List of complaints about Sussex Police

1. Wilful blindness on the part of Sussex Police
On two occasions I have been assaulted by an ex-policeman, my next-door neighbour. On each occasion the investigating officer said that he was only investigating the incident which had just been reported, and that he could not take account of previous incidents.

(a) On the first occasion, I was assaulted, punched repeatedly, and knocked to the ground by an ex-policeman. On two previous occasions, the same ex-policeman had threatened to beat me up, on the first occasion specifying that I would need intensive care in hospital.

(b) On the second occasion, the assault by the ex-policeman and two of his friends had been preceded by the previous assault, and many other forms of harassment which had been reported to the police. Had these been taken into account, it is inconceivable that I would have been charged and arrested by the police, that I would have been deprived of my property, and that two computers would have been rendered unusable and a camera would have been broken by the police.

2. Gross prejudice on the part of the Sussex Police
(a) After the first occasion on which I was assaulted by an ex-policeman, I was not allowed to sign a statement about what had happened because I refused to allow the statement to say that I did not want matters taken further.

On 25 March 2002 I emailed the Police Complaints Authority an enquiry about making a statement to the police. Richard M Offer of the PCA replied on 26 March 2002, "Your statement should be an accurate statement of what happened in your own words. Police officers often help prepare witness statements because they have experience of such work and because they can prompt you to recall what happened, descriptions etc."

This in my experience is not what happens in Sussex, both before and after the appointment of the present chief constable. Before he even spoke to me, the sergeant had accepted my assailant's contention that there had been an argument which led to a fight. When a constable had failed to get me to accept this version of events, the sergeant himself dictated a statement to a police constable. The sergeant decided what was to be included, though I was able to have the occasional word altered. The statement was supposed to end by saying that I did not want to take matters further. I refused to allow this, so the sergeant did not allow me to sign the statement.

I made my own statement about the assault by lodging a complaint with the PCA. The only result of this was a visit from Acting Inspector Barrasford, who asked me whether I wanted the sergeant punished. He did not tell me that the police's lie that I had been involved in an "altercation" would remain on record.

I do not know what the police found convincing about my assailant's account of events, but here is the account he gave in a statement filed in Eastbourne County Court:

Extract from Witness Statement of Clive Mabry, signed 15/0/02, paragraph 8:

". . . on 25th March 2002. My wife arrived home and found that the Claimant had removed part of the fence and the dividing wall. This followed comments by District Judge Robinson at the hearing on 21st March 2002. The District Judge confirmed that Mr Madden could remove the fence on his part of the boundary wall. I should point out that the boundary wall changes ownership halfway along. The Claimant had remove this fence and the Claimant reacted by hitting me over the head with a broom. I accept that I responded after this and there was a bit of a tussle between us. In the end, the Police were called. I had a bruise on my head and the Claimant had a cut on his hand. The Police confirmed that if they took action against one party, they would have to take action against both of us. I therefore declined to press charges."

[The date was 23rd, not the 25th March. Mrs Mabry was at home at the time, and alleged that I was doing "criminal damage" in unbolting fencing from my wall. I did not at the time remove any of the wall. At the next court hearing incidentally, District Judge Robinson complained that the police had telephoned him, as a result of which he had had to listen to the tape recording of the previous hearing.]

(b) After I was assaulted by Mabry for a second time and by two of his friends, when PC Francis, the "investigating officer", arrived to "take" a statement from me, he started by saying that he was recording that I had been involved in an "affray". This was after he had spent four and a half hours interviewing two of the people who had assaulted me. He refused to take past incidents - five and a half years of harassment - into account, and when I was trying to tell him what happened, he said "Keep quiet and listen to me". My official statement of what had happened was of course written by PC Francis, who had already demonstrated a prejudiced mindset in declaring that I had been involved in an "affray". After correcting syntax and changing Francis's phrase "human cry" to what I had actually said, "hue and cry", I signed Francis's statement, though I did question his use of the term "contemporaneously", but he said that he had been told to put that word in. This suggests that it is not only the custom in Sussex that witnesses' statements should be written by police officers, but that their vocabulary should be supplemented by words they have been taught to parrot by some misguided police trainer. This can exacerbate problems caused by police trying to make witness statements conform to a predetermined pattern, for example by ensuring that words used in a particular law appear in a witness's statement. It must often be clear to those involved in court cases that the police make inappropriate use of leading questions when interviewing possible witnesses, so I am surprised that the practice is allowed to continue.

3. Wrongful arrest

4. Neglect of proper procedures when I was in custody
Three requests by me to see a doctor - as was my right - were not acted upon, and the log inaccurately recorded that I had not asked to see a doctor.

5. Illegitimate use of a caution
After I had been interviewed and spent further time in a cell, P.C. Francis tried to caution me. I refused to accept a caution. On 21/8/04 PC Francis telephoned me to ask whether I had changed my mind about accepting a caution from him. He added that he might want to arrest me again, and that he was seeking to have my website closed down. He also said that copies of all the pages of my website had been given to the Crown Prosecution Service, who were proceeding with the case.

(If what PC Francis said about the CPS is true, I also want to complain that the CPS should not have taken over four months to discover that they did not have a viable case. Perhaps they commit themselves to cases without examining the evidence, subjecting many members of the public to injustice until they find it convenient to proceed with cases to which they have committed themselves.)

Home Office Circular 18/1994, National Standards For Cautioning (Revised), Section 2, declares that "A formal caution is a serious matter. It is recorded by the police; it should influence them in their decision whether or not to institute proceedings if the person should offend again; and it may be cited in any subsequent court proceedings. In order to safeguard the offender's interests, the following conditions must be met before a caution can be administered -
- there must be evidence of the offender's guilt sufficient to give a realistic prospect of conviction;
- the offender must admit the offence;"

Note 5A adds, "The officer administering the caution should be in uniform and normally of the rank of inspector or above. In some cases, however, a Community Liaison Officer or Community Constable might be more appropriate, or in the inspector's absence the use of a sergeant might be justified. Chief Officers may therefore wish to consider nominating suitable 'cautioning officers'.

I certainly did not admit any offence. If a chief officer has nominated PC Francis as suitable for the role of a cautioning officer, he or she should reconsider his or her action. If the caution was recorded, then it will have been added to other seriously inaccurate and defamatory records that Sussex Police have created about me.

6. Withholding of important evidence
At the end of an interview on 12th August 2004 at Eastbourne Custody Centre, I signed a form entitled "Notice to Person whose Interview has been Tape Recorded". Two cassette tapes had been recorded, and three copies of each were recorded simultaneously. I by right should have been sent two tapes "as soon as practicable".

I telephoned Sussex Police on 3rd November to ask for my tapes, but my request was referred to PC Francis, who refused it. I then repeated the request on 11th November in letters to PI Brown, CI Matthews , and CC Jones, to no avail. On 12th Dec. I wrote to the solicitor appointed to help with my defence: he confirmed that I had a right to the tapes and suggested that I could get them from the Custody Centre in Eastbourne. My letter to there was answered by a telephone call saying that it was thought that the tapes had been sent to my solicitor, and again the following day saying that it was thought that my tapes had been given to the Crown Prosecution Service. I telephoned the CPS, who said that they could not give me the tapes, I would have to get them from the Custody Centre. On 4th February 2005, thinking that perhaps under local policing policy Inspector Brown at Hailsham Police Station was the mastermind behind my arrest, I wrote to him:

"I wish to make a last formal request to be sent the two cassette tapes which were recorded for the benefit of the defendant or his or her solicitor when I was arrested and interviewed on 12/08/04. I have made several previous attempts to secure these tapes, without success, though as I was charged with crime I clearly have a right to them. As PC Francis was prepared to lie to me about his investigation of crimes I had reported to the police, I wish to examine how assiduously and honestly the transcription of the tapes was carried out."

I am still (25th March) without the tapes, and so will need to proceed with my analysis of PC Francis's transcription, mistranscription, and editing of the tapes without the benefit of the tapes themselves.

Part of the form I signed and my brief comments on it can be found here.

My analysis of PC Francis's printed version of the audio tapes which recorded my interview is available here.

7. Contravention of human rights
The Council of Europe's The European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10 declares:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

I think it was in contravention of the above that PC Francis caused my website to be closed down after I refused to alter my report of a command by him - "Keep quiet and listen to me" - and to remove annotated photographs which showed that my side gate had been forced open, removing the whole of the bolt and part of the catch.

8. Negligence, incompetence, and misuse of seized property
On August 12th 2004, police seized two digital cameras and two computers belonging to me. The cameras had no internal memory. On 6th January 2005 the Crown Prosecution Service issued a notice of discontinuance in order to abandon the case against me, and my attempt to have the case tried ended on February 4th when the CPS said that they were offering no evidence. My property was returned to me, without the precaution of arranging a suitable time and date for this, on March 2nd. One of the cameras and both computers are now unusable.

The damaged camera has a battery tray. The camera manual instructs one to "Slide the battery tray into the camera until it locks in place." It no longer does lock in place, so presumably someone removed the battery tray without releasing the sliding switch which locks the tray in place, breaking the mechanism which holds the battery pack under compression.

Neither computer works. The hinge holding the door on an expensive alloy Lian Li computer case has been broken, so that if the door is opened for access to USB ports, the door falls off. According to Form MG 6C, it was officially decided "that no examination of the computer equipment be made". I should like to know therefore why both computers are now unusable, who interfered with the software and perhaps firmware, and on what authority; and what exactly has been done to the computers to make them no longer boot up.

9. Inadequate provision for dealing with complaints
The policy for dealing with telephone complaints generally seems to be to refer them back to the person about whom one is complaining; and the policy for dealing with written complaints seems to be to either ignore them or to pass them on to someone else. There are signs now that complaints lodged seven months ago may be properly addressed, but I wouldn't bet on it. [01/07/05 Since matters have started to progress, I have started a log.]

10. Shortcomings in record keeping
This involves lack of records of serious harassment, inaccurate records being produced through policing by telephone, and most seriously, gross prejudice on the part of individual police officers, leading to untrue and defamatory allegations being recorded about members of the public.

11. Gross exaggeration in the production of a case summary
The unwarranted and inexcusable departures from fact in the production of the case summary form another example of Complaint Number 2.