"The Police investigation was marred by incompetence" - is this statement correct?

[joshdell92]

Hi guys

Have been working away at my GCSE coursework for sometime now, and the title of the largest question is the title of the thread. I was just wondering how far you agree with this and whether there are any good angles any of you could recommend to approach the question from? My belief is that the fact the police had never never dealt with anything like, let alone the concept of, a serial killer caused the investigation to be not as successful as one would hope. The fear brought about by this left them confused and unable to sufficiently deal with the public furore and mixed press-coverage.

All the best,
Josh

[smezenen]

I would have to say incompetence is the wrong word to use when describing the investigations into the Whitechaple murders.
Here are a few different angles you can look into:

1-JTR was not the first murderer in London, not even the first multiple murderer, so inexperience may have played a part in that the officials had never investigated a murderer that took his game to such extremes, they had however plenty of experience investigating murders in general.

2-They did not investigate these crimes as "serial" killings because the term "Serial Killer" had not been invented yet, the term was first used in the 1970's, and is credited to former FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler, rather they treated these crimes as a series of killings committed by one or more murderers.

3-We also must look at the case load the officials were trying to handle at the time, with the Post Office robbery, the Fenian plot to murder Lord Balfour, the general robbery and other crimes, all taking manpower and time away from the JTR investigation.

4-Another factor we have to remember is that modern day forensic techniques where either in their infancy or where not available to the investigating forces of London’s Victorian period, so we must look at the case from a contemporary point of view when we assess the effectiveness of the police forces and their investigation.

So a more accurate conclusion would be not incompetence but rather inexperience, case overload, and lack of technology/investigative tools that where the contributing causes of any marring of the investigation into Whitechaple murders.

[Monty]

Josh,

I suggest you read this excellent dissertation by Brian Schoeneman.

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/schoeneman-crisis.html

Monty