All they wanted was an admission. Instead, the family and supporters of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence watched as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, offered grand statements about racism yesterday when he gave evidence to the second phase of the inquiry into the investigation of the teenager's death.
Nearly two hours of evidence, during which the Commissioner apologised to the Lawrence family for the failure to bring their son's "racist murderers" to justice, were bogged down by the inquiry team's eagerness for Sir Paul to acknowledge the existence of institutional racism in the force and his determination not to use those words.
Again and again he peered over his glasses and told the inquiry team: "I am not in denial . . . I am not in denial," as they pressed him, one by one, to accept that the Metropolitan Police Force was guilty of widespread and institutional racism.
"I acknowledge that there is racism in the police service, but unconscious and covert racism is an unfair premise. If I believed that racism or corruption impacted on this case in any way I would have already said so. I honestly and sincerely believe those issues did not influence this tragic case."
Reaction to his evidence and 10-page submission to the inquiry team on how the force is tackling the problem of racism among its officers was a mixture of disbelief and anger, as supporters of the Lawrence family again called on the Commissioner to resign.
Afterwards Mrs Doreen Lawrence told reporters that she did not believe Sir Paul was racist, but it was wrong for him to believe that racism did not affect the investigation into her son's murder in 1993.
Her husband, Mr Neville Lawrence, stood beside her and said he did not want Sir Paul to resign. Instead, he wanted him to implement measures to tackle racism. He must "put things right and admit what is wrong is wrong", he said. "It's been five years. There has been no change."
It is perhaps too early to say whether Sir Paul will be forced to resign. His admission that individual officers were not only guilty of "patronising . . . wholly inappropriate . . . counterproductive" behaviour, but that an internal police review of the investigation into Stephen Lawrence's death misled key officers is personally damaging.
Several hundred supporters gathered inside the headquarters of the inquiry at the Elephant and Castle shopping centre to hear Sir Paul's evidence, which was perhaps the most difficult public appearance of his five-year term.
They jeered and heckled him with taunts of "racist", "whitewash" and "shame" and at times he struggled to be heard as he insisted "the grief that they [the Lawrences] have felt, I have shared . . . "
Asked by Mr Richard Stone, a former GP and adviser to the inquiry team, to accept that institutional racism existed in the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul paused and replied: "It would be dishonest of me to say that to ease the pain . . . if the inquiry team uses that term to move the issue forward we will respond positively."
He said the public would not understand the term and would assume all police officers were racist, undermining the endeavours of the force to root racists out.