The Nottingham killings have exposed a broken Britain

On 13 June 2023, Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic, fatally stabbed three people in the centre of Nottingham. Over the past four weeks, I have been closely following the Nottingham Inquiry – a public investigation into how Calocane, a violent psychotic and known risk to the public, was ever in a position to roam the streets freely. The inquiry has also looked at the response to Calocane’s murders – including the terrible treatment of the victim’s families by our institutions, from the police to the local authority. If ever there was a case that encapsulated a truly broken Britain, it is the story of Valdo Calocane.

Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, two 19-year-old students at the University of Nottingham, were Calocane’s first victims. It was 4am and the two friends were walking back to their student accommodation, having been out celebrating the end of term. They were nearly home when Calocane, who had been hiding in a nearby alleyway, attacked them on the street. Both were fatally stabbed before, according to a judicial summary, the killer ‘calmly’ left the scene.

Calocane’s next victim was Ian Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker. He was stabbed 15 times. Calocane left Coates’s body on the street before stealing his van and driving into the centre of Nottingham, where he attempted to mow down three members of the public in two separate incidents. Miraculously, all three survived, but not without significant injuries. In 2024, Calocane was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order, having had his charges downgraded to manslaughter on the grounds of his mental illness.

A month into the inquiry, one thing is crystal clear: Coates, Webber and O’Malley-Kumar were killed by Calocane, but they were failed by the British state. Calocane had been dangerously unwell for many years: in 2020, when he began to experience his first bouts of violent psychosis, health officials declined to section him because of the ‘over-representation of young black men in prison’. The Nottingham NHS Mental Health Care Trust, who became primarily responsible for Calocane’s care, did not administer anti-psychotic medication because of his fear of needles.

Despite his increasingly aggressive behaviour, which included forcing a neighbour to jump from her first-floor balcony after he broke in the door, Calocane remained at large. Prior to his fatal attacks, he assaulted police officers, emergency workers, flatmates and colleagues. He stalked strangers and repeatedly tried to break into neighbouring properties. At the time of the attack, he was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant.

Even without these frightening outbursts, the very nature of Calocane’s thoughts should have been enough to suggest that he posed a grave risk to society. He believed that he was being spied on by MI6. He ‘heard voices’ that told him his family was going to die – voices that he believed were the ‘creation of mental-health services’. In 2021, Calocane even travelled to Thames House in London, the headquarters of MI5, asking to be arrested. How was this man ever allowed to roam the streets?

The negligence and incompetence of the responsible authorities does not end there. Over the past few days, we have learnt harrowing details of how the victims’ families were treated by Nottinghamshire Police and Nottingham City Council. Coates’s body, we heard, was left on the road for 15 hours. His son was notified of his death on Instagram after receiving a message from a family friend. Inexplicably, the inquiry has also heard that Coates’s three sons were excluded from a vigil organised by the council – a memorial they had only been made aware of after receiving an inquiry from a journalist.

The conduct of the police has been exposed as truly scandalous. Multiple officers involved in the case were found to have spent an inappropriate amount of time looking at pictures and footage related to the crimes. The consequent misconduct hearing was concealed from the families. Bizarrely, the families were kept apart by the police throughout Calocane’s trial. Each family was told that the other preferred privacy when, in fact, the opposite was true – they were desperate to connect with one another, and have since formed incredibly close bonds.

Nottingham is not the same place after Calocane’s crimes. Each victim represented something unique about the city I grew up in and where I continue to live. Coates was an avid fisherman and Nottingham Forest supporter – a classic Nottingham bloke. He was a loving father and grandfather. The school he was travelling to on the morning of his death, where he worked as a janitor, was the same school my son attended. Webber and O’Malley-Kumar were doing what all Nottingham students do – enjoying the nightlife that has become part of the city’s character.

Walking through Nottingham on any day of the week you will encounter people with serious drug and alcohol problems. This once-proud metropolis, a former centre of British industry, is now littered with the tents and sleeping bags of its many homeless residents. At times, it feels as though, everywhere you look, all you see are people with serious mental-health issues – whether they are asking you for money, or merely shouting into the ether. Nottingham, like so many towns and cities now feels abandoned and unsafe. I no longer feel proud of Nottingham, the city I grew up in and where I continue to live.

Nottingham City Council has, perhaps wisely, said nothing throughout the inquiry. A few weeks ago, however, it saw fit to share the fact that it has been awarded the ‘Purple Flag’ award for safe cities on its Facebook account. This was on the same day the inquiry uncovered the extent of Calocane’s violence during a previous arrest. Its lack of sensitivity and awareness was sadly symbolic of the state’s failures that have been reinforced over the past four weeks.

Either through neglect or design, UK institutions are failing to keep people safe. This has been one of the most glaring facts exposed throughout the last four weeks. And, when tragedy does occur, it is families that carry the load in getting justice – whether it is Hillsborough, Grenfell or Nottingham, the state’s first response is always to protect itself.

We must never forget Valdo Calocane’s victims. But it is also our duty not to let the authorities who enabled his crimes off the hook. We must not tolerate Broken Britain any longer.

Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.