The Metropolitan Police has paused the murder investigation into Abraham Badru, a young man who was shot dead outside his Hackney home in 2018 after helping convict a gang of rapists as a 14-year-old, citing resourcing pressures within the homicide command. His family have reacted with anger and accused the force of betrayal, arguing that Badru sacrificed his safety and normal life to secure convictions that would not otherwise have been possible, only for his own killing to go unpunished and now effectively abandoned.

Badru intervened in 2007 to stop a gang rape on a Hackney estate and later testified in court, helping secure nine convictions, including a life sentence for ringleader O'Neil Denton. He received a police bravery award in 2009 but subsequently lived in fear of reprisals, changing his appearance and identity, before being shot dead in March 2018 at the age of 26. Eight years on, no suspects have been identified, and a senior detective told his parents that "no active investigative steps are being undertaken at present" due to reduced homicide command officer numbers, prompting his father Enitan to condemn the decision as a betrayal of his son's sacrifice.