The scene in Castle Road on the day of the raid – which Camden police knew nothing about

CAMDEN police still have no clue about a botched armed raid on a house right in the middle of their patch – and only heard about it when they read about it in the New Journal.

Top officers admitted this week they were still in the dark about the circumstances which left a teacher facing a squad equipped with heavy weapons and shields at his front door in Castle Road, Kentish Town.

Neighbours and passers-by were left startled by the scene earlier this month, but Chief Inspector Nicholas Hackett-Peacock said – eleven days after the incident – the borough’s force were still seeking information on what had happened and why. The armed unit left without arresting anybody or finding anything suspicious.

Omar Abdo, who was handcuffed and pulled away from his own home,  said last week that: “All I could see was a lot of guns in my face and all I could think was that my life was over. “I really thought I was going to get a bag thrown over my head and I was going to get taken away. It felt like the army was coming in and no one would know where I had gone..”

It has been established that the warrant was executed by a specialist firearm team within the Met but nobody told local officers, leaving its senior leadership facing awkward questions as to how such a significant police incident could take place without them knowing.

Chief Inspector Nicholas Hackett-Peacock said on Monday: “I can’t clarify to you why the BCU [Borough Command Unit] wasn’t notified. That’s why we’ve reached out to the team [specialist fire arm] to request that information. We reached out to them when we were aware of it being picked up by the media.”

He added: “We’ve reacted at the same time as the residents of Camden have. Unfortunately, we weren’t sighted at all that this warrant had been conducted or what the result was, until it hit the media and we’ve engaged with our SNB [Safer Neighbourhood Board] partners to try and find out further what’s happened and to reach out to the relevant investigating teams.”

The case has raised questions over how far police are going to explain their actions to the public. Without information or scrutiny, police would be able to do what they liked without ever having to justify their choices and behaviour. Weekly interviews with the local press were ended several years ago and now most incidents are filtered through the central Met publicity team.

When the New Journal asked the Met Police about the incident last week, its communications unit – known as the press bureau – said there was no record of any operation or a raid on a house. It only confirmed it had taken place after several enquiries by our reporter and the sharing of photos taken by a passer-by shocked by the scale of the weaponry involved.

Ch Supt Hackett-Peacock was answering questions during his appearance at the Town Hall’s cross-party Culture and Scrutiny Committee.

Its chair, Councillor Awale Olad, held aloft last week’s front page story and asked him: “I want to learn how the police operate internally. It seems completely dysfunctional that nobody has told you that an operation was about to take place, nobody is responding to your requests as to why this operation took place on your own patch and nobody seems to want to highlight the issues.

“It just looks like they don’t want to engage in any way, shape or form, and only decided to engage once pictures and videos emerged. I’m sorry but it just looks completely murky to, I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

He described it as an “atrocious” incident and said it was the second time in two years that armed police had targeted a black household and left with nothing. Officers said that they would have had “community engagement” work in place if they had known the operation was taking place. Police have been told they should have been aware of the impact such actions could have on people living in the area.

Ch Insp Hackett-Peacock said he could not say why he had yet to received any response or update from the firearms team.

“I understand your viewpoint, I don’t necessarily agree with it,” he told Cllr Olad during their exchange.

“We have reached out to the department. They haven’t got back to us yet, and we will continue with our efforts to obtain that update and make sure it is passed to the relevant parties. I can’t give an explanation as to why they haven’t contacted us since Thursday, but there could be a myriad of reasons. I don’t necessarily think that delay in answering an email is an indication of anything murky.

“It is frustrating we haven’t got the update and we will continue to look into that for you.”

But Cllr Olad said: “I’m shocked and appalled by this, and incredibly disappointed,  and I’m hoping we do hear something back really quite quickly because our residents shouldn’t be living in fear. It is disappointing that our own chief inspector isn’t able to give us any proper answers to any of these questions.”

Mr Abdo said: “In the Somali community here in Camden, when something like this happens, they won’t want to take this forward. They will just think this is another day. They need to change their mindset and speak out so it doesn’t happen to other people again. That’s why I am speaking out. There is no way this should be part of normal life.”

Mr Abdo has returned from China where he was teaching English in a school for three years. He has recently finished an IT course and said he was looking at getting into “data engineering”.

He said that he had been wrongly stopped by firearms officers five years ago in Kentish Town and that he “used to get stopped a bit when I was a kid”, adding: “Who doesn’t growing up in Camden?”

Last week, a Met spokesman said: “On Friday, January 6, officers executed a warrant under the Firearms Act at a residential address in Castle Road. Entry was conducted by specialist firearms officers. No police firearms or taser were discharged. The address was searched and nothing found. No arrests were made.”

No apology to Mr Abdo has been included in any statement so far.