An Independent Police Complaints Commission: sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? But who will guard the guards themselves?
Roman society wrestled with the same question that today’s society
cannot answer: who polices the police? The
public have always required protection from corrupt or negligent police
officers and in today's society this protection is supposed to come from The
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Police corruption is a growing
problem and in the last five years alone investigations handled by the IPCC
rose from 30 to 150. The IPCC needs to cope with their ever increasing work
load, but it also has to address how to make their investigations more
successful. Police corruption not only affects the standards of policing, and undermines
public faith in this service but the tactics employed by the IPCC and Police to
maintain wrongful convictions have wider repercussions for us all.
Only
at the end of July this year the IPCC wrote in a letter to me “we are
completely independent of the police service and are responsible for making
sure that the police complaints system in England and Wales works effectively
and fairly.”[1]
This statement suggests that they are autonomous, self-reliant and
unconstrained when they investigate complaints against serving police
officers. But the IPCC have no powers to
investigate the actions of retired police officers, which is why so many retire
when they face an IPCC investigation. Quite why police officers should be
granted immunity from investigation upon retirement is unknown. No other criminal is given immunity from
investigation, even if they have been law abiding for twenty years. Even the
Metropolitan police are currently looking to bring charges 27 years after the
murder of PC Keith Blakelock in a remarkable turn of events since the original
conviction of Silcott, Braithwaite and Raghip in 1987, which was overturned in
1991 when forensic tests suggested fabricated interview records. There is no
statute of limitation for ordinary criminals, even if they have retired from a
life of crime many years previously.
Police officers on the other hand gain immunity from investigation as
soon as they retire which effectively allows a serving police officer to act corruptly
or negligently with impunity. I
believe that police officers should still be responsible for their actions upon
their retirement. Under the current system the IPCC are the only organisation
which can investigate the actions of serving police officers, but the IPCC doesn’t
actually do this itself. They state, “our
role is to forward your complaint to the relevant police authority........for
them to consider.[2]
In
the process of investigating how a miscarriage of justice has occurred, a large
amount of documents are filtered through by the Defence and evidence accumulated,
and a cyclic process then begins. For example in my case between 1991 and 2012,
there have been over 100 complaints made against Essex police in relation to my
case, 24 made during 1991 alone. Further complaints have been made in the past
ten years including seventy nine in the last 18 months. On each occasion recently
the IPCC have accepted the advice from Essex police not to discipline or
prosecute any of the police officers that have had complaints lodged against
them. On many occasions Essex Police
have applied for a “dispensation” on grounds that my complaints were not lodged
within 12 months of the alleged offence, which is tricky given that the
complaints could only be made after disclosure was granted by the police
themselves, many years after the date of the offence. Another excuse for
“dispensation” has been that the officers have retired. In some cases the IPCC
have waited for considerable periods with a complaint lodged and during this
time the offending officer has retired.
The
IPCC therefore have instructed Essex police officers to investigate themselves,
which goes against the grain of being 'completely independent'. All police complaints are investigated within
the same police authority, except on the rare occasion when the complaint is so
serious as to warrant an investigation by police officers from a different
authority.
It
is quite possible that a police officer facing a complaint will be investigated
by a colleague, a friend of a friend, or a friend of a family member. This is especially so in my case which
involved over two hundred police officers from the Chelmsford area all being
investigated by Chelmsford officers themselves. Therefore, police officers would
potentially be able to discuss the nature of the complaint at their
leisure. The public should not be
surprised when their complaints are not upheld.
Often evidence has been 'lost' or 'mislaid' making it impossible for an
investigation to reach a conclusion.
The
IPCC’s work is closely tied to other MOJ Departments including that of the
CCRC. I am sure that I am not the only person who has lodged complaints with
the IPCC, and the progress of the complaint was deliberately stalled until the
CCRC made an announcement, the defendant then finds that his or her complaints
are dismissed very suddenly. These government departments are clearly dependent
on one another for decision making. And yet the CCRC claim that their role is
not to investigate the conduct of police officers and the IPCC maintain that
they are not to be used as leverage to overturn a conviction.
This
dimension is employed by the police to avoid having to investigate complaints,
the IPCC say that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has already
investigated matters. In a letter from Charles Garbett, the Acting Chief
Executive and Treasurer of the Essex Police Authority, dated 2nd
August 2012, he states: “the documents held by the Force in regard to your
complaints were available to the CCRC and no issue has been raised by them in
respect that the Force has not co-operated with them”.[3]
The
case documents total approximately three and a half million pages, three hundred
and forty thousand of which are concealed behind a Public Interest Immunity
certificate (PII). A good analogy would be: it’s as difficult as trying to find
a single needle in a haystack. Firstly, the CCRC needed to be looking for the
needle and my complaints have been made since my submissions to the CCRC, who therefore
cannot possibly have looked amongst the documents for my specific complaints
and secondly the CCRC may have had access to the 'haystack' but the fact that
they didn't find the 'needle' doesn't mean that the 'needle' didn't exist!
The
IPCC have been provided with two DVD's which contain all the documents and case
photographs that the CCRC couldn't find, but which prove specific police
complaints. The IPCC have now been given
that 'needle' from the 'haystack', and I wonder what excuse will be given by
Essex police for not investigating these current police complaints.
The
public may believe that the IPCC actually police the police, but they do
not. The police actually police
themselves. Most of the time police complaints even fail to be
investigated. When an investigation does
occur they are rarely upheld as a police officer can avoid scrutiny by simply
retiring. This loophole has been
slightly tightened recently, but not made entirely obsolete. Retired police officers are still immune from
an IPCC investigation.
Just
as Juvenal wondered who is to 'Guard the Guards' themselves, it is likely that
he would be equally dissatisfied with the actions of the IPCC, were they to be
responsible for 'guarding the guards', just as the public are today with how
the IPCC police our police, some two thousand years later.
Until
police complaints are investigated by a truly independent organisation, corrupt
or negligent police officers will continue to avoid being properly
investigated. The Home Affairs Select Committee is due to report on the
effectiveness of the IPCC in September 2012.
It is to be hoped that this immunity for officers, whether they are in
service or retired, becomes a thing of the past and equally it must be correct
and lawful that all officers should be accountable for their misconduct. I also
welcome the proposal by the new head of the IPCC, Dame Ann Owers, to recruit
more people from outside of the police. Whether this move will bring about the
radical changes needed remains to be seen but in the meantime it is a step in
the right direction.
For
further resource on how judicial processes interfere with overturning wrongful
convictions see publications:
Bamber, J, Gilfoyle, E, May, S, How judicial procedures obstruct miscarriages
of justice from being overturned: the search for truth in an adversarial system.
http://jeremybamber.org/judicial-process/
Naughton, M. The Criminal Cases Review Commission: Innocence Versus Safety and the
Integrity of the Criminal Justice System. http://www.innocencenetwork.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Michael-Naughton-CLQ-FINAL.pdf
Robbins, J. The Justice Gap Series http://thejusticegap.com/justicegapseries/wrongly-accused/
Robbins, J. The Justice Gap Series http://thejusticegap.com/justicegapseries/wrongly-accused/
Sekar, S.
(ed. Mansfield, M.) The Cardiff Five:
Innocent Beyond Any Doubt. http://www.watersidepress.co.uk/acatalog/info_9781904380764.html
