Loughinisland murders: What the police did wrong
- Despite being implicated in the weapon importations, senior members of the UVF, UDA and Ulster Resistance, "some of whom were informants", were not investigated because Special Branch withheld key evidence.
- In south Down during the late 1980s and early 1990s, "some police officers (placed) more value on collecting information and protecting their sources than on preventing and detecting crime".
- Special Branch failed to pass on intelligence about escalating activities of a "small but ruthless" UVF unit operating in the area, protecting them from effective investigation which may have led to their arrest, preventing their involvement in the Loughinisland attack.
- Most informants involved in importing weapons, some of which were used in at least 70 murders and attempted murder, were not subject to police investigation.
- Failures in the policing response to loyalist paramilitary activities due to a focus on the IRA.
- Significant delay in arresting suspects, despite a compelling intelligence picture identifying them within 24 hours.
- Murder suspects were warned by a police officer before they were arrested for a second time in 1994.
- Special Branch continued relationships with sources identified in intelligence reporting as likely to have been involved at some level in Loughinisland.
- Although at first "properly resourced", the inquiry was quickly scaled down due to "other investigative commitments".
- While awaiting removal of the Triumph Acclaim used by those responsible for the murders, detectives checked if the lights were functioning and if there was any petrol - threatening evidential integrity.
- No evidence the field where the car was found was examined for footprints or soil samples - missed forensic opportunities due to "poor and undisciplined scene management".
- Inadequate investigation of the ownership history of car, with no evidence the officer given the task was briefed about the significance of such inquiries, "a failing for which the murder investigation was entirely responsible".
- Failure to follow-up information that the name and address given by the man who had bought the car from the last registered keeper the night before the shootings were of a prominent member of the UDA.
- Officers tracking UDA vehicles collecting weapons lost sight of them for 90 minutes during January 1988 in remote countryside, when part of the weapons and ammunition cache was retrieved from its hiding place and loaded for the return to Belfast - a military-grade automatic assault rifle from that shipment used at Loughinisland.
- Special Branch failed to provide local officers with information about the operation that preceded the arrests of three men with some of the weapons in Portadown.
- Unwillingness by Belfast Special Branch to provide intelligence and other support to the Special Branch Offices in South Region.
- Following the murder of building contractor Jack Kielty in Dundrum in January 1988, Special Branch began to get information about individuals suspected of involvement in loyalist terrorism in the area and, by mid 1993, had information of their involvement in a series of terrorist incidents, including a gun attack on Thierafurth Inn near Castlewellan in November 1992 killing Peter McCormack, and the murder of Martin Lavery in north Belfast in December - but most of this information was not passed to detectives investigating the attacks.
- One document was marked `NDD/Slow Waltz' (NDD = No Downward Dissemination and `Slow Waltz' = share in slower time, if at all).
- One officer involved was influenced by what he believed to be the republican background of victims.
- ? Sources not asked to gather specific information that could have assisted the murder investigation.
- Desire to protect informants influenced police activity and undermined the investigation into those who carried out the killings that evening.
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