Police Guidance 2006

A practical approach based on day-to-day policing in Sussex, which has a force with professional standards that according to the Chairman of the Sussex Police Authority Complaints Committee - apparently invoking the word of the head of HMIC - is among the five best in the country!

Experience shows that the IPCC will not find fault with any of the following recommendations.

2006 Part 1

THE MANAGEMENT OF EVIDENCE

1. Witness Statements from members of the public

(a) Those who claim to be victims of crime
(i) It is the role of the police officer to write statements for so-called victims, so take all possible steps to prevent members of the public writing their own statement, and if a member of the public insists on the inclusion of something of which the officer does not approve or the exclusion of something which the officer wants to include, do not let that member of the public make a statement at all, so the police will be at liberty to invent their own wording under the so-called victim's name in the official crime records. If possible, do not allow that member of the public access to that record. This strategy is useful if you want to protect a particular individual, such as an ex-policeman, from criminal charges.

(ii) Should it prove impossible to prevent a self-professed victim of crime from signing a statement, for example if he or she has already written and signed a statement before you have the opportunity of preventing them from doing so, simply ignore that statement and any statement you write yourself in order to give the appearance of doing your job as an investigating officer, when you come to give your own account of the incident in the official Criminal Records. Should the victim take the extraordinary step of demanding to see criminal records using the Data Protection Act, and as a result tries to file a complaint, a colleague will simply refuse to record it.

(iii) The investigating officer can incorporate into his or her written record comments by the so-called victim, but he or she should use leading questions to ensure that words and phrases taken from legislation relevant to the putative crime are included, to construct a more convincing case.

(iv) Though copies of witness statements for the prosecution are usually given to a person who is charged with crime, it is important to withhold any witness statement which might be seriously challenged by the criminal, so that he or she will be unprepared to face in court the evidence which such a statement will provide. Should the charged person take the extraordinary step of demanding a copy of a statement using the Data Protection Act, you can rely on a colleague refusing the request on the grounds of "confidentiality and duty of care" towards the individual who signed the statement.

(v) For trivial matters, for example an allegation that an ex-policeman has threatened to beat up his next door neighbour and put him in need of intensive care in hospital, do not allow any formal statement to be made, and do not make a record of the incident.

(vi) If you are appointed as an investigating officer, take a proactive approach, adversely criticising the behaviour of the accused person before beginning to question him or her, and recording something against them at the outset, such as "affray", to show how you mean to go on.

(vii) An investigating officer should ensure that he or she is in complete control of any questioning. If what the villain says contravenes your expectations, say "Keep quiet and listen to me."

(viii) An investigating officer for a particular incident should not allow an aggrieved person any chance whatever to give evidence of previous incidents which led up to the present incident, as the police officer's job is to deal strictly with the current incident, thereby minimising its importance.

(ix) An investigating officer faced with concrete evidence of criminal activity by the persons wishing to bring a charge against a villain, should dismiss that evidence as not of a character that would be upheld in court. Such a strategy is particularly important when one of those wishing to bring a charge is an ex-policeman.

(x) If a villain records what you said re. 1(a)(vi) and 1(a)(viii) on a website, have that website closed down, seize his or her computers, and sabotage the computers so that they are no longer usable, and the records may be destroyed. You can safely ignore any official police decision that "no examination of the computer equipment [should] be made." Useful strategies include removing part of the operating system, adding a password, preventing access to the BIOS, and rendering all hard disks unreadable.

(b)Those who can be persuaded to give corroborative evidence
(i) If possible, the investigating officer should also write witness statements for members of the public who can be persuaded to support the police in court, again using leading questions to strengthen your case, though it is better to have a statement written by a member of the public than not to have a statement at all, providing it seems to have any relevance whatever to the case.

2. The Case Summary

(a) There is opportunity here to add material not included in the original charges put to the defendant, and you can strengthen the police case by simple multiplication. For example, if a person says that he has seen the prisoner on one occasion walking in his garden, improve on this by saying, "he has observed the defendant on occasion", suggesting that this happened several times. If a person says that the prisoner hit the top off a plant, say that the defendant has cut "parts of his plants" down. Such multiplication of course is particularly useful if you are concocting a charge of harassment.

3. Taped evidence

(a) Remember that it is very unlikely that a defendant will ever hear any tape recordings you make, as your colleagues will ignore or refuse any request from the defendant to be sent copies of the tapes. Most people with an interest in the case will be content to rely on a written record of taped interview, which allows for judicious editing of the text to strengthen your case against the defendant.

(b) For a long interview, requiring more than one tape, take the opportunity, early in the second recording, to recapitulate the material on the first tape, slanting the summary with the introduction of untruths to strengthen the police's case.

(c) The Record of Taped Interview
(i) According to CPS Guidance on Tape Recorded Interviews, for a "complex" case (the defendant being expected to plead "not guilty"), the Record "should contain not only admissions but also the main salient points verbatim." Take that with a pinch of salt: it is for the police officer to decide what might or might not be a salient point, so omit any section of the recording which would seem to favour the defendant and weaken the police's case.

(ii) Introduce quasi-phonetic spellings into your record of taped interview, to give an appearance of careful and accurate transcription, but introduce small edits to strengthen the prosecution's case. For example:

• If the defendant says that he has put up with insulting remarks from neighbours for more than five years and that he is unwilling, verbally, to engage in such confrontation, simply change unwilling to willing.

• If the defendant says that he wrote insulting remarks about complainants in an attempt to dissuade them from using abusive language to him, you could change that to in an attempt to disgrace them."

(iii) Another useful strategy is to make nonsense of what the defendant says: for example, if the defendant concludes the interview by saying, "I think the alarm and distress I've been caused since 1999 are very much greater than any alarm and distress that have been caused to the McCombies", simply changing to the McCombies to from the McCOMBIE's should effectively confuse the matter.

(d) Notice to Person Whose Interview Has Been Tape Recorded
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Code E, 4.19 says, "The suspect shall be handed a notice which explains:
"• how the audio recording will be used
"• the arrangements for access to it
"• that if the person is charged or informed they will be prosecuted, a copy of the audio recording will be supplied as soon as practicable or as otherwise agreed between the suspect and the police."

Ignore that rubbish. The notice needs to be signed by the defendant, but do not allow the defendant to read or fill in anything else on the form. Hold the form down on the worktop, with your hand covering the explanatory top half, and just tell the prisoner to sign it. You can then fill in the rest of the form yourself at your leisure.

4. Evidence held on a villain's computers

Copies of anything that the police might find useful in court should be made before following the advice in 1 (ix). In no circumstances must the defendant be allowed access to documents on his computers which might help his case, so refuse any such request, though to give an appearance of complyiing with justice you can use the formula adopted by PI Brown of Hailsham, "Sussex Police will not be making any disclosures of the evidence and documents that you request unless it falls within the rules of disclosure." If documents are no longer accessible, the common law duty of disclosure will be ineffective.

The IPCC having failed in 2006 to deal with complaints from me dated 20th August and 2nd September of that year about dishonesty and corruption on the part of Sussex Police, any additions to the above will require a revised 2007 edition of the document.