My Criminal Record
I lived in West Sussex from 1981 until 1998, and did not have any criminal activity recorded against my name, but then I did not have an ex-policeman living next door to me, and was not subjected to harassment by the police.
I moved to East Sussex in September 1998, and soon afterwards an ex-policeman named Mabry moved in next door, along with his wife and the wife's mother. Though Mabry is not much more than semi-literate, he had been employed as a police officer by a force with an outstanding record for dishonesty and corruption, the metropolitan police. He is I think the most shameless liar I have met in my life.
Like his friend Smith, who lived behind Mabry's property, Mabry helped himself to part of my property. He fenced off a one and a half metre strip of my front lawn in order to widen his drive. I was not to receive my Land Registry certificate until two months later, but Mabry said that he had his Land Certificate and that it showed the boundary to be where he was having the fence erected.
When I received my Land Certificate in January 1999, I found that the boundary was along what had been the edge of my lawn until Mabry destroyed it, so I asked Mabry to remove his fence.
Mabry only removed part of the fence. I did not remove the remaining fencing on my property myself in 1999 because of Mabry's threatening attitude: twice in that year he threatened to beat me up.
In March 2002 a county court judge, with Mabry present, said that I could remove the fence. After I did so the following day, Mabry attacked me and knocked me to the ground.
The police wanted me to agree that I had been involved in an argument which led to a fight. I refused, as it was not true. The police then wanted me to agree that I would not pursue the matter. I did not agree to that as I had been subjected to harassment by Mabry for three years. I was therefore not allowed to sign a statement of what had happened. The sergeant in charge of the case said I was being "obstroperous". I do not know the man's name, but as he evidently did not understand the meaning of obstreperous and couldn't pronounce the word either, I think of him as Sergeant Dogberry.
When I contacted the Police Complaints Authority about my dissatisfaction with the behaviour of the police, Richard M. Offer suggested that I could "contact the Superintendent heading your area police service". This proved impossible in Sussex. I got no further up the police hierarchy than Sergeant Hansen. It was from Sergeant Hansen that I learned that the police had it on record that I had been involved in an "altercation". On two occasions since then police officers have repeated that false charge, demonstrating that my account of the attack on me by Mabry, made through the Police Complaints Authority, had been completely ignored by the police. That false record of an "altercation" no doubt influenced the police on subsequent occasions when I complained to the police of harassment by Mabry and his friends.
An acting inspector (Barrasford) was involved in the sequel to my complaint to the PCA. He said he was an ex-teacher, and was evidently more intelligent than the dimwits and liars filling some of the lower ranks of the force, so the failure to modify the offical record of the attack on me is presumably symptomatic of irresponsible attitudes towards record keeping by Sussex Police. Certainly their attitude towards record keeping is far too casual. When I reported to the police that I had spoken to a neigbour about a satellite dish four days before I had part of it stolen, they failed to spell his name correctly, and when I had to attend Eastbourne Custody Centre as a criminal for fingerprint and dna records and pointed out a misspelling in what PC Wilkinson [or was it PC Satchwell?] was typing into the computer, he said that it didn't matter.
Recording that I had been involved in an altercation was presumably an excuse for Sergeant Dogberry to do nothing further about the attack on me by Mabry.
After I had been assaulted by Mabry a second time, before beginning to question me as part of his token investigation of the assaults that I had reported to the police, PC Francis said that he was recording that I had been involved in an "affray". He was later, during questioning at Eastbourne Custody Centre, to be more precise: I had been "responsible" for an affray. I did not know at the time that this false accusation was serious enough for a constable to "arrest without warrant anyone he reasonably suspects of committing this offence" (www.police-law.co.uk), and in the most serious cases to render one liable to three years in prison or an unlimited fine.
That PC Francis should have been able to accuse me of this before he had begun his formal questioning of me I regard as symptomatic of criminal laxness and incompetence in the way the local police force is run, and in this particular case to low-level corruption instigated by the ex-policeman Mabry and his friends.
Without warning, PC Francis subsequently arrested me on the spurious charge that I had "pursued a course of conduct which amounted to the harassment of Mr and Mrs McCombie and which you knew or ought to have known amounted to the harassment of them". PC Francis then falsified in various ways the evidence he was trying to gather against me.
I was very surprised to be told that the CPS initially accepted that there was a viable case against me, and objected to the "notice of discontinuance" they sent more than four months later to the solicitors whom I had not agreed should represent me, Mayo & Perkins. The notice said, "The decision to discontinue these charges has been taken because there is not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction." That statement implies without saying so that there was some evidence, even though when I appeared in court at my own insistence the CPS said that they were offering no evidence.
That the spurious charge against me by the dishonest PC Francis is still on record is suggested by a note sent to me by Mayo & Perkins - along with a copy of the CPS letter - which informs me, "Your file will now be sent to storage where it will be held for the next six years." Presumably this file is just the solicitors' own file, kept in the expectation that the CPS or the police might provide them with more business in the course of those six years, while the lies in police records could remain there for many more years.
After more than three months, I am still waiting to see whether the Independent Police Complaints Commission are any less ineffectual than the Police Complaints Authority in policing the police.
On 10th May 2005 I said in a letter to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, "Glancing through your Baseline Assessments of Sussex Police for April and October 2004, I do not recognise the force there described. My own considered view of the police force in the Wealden district of East Sussex is that it is lousy. From early 1999 until 12th August 2004 I rated them as useless, and thereafter as malign. The increasing use of “self-assessment” by the Inspectorate I find disquieting. On my website I quote the Sussex Chief Constable making the ridiculous claim that “we [the police] exemplify integrity, moral courage, impartiality, duty and honour.” Such words do not describe the police officers with whom I have come into contact."
Since then, it has become obvious to me that the lousiness extends into the Professional Standards Department of Sussex Police. The unacceptable behaviour that police officers are allowed to get away with is worrying. The fact that some of them are asking routinely to be armed with tasers and even guns is frightening.
The conjuring up of the spectre of "terrorism" could encourage the public to overlook serious shortcomings in the police service, though I think that statistics would show that any member of the public in this country is more likely to be killed by the police than by a terrorist.
The police have called me a criminal, and evidently still have it on record that I am a criminal. In return, I shall continue to put on record my views on the behaviour of the police.
