‘Police failed to act on Raoul Moat death threats’

A POLICE watchdog has outlined how warnings gunman Raoul Moat had threatened to harm his former partner while he was in prison were not acted upon by officers.

Moat shot his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart and her boyfriend Chris Brown two days after he was released from Durham Prison in July 2010.

Mr Brown died but Miss Stobbart survived. Moat, 37, then shot Pc David Rathband and later killed himself in Rothbury, Northumberland, following a huge police manhunt.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigated officers’ involvement with Moat.

In its report last year, the IPCC claimed “intelligence was forwarded to Northumbria Police during the afternoon of July 2”.

Now a second report into the handling of the intelligence, not yet published but seen by sections of the media, says prison reports about Moat’s threats were not acted upon.

According to the draft document, Moat made the threats in a conversation with another inmate who said he was vowing to do serious harm.

It said the prison’s security information report was passed between various prison in-trays and read and signed by at least three senior officers.

Information was passed to Northumbria Police’s Public Protection Unit but the IPCC report also said there was confusion over the identity of Moat’s partner.

It said information was also passed to the Northumbria Police Force Intelligence Bureau – but staff at the unit had already gone home for the night.

The report stressed there was no evidence of misconduct by two police officers.