Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary

The duties of HMIC are described in the Police Act 1996. The Inspectorate introduce themselves on their website, under the heading of "Our Work", as being "charged with examining and improving the efficiency of the Police Service." They, to my surprise, also say that until 1993, all the inspectors were policemen! Subsequently, as far as I can make out, four inspectors and one assistant inspector were appointed from non-police backgrounds. What proportion of the inspectorate these outsiders constitute I have yet to discover.

A pdf file, hmicrole.pdf, shows that the impression given me by the "Our Work" introduction was misleading. There is one Chief Inspector and three Assistant Inspectors based in the Home Office building, though the Inspectorate claims to be "independent" of the Home Office. There our four regional Inspectors, ex-chief-constables, who do the inspecting. There are only two inspectors from non-police backgrounds. Although HMIC claims to be "independent" of the Police Service, "HMIC's inspection staff are almost entirely provided by forces on a secondment basis, some being on short-term loan"!

Currently, inspection of the police is based on "baseline assessment". The idea was that the Inspectorate should measure and/or record the performance of police forces in Spring 2004, and then measure them again every three years to see if they had got better or worse. More recently the model has been "refined", and will be "based to a significant degree on self-assessment"!

It was planned to republish the baseline assessment in autumn 2004, and annually thereafter. I am not clear about the relationship between this and the model envisaged in the last paragraph, so I am guessing when I presume that annual reports will be based largely on statistics, many of which may be based on "self-assessment" by the forces being inspected.

Let's proceed to consideration of things the Inspectorate has actually done.

On 24th April 2005, in a letter to the Sussex Chief Constable, I said that if I did not receive very soon copies of interview tapes - recorded the previous August - to which I had a right, I would make a complaint to the Home Office. When I did not receive the tapes, and seeking a more precise destination for my complaint than the entire Home Office, I wrote to HMIC South of England Region, as they seemed to have close ties with the Home Office. I complained about the lack of tapes, and made a few other comments about the lousy quality of policing in my area.

Although, as the Inspector told me in reply, individual complaints are not usually within the remit of the Inspectorate, HMIC were evidently responsible for prompt action by Sussex Police, who no longer merely ignored or dismissed my complaints, but sent a case worker to investigate them. My impression of the way HMIC deals with members of the public was entirely favourable.

The Inspectorate states that its purpose is "To promote the efficiency and effectiveness of policing . . . to ensure: agreed standards are achieved and maintained; good practice is spread; and performance is improved." I want to examine two recent reports on Sussex Police to see how far they reflect these stated aims in relation to the particular concerns I have about Sussex Police.

Baseline Assessment - Sussex Police - October 2005

This document, making "considerable use of self-assessment", prints on Page 9 a Summary of Judgements which grades twenty-six police activities using four categories, Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor. A twenty-seventh assessable category, Professional Standards, was not assessed on this occasion. HMIC also, for twenty-one categories, decides the force's Direction of Travel, whether Improved, Improving, Stable, or Deteriorated.

One activity, Resource Management, was graded as Excellent. As three other Resource Use categories were only Fair, one can guess without reading on that the force did not spend too much money.

Fifteen categories were rated as Good, and ten were rated as Fair. So Sussex Police were rated as Poor in no department.

My assessment of them as altogether lousy is completely at odds with this evaluation, which calls for further investigation. For instance, I am concerned about dishonesty in the police. The words honest and dishonest, honesty and dishonesty, do not appear in this 70-page assessment. The word corruption occurs once, in connection with Professional Standards, which are not graded in this report.

The Direction of Travel ratings put me in mind of the government's view of the education service: under their management, it gets better each year, and will doubtless do so as long as they are in power. The DoT ratings for Sussex Police are eight Improveds, one Improving, eleven Stables, and only one Deteriorated

Though this report does not formally grade Professional Standards, they are assessed in the very first paragraph after the Summary of Judgements. I was astonished to read here, in Section 1, "It has an effective and efficient professional standards department who promptly investigate complaint cases." This is just laughable, and perhaps depends largely on self-assessment, as my experience of this department is that it passes complaints on to a local officer if possible, or if forced to deal with complaints does so dishonestly.

Perhaps they consider themselves "efficient" because by overlooking evidence unfavourable to the police, they save time and money. This could explain the qualification in the last part of the quoted sentence, "however, more could be done to improve the proportion locally resolved."

It becomes clear as Section 1 proceeds that evaluation depends largely on statistics, on percentages, and how Sussex percentages compare with MSF percentages and national percentages. MSF stands for "most similar force(s)", and Sussex Police is grouped with five MSFs, including Essex. I will use the first example of the method in practice for comment.

In Section 1A we are told, "Some 41.2% of racially or religiously aggravated offences were detected during 2004/05, an increase of 2.8% over its previous year's performance, placing it 3rd in its MSF group and 23rd nationally." The appearance of precision emphasised by the decimal points is deceptive, and I am sure that the very method of measurement distorts the measurements themselves. In athletics, competition encourages the use of drugs. In policing, the use to which statistics are put is bound to affect the way they are collected, given the levels of dishonesty I have found in some of the police officers with whom I have come into contact.

When HMIC quote a different source of statistics, the British Crime Survey, used by the Home Office when determining policy, the figures are at odds with the "progress" identified by the HMIC: "In spite of all this progress the British Crime Survey (BCS) of Sussex residents indicated that, during 2004/05, only 45.5% of residents think the local police are doing a good job. This is below the MSF average of 49.8% and places them 5th in their MSF group."

Reading the Home Office's Internet page about the BCS, one may initially be cheered to think that there is at least one study which is truly independent of the police: "The BCS measures the amount of crime in England and Wales by asking people about crimes they have experienced in the last year." They do this by conducting "over 50,000 interviews".

If one looks further, however, and examines the BCS's latest statistical bulletin, a different picture emerges. The Crime in England and Wales: Quarterly Update to September 2005 starts with the following main points:

1. "The risk of being a victim of crime, at 23 per cent, is the lowest level recorded by the BCS since the survey began in 1981." I had to read on to make sure that I had understood this sentence correctly, and that yes, "just over 23 per cent of the population" were "victims in the year to September 2005." That figure is shocking enough, but of course it could be worse, because

2. "The number of crimes recorded by the police fell by one per cent in July to September 2005 compared with the same period a year earlier." I know from my own experience that the police are untrustworthy when it comes to recording crime. And on Page 4 of the bulletin one reads, "The British Crime Survey suggests that only a quarter of violent crimes end up in the police figures."

3. "BCS interviews in the 12 months to September 2005 showed violent crime to be stable compared with the previous year."

So the BCS does make some use of figures it has collected itself, but a brief look at its work does not convince me that the work of the police is sufficiently monitored and controlled by anyone.

Although HMIC Assessment does specify many areas for improvement, much of it is based on statistics, which may well be unreliable, if available. Appendix 1 prints Performance Tables. Section 1A, on Fairness and Equality, lists seventeen "indicators" (e.g. "% of victims of racist incidents very/completely satisfied..."). For Sussex Police, figures for twelve of the seventeen categories were "not available at time of publication". For 1C: Customer Service and Accessibility, the figures are fourteen indicators (e.g. "% of victims of domestic burglary, violent crime, vehicle crime and RTCs very or completely satisfied...), twelve of which for Sussex Police were "not available at time of publication".

Much of HMIC Assessment 2005 does not impinge directly on my concerns about the police, but one set of value judgements and one policy objective do so.

There are complimentary comments about leadership throughout the report, but Section 7 is specifically headed Leadership and Direction. We are told that since the appointment of the Chief Constable, "there has been a new vigour to a police force that had been struggling for clarity of leadership." My own experience was of a deterioration in the service following the appointment of Jones. Whether a previous report actually depicted a force struggling under poor leadership, I doubt. The current assessment, headed 7A Leadership, starts with a rating of "Good" and the comment, "There is ample evidence of ‘active’ leadership by the Chief Constable and his command team, demonstrating their own values and challenging unacceptable standards and behaviour."

I entirely disagree. I have had experience of very unacceptable standards and behaviour, which were fostered or endorsed by the force, and even defended by the department responsible for standards. If one has to appeal to the IPCC, then the police service itself has failed.

The third item for leadership strengths reads, "There are identified ‘local police chiefs’ who enjoy an appropriate level of devolved authority, and true geographic accountability for their districts. This is an innovative approach and places the force in a strong position to respond to the police reform agenda and that of neighbourhood policing."

This last idea, which according to Section 1 of the Assessment, "has received positive comment from government", seems to me pernicious: devolving authority can mean abnegating authority, and the process seems to cascade down the line of command, so that in the worst cases one's complaints and concerns are referred down to the individual officer or officers about whose conduct one is dissatisfied. The fact that they have a little badge on their uniform saying "Hailsham" means nothing to me: I would be much happier if it stated their IQ.

I take issue with the Assessment of October 2005, because it does not reflect my own experience of the police. There is clearly a place for a report on the police which is designed to improve police morale, but what purports to be a serious independent report is not the place for sweeping value judgements which are not substantiated with reference to facts.

I have a particular concern with the way in which Sussex Police deal with complaints from members of the public, and will turn to HMIC's recent report on Professional Standards Department to see if my own concerns are addressed.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary - Inspection of Sussex Police Professional Standards - JANUARY 2006

The report consists of fifteen pages, one for the title, one blank, one for a list of contents, and two for a glossary of sixty-two acronyms. Many of the acronyms, like the last three, are new to me. SPOC is a single point of contact, TCG indicates a tasking and co-ordination group, and UPP specifies unsatisfactory performance procedure. There are nine and a bit pages of what might be the actual report.

In fact the first three of those pages are taken up with introductory matter, including information that the inspection grades departments as Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor, and that forces are assessed on four "key elements", Intelligence, Prevention, Enforcement , and Capacity and Capability.

The fourth page starts with an Overview of the Sussex force, then two-thirds of the way down the page there is a sub-heading, "Professional Standards." This starts with a description of the structure of the department, but already words which imply or make value judgements are included: "experienced officers", "good pro-active and covert criminal investigative skills", "Experienced staff", and "strong operation links".

Page 5 grades the department as "GOOD", and comments follow on the four elements, under subheadings for Strengths and AFIs. Twenty-nine Strengths are identified, and seven AFIs. For Intelligence, there are no AFIs at all. An AFI is an area for improvement.

I am interested in such procedures as the way Sussex Police collect evidence, and in the way they guard against or deal with bias, malpractice, and low-level corruption. I am unimpressed by stuff like, "Staff within the operations unit of the PSD are highly skilled, credible and experienced . . . The intelligence cell is staffed by experienced, skilled and credible police officers and police staff with significant detective and analytical expertise." Are the intelligence cell staff less skilled than the operations unit staff? Are all the staff "credible", or are some of them liars?

The public have to take the Inspector's word for it that the staff of the PSD have the qualties or skills that he or she attributes to them. Having had experience of Sussex Police professional standards since 1999, and more recently of the Professional Standards Department itself, I consider this HMIC report to be inaccurate and misleading.

To examine the inadequacy of the report, I will consider the way it deals with complaints by members of the public. Such feedback is of great importance if a force seeks to improve its performance.

Evidently forces used to have Complaints and Discipline Departments, which were expanded to cover anti-corruption, and renamed Professional Standards Departments, so one expects efficient handling of complaints to be a core activity of such a department, with a determined effort to improve standards. HMIC evidently agrees with this view, as the report's introduction says that "The issue of complaints holds a unique importance for HMIC." In the report, one learns that the PSD has 38 staff members, 34% of whom [i.e. 12.92 individuals] deal with complaints.

Under the Prevention subheading, one Strength is said to be: "There is an open and accessible system for making a complaint by letter, telephone, e-mail, or by third party reporting."

The next Strength is actually the same one. The item outlines how "team members made contact with the Force to test how receptive it was to complaints from the public. Staff at main police stations were well versed in taking details of a complaint . . . ." Why not investigate instead the experience of real complainants?

Under the AFIs subheading it is conceded that "Staff at more rural police stations, whilst courteous, appeared to lack a comprehensive understanding of the complaints procedure," and another AFI says that on the Sussex Police website "there is no detail about the complaints procedure". Her Majesty's Inspector recommended that the website be "enhanced" in this respect.

The Enforcement subsection has several references to complaints: • "There is clear evidence of sound strategic, tactical and operational leadership through the examination of public complaints"; • "The force performance meeting (FPM) examines public complaints on two districts every two weeks"; • "The investigative arm of the PSD is well managed"; • "There is a sound process of early assessment of complaints and the application of a proportionate response"; • "There is also a low level of appeals to the IPCC and few have been upheld."

The last comment I find very surprising: one wonders whether complainants were too discouraged to bother with the IPCC, or whether there had been a dramatic improvement in the police's performance in the short time since the Baseline Assessment of 2005 said of the PSD investigation of complaint cases, "more could be done to improve the proportion locally resolved."

This section does have an AFI which says that, "Consideration should be given to measuring satisfaction amongst complainants," which leads to a recommendation "that the Force should explore ways of measuring complainant satisfaction."

One AFI at the end of the Capacity and Capability subsection gives a tiny glimpse of the shambles that the complaints system seems to me to be in: "front counter staff should have a basic understanding of who can make a complaint and when, where and by whom it should be recorded."

Do Sussex Police actually have a coherent and comprehensible complaints system? When, frustrated by my complaints being ignored by local police, I drove to Sussex Police Headquarters in Lewes in an attempt to get a meaningful response, I thought I had arrived at an army barracks. I was stopped by a guardian at the barrier who said that I could not go in because the time was after 4 p.m. He did however give me a booklet, which I think must have been a copy of the IPCC's publication How to make a complaint against the police. There are things in that booklet which do not seem to apply to Sussex Police, and there are things in the Sussex Police system that are not in the booklet.

The booklet says, "If the police force does not record your complaint it has to give you reasons for not doing so." Of the several occasions on which I have made complaints against the police, I only know of one occasion on which my complaints have been recorded, and that was after I complained to HMIC about a lack of response from the police, and I was able to file the complaints that I have published on this website. The preferred method of dealing with complaints seems to be to ignore them, brush them aside, or pass them on to someone else.

The booklet says, "Individual police forces have their own procedures for local resolution of complaints and will inform you of this process when they record your complaint." After I had complained to HMIC, some of my complaints were addressed, but I was not informed of the process, but learned of procedures slowly as they unravelled.

On 8th July 2005 I received an email from the case worker who had questioned me about my complaints. It told me, "My department deals with Police Misconduct issues which fall under Police Conduct Regulations 2004. Your complaint against the Chief Constable Mr Jones is not a misconduct issue that fits within the Regulations and is a generalisation based upon your own experience and perception when having been in contact with members of the Sussex Police."

The case worker works for DI Preddy, who on 11th August wrote to say, "my role within Sussex Police is to investigate allegations of breaches of the Police Misconduct Code . . . This being the case, I cannot investigate perceptional issues such as ‘wilful blindness’ or ‘gross prejudice’ however serious you consider these matters to be."

As the case worker works within the Professional Standards Department, it seemed that the Department could only deal with complaints which fell within the Code. As a result, I included in a letter of 5th September to the Chief Constable: "Unfortunately the scope of DI Preddy's enquiries will apparently not include the most serious of my complaints . . . I wish to know who else Sussex Police can depute to consider the 'perceptional issues' that DI Preddy claims he cannot examine."

The letter addressed to the Constable, like my email to the High Tech Department seeking information about the serious damage to a camera, and like my letter to the person responsible for the local property store about the sabotage of my computers, was passed to DI Preddy. As a result my questions remain unanswered. I still need to discover how to file complaints not covered by the limited Police Misconduct Code, if the IPCC do not deal adequately with them.

The IPCC booklet has a page on local resolution of complaints, and says "Individual police forces have their own procedures for local resolution of complaints and will inform you of this process when they record your complaint." That was news to me, so I was surprised to read in the HMIC report, "During 2004/05 some 43% of complaints were locally resolved." Perhaps that statement relied on self-assessment by the police.

My experience is that the police simply stonewall and deny any malpractice, lying in the process or withholding information if necessary, and then rely, in CS Pople's words, on the formula: "I am satisfied that there is no realistic prospect that a tribunal would find that the conduct of the officers fell below the required standard in the circumstances."

In March 2006, Wealden residents received, along with their council tax bill, a Sussex Police leaflet which starts with a message from the Chairman of the Sussex Police Authority: "Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary's assessement of Sussex Police in 2005 showed the force to be performing well and improving in many areas . . . ." Sadly, such a generalisation is probably justified by the report, and could encourage complacency.

I think the problem is with HMIC: it is not independent of the police, and its reports seem to be far too reliant on self-assessment by the police themselves, some of whom are untrustworthy.

12 August 2006: Having been astonished to learn from SPA minutes and meetings that, according to HMIC, Sussex was "very close to achieving the highest grade of ‘Excellent’ ", that failure to achieve the highest grade was seemingly "a bit of a quirk of the marking scheme", and that as regards professional standards Sussex was "one of the five forces nationally to be graded as Good and a quiet word on the side was of those Goods Sussex was at the top", I wrote to HMIC South of England Region on 2nd August 2006. The reply from HMIC, dated 11th August, attributes the complimentary remarks to "the press release accompanying 'Raising the standard' ". That report was published in June 2006. My "very close..." quotation is taken from the minutes of a Complaints Committee meeting dated 1 March. My "bit of a quirk..." quotation is taken from a Police Complaints Authority meeting dated 7th April.

I will probably examine this correspondence in more detail when I come to write the Policing the Police page of this website.

In the meantime, since May 2007 HMIC has featured in a video called Sussex Police Authority in Cloud-Cuckoo Land.