Your editorial (Ian Tomlinson death: Thoroughly disappointing, 10 May) confirms Inquest's long-held view, formed by our involvement and monitoring of deaths in custody over the past 30 years, which has revealed an institutional unwillingness to approach them as potential crimes. This affects the whole process from selection of and initial briefing of the pathologist, the investigation carried out by the Independent Police Complaints Commission – which may not even define the place of death as a crime scene – through to considerations by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Our criticism of the failure to initiate an independent investigation of Ian Tomlinson's death immediately led to a very public spat in your pages, culminating in us asking "why wait to launch a fully independent investigation?" (Response, 23 April 2009). For too long there has been a pattern of cases where inquest juries have found overwhelming evidence of unlawful and excessive use of force or gross neglect and yet no one at an individual or senior management level has been held responsible. It is vital that fundamental changes are made to the whole approach to investigating contentious deaths if we are to avoid a repetition of the damaging process that the Tomlinson family has had to endure.
Helen Shaw and Deborah Coles
Co-directors, Inquest
• Your editorial criticises the IPCC investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson for being insufficiently thorough. This criticism is at odds with the view of the coroner who presided over the recent inquest, and who thanked the IPCC for a "very thorough and timely investigation". The evidence from the IPCC's investigation was subjected to intense scrutiny in the course of the inquest, which found that Mr Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed. This verdict was in line with our own conclusions, when we submitted the file to the Crown Prosecution Service in August 2009 with a recommendation that the officer be prosecuted for manslaughter. I encourage your readers to read the Tomlinson reports, all three of which are available on our website, for themselves and draw their own conclusions about the thoroughness of our investigations.
Deborah Glass
Deputy chair, IPCC
• What causes me most outrage is the fact that despite seeing a member of the public assaulted by PC Harwood and confirming the events to colleagues, three police officers failed to go to the assistance of a man who in their own words was confused and lying on the floor. The morality of modern policing leaves a great deal to be desired and one wonders, if CCTV footage and phone images published by the Guardian had not come to light, whether the police would even have investigated this unlawful killing.
Stephen Black
Kettering, Northamptonshire