The police force that issued the Plymouth gunman Jake Davison with a shotgun certificate has said he should never have been allowed to have the weapon and apologised in public for the first time to his victims’ families.
Devon and Cornwall police also said Davison, who had a history of violence and an obsession with weapons from an early age, should “certainly” not have been given his shotgun back after it was confiscated when he attacked two children the year before the shootings.
Ch Supt Roy Linden, who leads the force’s learning improvement after the tragedy, said there had been a series of problems within the force’s firearms department, including budgetary pressures, a reduction in staff numbers, IT issues and a culture problem with workers too tolerant of risk.
On 12 August 2021, Davison killed his mother, Maxine, 51, three-year-old Sophie Martyn, her father, Lee, 43, Stephen Washington, 59, and Kate Shepherd, 66, in Keyham, Plymouth. Davison, 22, then turned his pump action shotgun on himself.
He had been given back the shotgun and his certificate just weeks before, after they had been removed following the attack on the children in a Plymouth park.
Addressing an inquest jury in Exeter, Linden said the force believed Davison should not have been issued the certificate in January 2018 and after it was taken off him he “certainly should not have been given the shotgun and certificate back”. Linden told the inquest: “For that we apologise. It should not have happened.”
He said that as well as the budgetary, staff numbers and IT issues, a lack of leadership and failings in the way staff were trained was a “significant” factor, adding: “It’s quite clear there was an overly optimistic tolerance to risk.”
The inquest has heard that there is still no national accredited training scheme for firearms department staff a quarter of a century after the Dunblane tragedy.
Dominic Adamson KC, representing some of the victims’ families, suggested there had been “decades of inertia” on training at a national level. Linden replied: “Yes.”
Adamson put to him that recommendations made after the Dunblane shootings around training had not been implemented. He answered: “The evidence bears that out.”
Asked if the Home Office and police forces were “sleeping at the wheel” when it came to training, he replied: “There should have been a national training programme.”
Linden said the force had doubled the number of staff in its firearms department from 45 to 99 and made significant changes to training and staff culture, with the approach to risk reset. He said the refusal rate for shotgun certificates was now 6.2% – double the average for England and Wales.
He also told the jury that the force believed the same rules should apply to the system for shotgun licensing as for other firearms – at the moment there are fewer restrictions around shotguns. He also said the cost of a shotgun licence should be increased from the current £79.50 for an initial application.
Linden said there was a “tendency” to say such a tragedy could never happen again, but added the “sobering and sad fact” was that it could.
The inquest continues.
