Police criticised for 'poor' response to tormented family
Olivia Davison said police did not do enough to help single mother Fiona Pilkington and her disabled 18-year-old daughter Frankie Hardwick after they suffered years of abuse from yobs on their street.
The family, including Ms Pilkington's son Anthony, from Bardon Road, Barwell, were sometimes prisoners in their own home because youths were throwing stones at windows.
Ms Pilkington, 38, and Frankie, died on October 24, 2007, in a car parked in a lay-by in Earl Shilton.
The pair died after Ms Pilkington doused a pile of clothes on the back seat with petrol and set them alight – causing the vehicle to explode.
Yesterday, an inquest at Loughborough Town Hall heard how Ms Pilkington had made dozens of calls to police, but few had resulted in an officer going to see her. Many of the calls were simply logged and on one occasion an e-mail was sent to the beat bobby asking him to call.
Ms Davison described officers' response to calls by Fiona Pilkington as "poor" and quizzed former assistant chief constable Chris Tew on why more was not done.
She said: "It's quite difficult, it would seem, if you are a resident living on the road to get a response from the police."
On two consecutive nights in February 2007, the family were afraid to step outside their house because youths were shouting at them outside.
The police took four days to respond and Ms Davison said: "I absolutely appreciate what was happening – the Leicestershire police could have been dealing with thousands of incidents, but it would seem to me that knowing there is a disabled person in the house would suggest they were vulnerable.
"To not respond in four days is quite poor to people being frightened to come out of their house.
"Beat officers are supposed to know their beats. It seems to me if a beat officer is given Bardon Road as his beat he would no doubt know Fiona so he would know that family.
"He would be very interested that over two nights they were so scared they did not come out of their house."
In 2004, eight reports were received from the Pilkingtons, seven of which were marked as "incident closed" shortly afterwards.
The only one dealt with thoroughly seemed to come about after Ms Pilkington wrote a letter to her MP, David Tredinnick, about the problems she faced.
In response to this, Ms Davison said: "Because we have an MP shouting and an area inspector involved then we have a concerted action to do something.
"We have a mass of activity in one complaint but not the others."
She also criticised the police's failure to link incidents together, preventing officers from treating the family's problems more seriously.
"These incidents take on an aspect of menace. It has a greater relevance if you know the history," she said.
"If these had been linked and not closed a different picture would have presented itself in terms of a family with problems of offenders."
Mr Tew, who retired in July, admitted things could have been done better.
He said: "Things have moved on quite considerably – there would be a totally different response today than there was then (in 2004 and 2007)."
"I would expect now that this would all be picked up as a series of ongoing incidents."
From January to October in the year the pair died, police received reports of 31 anti-social behaviour incidents in Bardon Road and Bradgate Road in Barwell. Out of that total, 13 reports were from Ms Pilkington.
Between April and October 2007, police received 40,000 calls about anti-social behaviour.
Ms Pilkington's mother, Pamela Cassell, 72, has attended the inquest throughout.
She said: "Fiona couldn't defend herself. She was very shy and she didn't want any trouble so she tended to ignore the youths. She was very vulnerable.
"On the day that they died, Fiona rang up the police and told them about the children who were walking on their hedge and she was told to just ignore them.
"The same girls that were walking on the hedge were taking the mickey out of Frankie and imitating the way she walked. It was going on for so long I thought somebody would have done something. Fiona just gave up."
An inquest into the deaths began on Thursday in front of an eight-member jury and is expected to conclude on Tuesday.
