Double Injustice.

Naomi Hunte and Fiona Holm were killed by the same violent partner, Carl Cooper, within 16 months of each other. Both were from African Caribbean backgrounds, and both had mental health conditions which made them very vulnerable. On both occasions, the police knew of the risks to their lives but did not take any effective action, and both times the result was the woman's death. Both deaths were preventable.

Project Resist is supporting the families of Naomi and Fiona who have come together to make sense of why the police failed so abysmally in their duty of care to both women. In the absence of any other explanation for these failures, the families believe that the police were able to ignore both women simply because they were black, female and disabled. They are seeking urgent answers from the police in their struggle for justice.

"The campaign is important to me because, if the police had listened to my sister Fiona and Naomi, would both still be here. I've lost an important person in Fiona. The police should have done more when she went missing. They did nothing. We had to physically go and look for her ourselves, which we shouldn't have had to do. I feel angry, really angry and hurt. How can they expect us to trust them at all?"

"We want to find mum's body and lay her to rest. We need the future to be better than it has been for our girls and boys. I feel angry and hurt. You see on the video — the police didn't care when they talked to us. Vulnerable people like mum and Naomi should be entitled to more support."

"The police cannot be trusted to do what they are supposed to do. It's a big let-down. It took a year for him to go and kill another lady. If they had done their job, he would not have been in a position to kill for a second time. It's hard to understand why."

Tragically, the deaths of Naomi and Fiona are only the latest, albeit particularly egregious examples, in a long line of cases where reports from women of abuse at the hands of violent partners have been dismissed and investigations into their subsequent murders have been botched.

These cases raise serious questions about continuing police failures in responding to domestic abuse cases. Cooper was a serial perpetrator of high-risk domestic abuse against multiple women and had been convicted in Jamaica in 1989 for four offences of violence against women. Cooper had also been previously prosecuted in the UK in 1999 for the attempted murder of his ex-partner and it is understood that he had also been a suspect in multiple other violent offences against women.

"You have a history of acting in a controlling and coercive manner to your sexual partners. In 1989 you were convicted in Jamaica for four offences of violence. Ms Hunte had made previous complaints to police about your controlling and coercive behaviour. Ms Holm had also made a previous complaint to police about your behaviour. She had also complained to friends that you had stabbed her with a screwdriver. Other women have also made similar complaints about your conduct. I am sure that you have, over many years, been a great danger to women."

We hear about government claims of 'clamping down on police failings', and the police speak about treating domestic abuse as a 'top priority', 'on par with terrorism'.

In practice, what we see is an endless repetition of the same failures year after year. There is a clear lack of political will needed to hold individual police officers and the wider criminal justice system to account.

Trust in the police and criminal justice institutions has continued to erode while the state fails to grapple with the institutional perpetuation of racism, misogyny, ableism, and abuse of power that dominates the policing of violence against women.

This campaign has been launched to:

1. Call on the police to renew their search for Fiona's body with regular updates to the family, and call for witnesses to come forward with any information that can help to locate her body.
2. Build support for the families in their struggle to ensure effective investigations into the police misconduct and discrimination they have had to endure in both cases.
3. Call on the government to work with us to introduce effective measures to fulfil the state's obligations to protect, prevent and prosecute domestic abuse cases and deliver real police accountability. We seek:

• a radical overhaul of the current system of policing domestic abuse and domestic abuse-related homicides;
• a recognition of the obstacles faced by disabled and minoritised women in engaging with the criminal justice system and accountability when the police fail to take reasonable steps to support women in accordance with their own guidance;
• the implementation of robust disciplinary measures where there are clear failures in the investigation of domestic abuse/homicides, including in relation to the effective supervision of those investigations.

In the aftermath of Carl Cooper's murder trial, the police patted themselves on the back for having secured a conviction for the double murder. What they failed to acknowledge is that this was not just a case of double murder but of double injustice generated in a large part by their own mistakes, negligence and inaction. Had they taken effective action in accordance with the law and guidelines on domestic abuse and coercive control, both women might still be alive today.

At the heart of these deaths lies a continuum of abject police failure: their failure to investigate the reports from Naomi and Fiona of serious and life-threatening violence; their failure to take steps within their powers to protect Naomi, their failure to adequately investigate Fiona's allegations of serious violence, their failure to warn Fiona about Carl Cooper's previous history of violence against Naomi and multiple other women; their failure to connect both cases; and their failure to conduct a timely and proper investigation into both of their deaths.

To add insult to injury, after Naomi's murder the Metropolitan Police did not record the case as one requiring an investigation or refer the case to the Independent Office for Police Misconduct, despite the fact that Naomi had repeatedly reported Cooper before she was killed and that her family had expressed concern that she had been the victim of overwhelming police failure to protect her. Whilst Fiona's case was referred to the IOPC after her murder, the IOPC declined to investigate. Following legal submissions, the IOPC finally agreed to open an independent investigation which is currently underway. As well as exploring the broader circumstances of the death the IOPC has opened misconduct investigations into 10 officers, of which 6 meet the severity of gross misconduct. The families are now waiting for the outcome of these investigations.