Monthly Archives: October 2011

Panorama

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I watched tonight’s Panorama with interest. In it we had a Chief Executive Constable of ACPO stating that we should recognise officers make mistakes which should be taken into account when dealing with complaints. Yet he seeks to state that the former Special Constable, also featured , somehow justified being sentenced to 3 years imprisonment. Former Special PC Lightfoot deals with a drunken buffoon ejected from a nightclub by bouncers who still have to call the police, abuses an ambulance crew preventing them dealing with a collapsed lady, throws another lady’s handbag into the street, who refuses to go home, falls over twice he is that p*ssed and tries to bite the legs of the attending officers. All Mr Lightfoot did was punch him six times using distraction blows to get him to release his arm or did I miss something? Oh and Mr Lightfoot, being a Special was not even being paid for the privilege. Good grief, I have known rapists and GBH assaults by stabbing get less of a sentence.

I also consider it easy for a closeted ACPO ranking official who last saw an angry man on a cctv camera to pick fault with those at the sharp end. I would also be pleasantly surprised if they chose to get their uPSD to investigate rather than prosecute. I would dearly love for the uPSD to not be allowed to consider any rumour, anecdotes, innuendo or reputation. However, for that to happen we would need to have proper and efficient investigators in our uPSD and we all know that in the majority of cases efficiency and uPSD do not go hand in hand. Unless of course, they have decided to sack you, then they are brilliantly efficient.

The main recipients of this summary uPSD justice are the lower ranks, the street cops. Those brave individuals who put themselves in the firing line day in and day out. They have no support from senior management who are just as likely to cold shoulder them when it suits. Woe betide you making a mistake if your face doesn’t fit. Just ask PC Consterdine from the Conspiracy of Bastards post. I felt that the Durham experiment was worthwhile. The member of the public still not happy at the arrest but understanding the reasons behind it. In my force, that would just be a two year prosecution of the officer for a criminal assault where it was a toss up if he was to face a misconduct panel.

I think I would welcome an independent investigative arm to police discipline but one which specific rules of engagement. Their remit would be to investigate and not prosecute. Their purpose would be to not decide guilt or innocence but to report the full facts to a judiciary or panel for them to make a decision. Being independent they would simply investigate the complaint with no ulterior motive or sinister crusade behind them. One thing it cannot be, though, is the IPCC. That bunch of former school teachers, insurance consultants and DWP clerks thrive on salacious and unwarranted headlines designed to promote and publicise themselves rather than a true reflection of the case facts.

Independent enquiry would do away with Noble Cause Corruption, so say I.

A Conspiracy of Bastards!!

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A long time ago, the police believed they were a prosecuting service. To an extent we still are. However, the focus of attention for the police has now shifted away from prosecuting offenders towards an investigation of the circumstances and allowing other, supposedly qualified, professionals the opportunity to decide whether there is enough evidence to prosecute or not. It is, therefore, a shame when they uPSD’s of this country fail to realise that this is the way they should apply their own efforts.

Take PC Consterdine (not his real name) who was involved in the arrest of an offender. He uses force on the offender which he declares it to his sergeant who does nothing more than absolve all responsibility for it and report it to the uPSD. There is an in car video of the events. This is because the Sgt was a “career boy” and couldn’t make a decision in his life and stick to it. As it happened, PC Consterdine was a referred officer. In my force that is an officer who has more than the average number of complaints. Simply, they get the fact that they have complaints brought to their attention and they are told to change their ways. In reality PC Consterdine was a dog man so the uPSD should actually have told this to his dog who was the real culprit in respect of the complaints. He would insist on biting people very hard and very often.

I suppose that should give you a clue. A dog man with a dog that bites very often??? You guessed it, this was a pro-active police officer who was prepared to put himself out to help others but, in reality, who cared. Certainly not the brainless sergeant who grassed him up because of his weak willed nature nor the uPSD who now had the prime opportunity and aim to get PC Consterdine sacked. This was an officer with numerous letters of appreciation and awards from St John’s Ambulance and other organisations for saving the lives of a stabbing victim and a man who tried to hang himself.

It is simple to get someone sacked in this country, you just make it up as you go along. That is why the uPSD started off with an investigation into PC Consterdine for a common assault. They requested information and advice from the local CPS and eventually submitted a request for the case to be reviewed. How shocked they were when their case plummeted around their ears after a CPS official declared that there was insufficient evidence to convict on the basis of the evidence provided so far.

So what does a uPSD do now? He certainly doesn’t tell the Fed Rep or the Solicitor for the officer. Instead they decide to get a statement from the person who has been struck and, joy upon joy for them, the baddie evidences in his statement that the strike by PC Consterdine broke his arm. The fact that the statement bore no reality to the truth of the situation in any other respect was not lost on the investigators who did not care because they could now reinvestigate the common assault as a grievous bodily harm.

Just hang on a minute!! In the referral to the IPCC did the uPSD declare that they believed the broken arm was caused by a car crash which the offender was involved in? Did the uPSD write to the offenders casualty doctor for evidence of the injury and he wrote back declaring that the injury was caused by the car crash described as a “Chauffeur’s Injury” and could not have been caused by the strike from PC Consterdine. “No worries” said the uPSD, “we will just not tell the Solicitor, the Fed Rep or PC Consterdine. We will pretend that we have the evidence of him committing GBH and get him interviewed. That way, when we get to misconduct tribunal, we can use it against him and get him sacked.”

To summarise, PC Consterdine struck a violent and aggressive offender, declared it to his Sgt, the uPSD could not prove a Common Assault so fabricated a GBH in order to get him into interview, without which any subsequent Misconduct Tribunal would have had no evidence and no opportunity for the prosecuting barrister to get his teeth into. This was done in the full knowledge of senior officers in the uPSD and at least one ACPO officer.

PC Consterdine was required to resign and failed to get his job back at the Police Appeal’s Tribunal. He cannot sue for unfair dismissal and so has to try for a Judicial Review of the decision. We may well be out of time but a Judge will decide that issue. A complaint has been made to the relevant force, they have denied it and refuse to investigate the allegations. Unfortunately for them, they sent papers with the PAT file which, perhaps, they did not intend to send.

My MP is interested, PC Consterdine’s MP is interested. Both are being ignored by the force. Perhaps, this matter may need to be debated in the press!!

Gaddafi – Still getting in the bloody way!

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During my last blog, which was only the other day, I made mention of a forthcoming Panorama programme which features examples of some of our best uPSD work in getting officers convicted of criminal offences for doing their job in difficult circumstances. Then Colonel Bloody Gaddafi pops up and gets himself shot. As a consequence I think the BBC are going for a quick and cheap headline and the Panorama programme being shown is now going to be about Gaddafi rather than the programme we thought. I mean, it’s not as if we aren’t completely and fully aware of his death that we need another half hour of television to tell us some four or five days later. Perhaps, it might be a Noble Cause Corruption type programme featuring some of our best known former Ministers and Prime Ministers who could have dark secrets to be revealed. As a consequence I will be watching!

 

Fran Croucher is innocent – Shock!!

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Well of course it is not a shock. What is a shock is how the uPSD consistently get matters like this wrong and the consequences that arise from such an investigation. From my own bitter experience and that of dealing with other officers it is not uncommon for the uPSD to “tailor” their investigation to whatever point they wish to prove dependent upon which side of their brain the marble happens to be.

I know that there are a number of non police readers of this blog who email me with their thoughts. I ask them to consider this: Today you went out to work to perform an honest day’s graft, earn your money safely and then return home to the bosom of your family content in the knowledge that you received a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Fran Croucher went out to work just like thousands of other police officers but ended up being beaten unconscious. For some reason her local uPSD decided that she was guilty of something and she ended up being prosecuted for trying to perform an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

Remember those police adverts where they got famous people to say “Could you?”

Could you really consider going out, doing your job honestly and then facing the possibility of being sent to prison because you were beaten up at work. Welcome to the UK and welcome to Noble Cause Corruption.

Panorama

Noble Cause has received information that Panorama will be putting the viewpoint of other potential Noble Cause Corruptions in their television programme scheduled for Monday. It will be interesting to see whether the BBC have fairly represented the views of those officers featured as they consider their own fate in attempting to perform a day’s work and being paid back by imprisonment, criminal conviction and job loss. It also includes the case of a former Greater Manchester Police Special Constable who tried to perform and honest day’s work for no pay and still ended up getting 3 years imprisonment. This is the UK and this is Noble Cause Corruption.

Make sure you watch!

The Final Curtain

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I have been a bit tardy lately, largely due to the pressures of work I face. However, I have two bits of interesting news to impart. The first is that John, who features in the post of 7th June 2011 called “Men Behaving Badly????” has now submitted an appeal to the Criminal Case Review Commission. He knows it is a long shot but it is the only shot he has.

Many people who know him are of the opinion he was badly done to not only by the investigating force but also by the judiciary and his own force. A man who is a victim of regular and concerted domestic violence, 18 occasions of which he reports to the job, has photographic evidence of bite marks on his back, bruises to his arms and body, has colleagues who saw a stab wound from an eating fork, should be allowed to defend himself

Unfortunately, one bad investigation later, John is convicted of being reckless in his use of self defence. Clearly the magistrates did not understand the R-v-Beckford stated case quoted to them. We now know that Social Services were in possession of overwhelming evidence against him at least 4 weeks before he was ever interviewed by the police!! The evidence was so overwhelming that all the professionals including the investigating police officers in the meeting came away knowing that on his return to the police station he was to be charged. Why was he interviewed and why did he spend a further 8 hours in custody? I don’t know but it seems a bit suspicious to me. There are several other areas of difficulty which have been reported to the CCRC so we wish him good luck with his appeal.

New Front

On a new front, a former colleague is now in the process of trying to get an out of time Judicial Review of his debacle. His uPSD investigation team, quite simply, deliberately misrepresented the reality of his grievous bodily harm interview by neglecting to point out that the injury subject of the grievous bodily harm was caused by a car crash. Even more sinister is the fact that they knew this fact before the interview for GBH because the doctor treating the “victim” told them so in a statement, conveniently not disclosed to our former colleague, his Federation Rep not his legal representative. Mr NCC has the evidence in his possession and no-one has been to see it. The point in question is this fabricated excuse for an interview was then used in a subsequent misconduct trial where the officer was sacked for excessive use of force. Without the interview was there any evidence? Only the word of a drug fuelled, burgling car thief who provided a statement which was a pack of lies to the uPSD. Why should we worry about the truth when the uPSD have an ulterior motive to the benefit of us all………… apparently!

We believe this to be a crime but the relevant force refuse to investigate. The IPCC hide behind the Police Reform Act and both organisations use delaying tactics to defeat the gathering of evidence. For example, the relevant Police Force is now at day 96 of the Data Protection Act request that they are required to complete within 40 days. They have originally denied the existence of certain information and then suddenly found it when challenged with identities of persons known to have the  information. How about an ACC who carried out a full review of the case but failed to notice that his own uPSD may have acted corruptly? If the courts won’t help us then it may have to be the press. I will keep you posted.

Noble Cause Corruption!!