The police and Lambeth Council could surely have worked together to ensure Mr Leary's safety. Lambeth council apparently penalising him for acting as a responsible citizen is madness.
- Woo, London, 26/10/2009 17:44
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Crazy, carrying a table leg is enough of a reason these days for the police to gun you down, let alone a gun.
- Chris, Rochester, 26/10/2009 17:42
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Mark Andrews, London - the way you keep plugging that YouTube piece at every opportunity makes me curious. Until someone identifies the people involved, we don't even know if they WERE police, do we, so why are you plugging it at every opportunity? Such "testing" would damage the equipment in such a way that it would need replacement to be effective for future use, so I for one find it difficult to believe that it wasn't manufactured simply to damage the image of the police more than their own efforts have done at times.
- Rogan, Irving, 26/10/2009 16:24
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This beggars belief. For me it is the final nail in the coffin, there is no point in helping the police until they up their game. For Mr Leary, he has learnt that no good deed goes unpunished.
- Stephen C, London, 26/10/2009 15:23
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And the government, local councils and police all wonder why they have lost so must public respect and trust...
- John T, London, 26/10/2009 14:40
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And some people want all these thick plods to be armed?
- David Short, Tunis, Tunisia, 26/10/2009 13:39
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It's not just the Police at fault here.
This man puts him self at considerable personal risk, actually refusing to hand the gun back to the gang members, which results in him having to be rehoused, and the council put him in a flat that is not as good as the one he was forced to move from?
Having said that, it is Lambeth council we're talking about, common sense would not have entered in to it.
- Tim, London, 26/10/2009 13:33
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Give the police a radar gun and an endless supply of motorists and they are both efficient & fearless.
Anything that requires proper policing shows them up as a bunch of useless, bullying half-wits; from the top down.
- John Bull, London, 26/10/2009 13:31
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If Stephenson hasn't been sacked, or resigned, from his post by the next General Election, then I sincerely hope that he has his desk cleared and bags already packed by June!
And, more worryingly for Boris Johnson, if Stephenson ain't gone soon then Boz probably won't be retained for a 2nd term!
- Dave, Cumbria, 26/10/2009 13:18
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De Menezes got shot without even having a gun. What might have become of this bloke (with an Irish surname)? Curtains.
- Peace Maker, Battersea, 26/10/2009 12:53
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If armed police had seen him walking along the street, going to a police station, with a gun in his bag? I think he would have got shot dead?
- Mickinlondon, london, 26/10/2009 12:41
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And to think that the film "The Lavender Hill Mob" was a comedy! How presciently wrong Ealing Studios were in 1951!
- David Low, Cirencester, UK, 26/10/2009 11:08
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This is a brave man standing up to the thugs and the police could learn something from this.
- Ziz, Farnham UK, 26/10/2009 10:54
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Having been threatened with arrest by Lavender Hill Police for reporting a stolen mobile phone at a time when they had "better things to do" I'm amazed that they even managed that.
- Bob, Cheam, 26/10/2009 10:49
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This is awful. The gun should have been collected. I hope these gang members can be caught and put inside for 5 years.
- Dhan Raj, Basildon, 26/10/2009 10:44
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Were they asking him to carry the gun for two miles so a patrol that came upon him by "accident" could stop & search him..? It all helps the arrest statistics you know.
- Mark H, London, England, 26/10/2009 10:21
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Given that he did not want the police to come to him just what should he have done? Perhaps we should give the problem as a question on University Challenge. I reckon the police should have sent a policeman disguised as a milkman along to pick it up. However, knowing of the Larkhall Estate his milkfloat might of gone before he got back to it.
- Jack Spratt, Richmond, Surrey, 26/10/2009 10:09
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Is there no end to the incompetence of the Metropolitan Police.
- Nick Holland, glasgow, 26/10/2009 09:19
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Everyday another story about what a joke the Met have become. Another law abiding citizen who won't be getting involved.
But guns on our streets? Perfecttly normal, there's even videos on the Old bill messing about with a gun on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbks-FvSFVs
- Mark Andrews, London, 26/10/2009 09:07
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Thanks for this warning about helping the police I will now look the other way.
- Stephend, London, England, 26/10/2009 08:54
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