Well people are always saying the police these days never get out of their cars and walk.

It appears that in this case they don't seem to have realised that there's a short cut across the park which cuts the distance very considerably, from 1.8 miles to 1.3 miles.

Every non-police detective in fiction from Sherlock Holmes on seems to have run up against police investigators who make mistakes like that. But on top of that to have a team of high powered lawyers who apparently couldn't even read a map...