Letter to DI Preddy

Your letter of the 19th October contains two paragraphs to which I need to respond:

(1) I note that on 22 March 2005 Chief Inspector Matthews wrote to you requesting that you supply him with receipts of purchase and an official quotation for the repair of your equipment, but it appears you have not responded to his request.

(2) I cannot progress this aspect of your complaint as a misconduct matter as I have no evidence to prove that any damage was indeed caused.

I will comment briefly on both paragraphs, even though I may be wasting my time: if you have no evidence that the police damaged my property, presumably Sussex Police do not have any such evidence either, so my making a claim to the police for damage to my property by the police at this stage would in all likelihood be futile.

(1) Chief Inspector Matthews did write to me on 22 March 2005. I responded to his letter on 26th March 2005, pointing out to him that my correspondence with Sussex Police involved much more than the "two specific issues" mentioned in his letter. As you presumably have a copy of that letter, I shall not enclose a copy herewith.

I said in my letter to CI Matthews, "I may well want to pursue a claim for compensation", but that would not simply include items which the police had damaged and for which there were "receipts of purchase" or "an official quotation for repair".

I have found an invoice for the camera which the police rendered useless (£229.12) and for the computer case which was damaged (£87.00 + shipping + VAT), but not for the hard drive which was destroyed, and I do not have a receipt for the cost of the migration of my Internet connection to another broadband provider as a consequence of PC Francis having had my website closed down.

Whether the photographic and computer equipment can be repaired, or if it can whether it would justify the costs involved, is open to doubt; but I could probably give the police the opportunity of arranging any repairs themselves.

The cost to me of police action last August – apart from the psychological distress caused – goes well beyond items damaged by the police. Shortly before I was arrested and had my cameras and computers seized, I had agreed to act as a tutor to local U3A groups who wanted to learn about computers. As a result, I had to buy another computer in order to write tutorial materials and, as the courses included photo-editing, another digital camera. As the basic notebook I bought did not have a parallel port and my laser printer was designed for use with one, I bought an electronic device which was supposed to make some parallel-port printers work with USB ports. It did not work with my printer, so I had to buy a new laser printer. The classes which I tutored took place in Polegate library, which has computers with 3½-inch drives. The notebook I had bought did not have a 3½-inch drive, so I had to buy an external drive in order to add tutorial materials to floppy discs for use by the students.

I have no receipts for the hundreds of files lost from the hard disc which was destroyed by the police, and to read the thousands of files on three other discs which had been rendered unusable, I had to buy another electronic device. It took me about two and a half months of work to sort out the mess made of my computers by the police.

I hope I have said enough to indicate that any claim I may wish to make against the police is likely to include much more than items which the police damaged and for which I have a receipt.

(2) You say I have no evidence to prove that any damage was indeed caused.

This statement surprises me. I do not know whether to attribute it to the fact that you have not been given most of the evidence in the case, or have not looked at it; to the fact that you will go to great lengths to exculpate the police from blame; or to the fact that your idea of the meaning of the term evidence differs markedly from my own. To check and refocus my own understanding of the term I looked up several definitions of it (appended to this letter) before saying:

(a) I agree that you do not "have" my damaged hardware, but your case worker has seen and handled my damaged Kodak camera, he has seen my damaged computer case, and I still have the two hard discs which were written on while out of my possession, one of which no longer works.

(b) My testimony about the damage should be available to you among the complaints submitted by me to the police in the form of an official witness statement, on my website, and in many letters and emails sent by me to Sussex Police. If you do not "have" some of that evidence, and are unable to obtain it from the Internet or from your own force, I can supply it.

Your comment on evidence seems to me on a par with the assertion of PC Francis that the damage to my side gate was not evidence of forced entry onto my property by six people, three of whom, including an ex-policeman, assaulted me.

I was pleased to read that you have nearly concluded your investigation, so that I should soon be able to move on if I think it necessary.

[An appendix was added with twenty definitions of the word evidence.]