Institutional Dishonesty
Chapter Six of The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry by Sir William MacPherson, February 1999, is a useful starting point for a study of this topic. The chapter is entitled RACISM. Section 6.5 starts consideration of the phrase "institutional racism". 6.7 and 6.8 recall how Lord Scarman's Report into the Brixton Disorders asserted, "The direction and policies of the Metropolitan Police are not racist." 6.24 implies that Scarman missed the point: "It is in the implementation of policies and in the words and actions of officers acting together that racism may become apparent."
MacPherson's 6.34 defines institutional racism as, "The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people . . . ."
In 6.39, MacPherson concluded that institutional racism exists both in the Metropolitan Police Service and in other Police Services and other institutions countrywide.
Racism within the police service is of course inherited from racism within society, and much of it is unconscious and so deep-seated that it can be difficult for the individual to recognise and neutralise, given the will to do so.
The same excuse cannot be applied to dishonesty. MacPherson 6.2, writing of the
the Kent Report on the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, said that each of seventeen officers interviewed "roundly denied racism or racist conduct". One does not have to be sceptical of their protestations: they could have been entirely sincere. Lies come into a different category: a much greater lack of self-knowledge would be required for an officer not to recognise when he or she was being dishonest.
MacPherson describes racism within an organisation as "a corrosive disease." (6.34) That phrase applies equally well to dishonesty within a police force, which forfeits the respect of the public, infects the rule of law, and tarnishes the reputation of honest and public-spirited officers.
Institutional dishonesty is established within an organisation when one or more of its members, in ways which impinge on the work of that organisation, is dishonest, either in word or action or both; and other members, who may otherwise as individuals be honest, are led, through the way in which that institution is organised, to be complicit in that dishonesty.
This page will be detailing dishonest words and actions of Sussex police officers, will go on to show how that dishonesty has been compounded and protected by dishonest reports from the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and buttressed by a weak Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and an ignorant Sussex Police Authority, while the Home Office stands by.
The police dishonesty was initiated on Saturday 23rd March 2002. After I had been assaulted by ex-policeman Mabry and dialled 999, and some time after five police officers had entered the Mabrys' bungalow, two of them, a sergeant and a constable, visited me. The circumstances are detailed in the statement I made through the PCA. The sergeant said that the constable would visit me on 25th March to take a statement, and rejected my offer to write the statement in the mean time.
When the constable arrived on the morning of the 24th, he wanted my statement to be based on Mabry's dishonest version of events. I refused to agree to that. I do not blame the constable. He seemed throughout to be merely following the orders of the rude and threatening sergeant.
In the afternoon, the constable returned with the sergeant, who dictated my statement for the constable to write down. I was allowed to change an occasional word. Then the sergeant wanted to dictate a sentence which said that I did not want to pursue the matter further. When I refused to agree to that, the sergeant angrily said that I was being "obstroperous", and did not let me sign the statement. What happened to the unsigned and incomplete statement I do not know. Nor was I to find out until much later what sort of dishonest statement was added under my name in Sussex Police's criminal records.
On 20th April 2006 I applied for information under the Data Protection Act, and received on 5th June from Sussex Police Corporate Development Department photocopies of pages from the Sussex Police Crime Reporting System, two of which refer to 23/3/2002, with an input date of 25/3/2002.
The first page, under the heading "Common assault and battery" records "LOC TYPE: ROAD". The location was actually my front lawns and drive, at no time less than 18 metres from the road.
Under the first sub-heading, details of the "AGGRIEVED" are blacked out, but are those of the ex-policeman Mabry who assaulted me and knocked me to the ground on my drive. The text of the entry reads:
"MO: DURING DAYTIME AFTERNOON IN ROAD OFFENDER AND VICTIM MALE ADULT ARGUED OFFENDER THEN USED WEAPON BROOM AND ATTACKED VICTIM CAUSED SLIGHT INJURY."
This is followed by a sub-heading "OFFENDER", with every detail blacked out, and then a subheading "SUSPECT" and an entry which names me, though it manages to record that I live in Eastbourne, which I do not, and to misspell both my first names.
The second page generally follows the same template as the first, except that this time all the details of the "OFFENDER" and the "SUSPECT" have been blacked out. My details appear under the sub-heading "AGGRIEVED". As on the first page, the details next to "Off Rep No:" and "Name:" have been blacked out, presumably to shield the officer responsible for creating the records. Again, both of my first names have been misspelled. The text under my name appears as follows:
"MO: DURING DAYTIME AFTERNOON IN ROAD KNOWN OFFENDER AND VICTIM MALE ADULT ARGUED OFFENDER THEN USED PHYSICAL VIOLENCE GRABBED AND PUSHED VICTIM CAUSED SLIT INJURY SPLIT NAIL AND STIFF RIGHT ARM A RIGHT INDEX FINGER."
[Photocopies of both MOs can be seen on this page.]
I do not know how accurately the first MO reflects what my attacker said to the sergeant who was acting as the investigating officer, but I do know that the second MO is in important ways dishonest and corrupt. The attack happened entirely on my property, more than 18 metres from the road. There had been no argument. The attacker did not grab and push his victim: he punched him repeatedly as he backed away across the lawns in front of his bungalow, until he knocked him down on the drive in front of his garage.
The dishonesty of this police officer was to have, and is still having, serious consequences.
First, it allowed my attacker to continue with harassment of me which had started in January 1999, and diversify the forms it took, as documented on this page.
Secondly, when Sussex Police refused to allow me to sign a statement about the attack, I sought advice from the Police Complaints Authority. I was advised to discuss the matter with the local superintendent. This proved impossible in Sussex. I had to make do with Sergeant Hansen, who insisted that I had been involved in an "altercation". She was presumably relying on the dishonest record provided by the investigating officer. As a result, I sent a complaint to the PCA, and included a statement of what had occurred when I was attacked.
On two subsequent occasions on which I complained to the police of harassment by Mabry, police officers insisted that I had been involved in an "altercation" in the past. One of the officers was I think the dishonest PC Francis.
The dishonesty of the investigating officer in March 2002 no doubt gave Mabry the confidence to attack me again in 2004, when on 24th July he smashed open my side gate and, accompanied by his wife and four of his friends, invaded my back garden. Mabry and two of his friends assaulted me, as described in a statement I wrote the day before the dishonest PC Francis came to write a statement for me to sign. [There is a mistake in the fifth paragraph from the end: the word McCombie should read Mabry.] I will return to this attack after dealing with three incidents which came between the two assaults by the ex-policeman.
As I was being subjected to constant harassment by Mabry, I reported some of the relevant incidents to the police. This sometimes led to pointless or objectionable visits from police officers.
When on 23 September 2003 Mabry cut down long grass on my property and threw it first on to an area of slabs and pebbles and then on to a flower bed, I complained to the police (email available here), and was visited by PC Satchwell, who said that a crime had not been committed because grass is not property (documented in another email).
Unfortunately the wording of my complaint (number 6 in the list available on this page), was changed by DI Preddy in his report for the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department (text available here) to say that I had complained that PC Satchwell had "refused to record a report". I had not said that, either in my official list of complaints, or
in an email which features the incident, or in conversation with PC Satchwell, when I merely disagreed with his assertion that grass is not property.
Later in his report, DI Preddy changes the wording of the allegation, implying that I had asked PC Satchwell "to crime an allegation of criminal damage and aggravated trespass." The email I sent to the police had been headed "Criminal damage and aggravated trespass", which implied that Mabry had committed crime, but I did not ask PC Satchwell to "crime" it.
The report goes on to say that PC Satchwell had supplied a statement under caution, and that he had said that "the circumstances described by the complainant did not amount to an offence of criminal damage nor was he prepared to arrest Mr Mabry because the complainant wanted him to do so." The circumstances were described by the complainant in the email he sent to the police, which made it clear that this incident was part of a policy of harassment by Mabry which had started more than four and a half years before. I did not ask PC Satchwell to arrest Mabry, and think that PC Satchwell is dishonest in suggesting that I did. For the rest, PC Satchwell's shortcomings can be partly attributed to his superior officers' expectations, and partly to youthful ignorance or stupidity, as in the case of his suggestion that, having complained of goods being repeatedly ordered in my name, I should stick a note on my front door saying that I would not take delivery of any parcels (documented here).
I think that PC Satchwell failed to be scrupulously honest and fair, but that compared with the dishonesty and corruption of the two investigating officers who investigated assaults on me, the incompetence of PI Brown, and the dishonesty of DI Preddy, it is unimportant.
The case of PC Wilkinson is much more serious. Two things said by this officer deserve comment.
The first is a comment he made on harassment I was being subjected to by neighbours. This is documented in an email I sent to the police on 3rd January 2004, following an email I sent three days earlier about harassment by parcel delivery, which had included the words, "this email is not a request that an officer or officers visit me". The 3rd January email says, "'I was nevertheless visited today by P.C.Wilkinson, who insultingly compared my problem with a neighbour who had wanted to pave over part of my front lawn, to a playground disagreement between children."
That someone who had suffered five years' harassment from an ex-policeman should be spoken to in such a moronic way by someone in public service is intolerable. That a police officer should have later lied about the matter is even worse.
PC Wilkinson's other comment was to have more serious consequences. It is documented in an email of 6th January 2006 to PI Brown: "'The considerable nuisance of stuff being delivered by post and courier also needs to be seen in the context of verbal abuse ("free speech" according to P.C.Wilkinson), threats of violence, damage to my property, and actual assault."
In a letter that I wrote to Eastburne County Court on 15th March 2004 about an action which included a demand that the McCombies "refrain from using abusive language", I wrote: "If I understand correctly what the judge said on 2nd March, this is (as I suspected) a matter not for the civil courts but for the police to consider. The police had already pronounced on the subject, so I shall have to either simply put up with the uncouthness or retaliate in kind." A footnote linked to the word subject quoted the above extract from the email to PI Brown.
For more than five years I had been subjected to abusive language by ex-policeman Mabry and his friends the McCombies. The police in the form of PC Wilkinson had enbdorsed the use of abusive language. I resorted to the local civil court for a remedy, but His Honour Judge Coltart disclaimed responsibility for such things. Unwilling to shout abuse back at my neighbours, I subsequently included two insulting phrases about the McCombies on a website as a deterrent, which led to the smashing open of my side gate, the invasion of my back garden by six people, assault on me by Mabry and the McCombies, my arrest by the dishonest PC Francis, the breaking of a digital camera (presumably by the dishonest PC Francis), and the sabotage of my computers and the total loss of hundreds of files (presumably by the dishonest PC Francis).
When I was visited by PC Francis and PC Wilkinson after those assaults and the subject of abusive language was broached, I told PC Francis that PC Wilkinson had defended the use of abusive language by my neighbours in the name of freedom of speech. PC Francis immediately said that abusive language could not be defended as free speech. PC Wilkinson's reaction to what I had said, in body language rather than words, was to refute it.
In my witness statement of complaints about Sussex Police, I included both of PC Wilkinson's comments, in the initial list of officers and in Complaint 3, where I say, "I had complained to the police of the abusive language, but was told by PC Wilkinson that we have free speech in this country."
DI Preddy's report on my complaints completely ignores PC Wilkinson's free speech comment, though it is obviously of far greater importance than his moronic comment about children in the playground, as it involves contradictory attitudes being taken up by two police officers, and it had serious consequences.
DI Preddy says that PC Wilkinson provided a statement under caution. Preddy writes of Wilkinson: "He states he may have considered Mr Madden's allegations to be similar to a playground dispute but he states that he would not have said this directly to him because of his history of making complaints against officers.
PC Wilkinson is a liar. He did say what he denies saying. He concedes that he may have thought it, which reflects badly on the character of South Wealden police officers. He implies that he might have said it had he not thought that I would complain!
The following sentence in Preddy's report reads: "He states that he updated the OIS serial log with the following comments from Mr Madden after attending on 3rd January 2004 'Simply using the Police in case I ever take out a civil claim'."
How dare this uniformed liar use the first person in such a statement? I could not possibly have said that. The only comment I can think of that bears any relation to that statement occurs in an email I sent to the police dated 30 October 2003 which ends, "I am simply putting on record some of the examples of harassment that I am subjected to by Mabry in the hope that eventually some effective action may be taken." That implies action by the police, not the civil courts, as harassment is a criminal offence.
On 24th July 2004 my side gate was smashed open, and an ex-policeman and five co-conspirators invaded my back garden. Three of them assaulted and threatened me. Mr McCombie, for instance, the first person to assault me, threatened that if I did not get out of my property I would have to watch my back constantly in future.
I telephoned the police to notify them of the assault. PC Francis was appointed the investigating officer in the case. When he first visited me, I took PC Francis down to the bottom of my back garden, and showed him where I had been assaulted by Mr McCombie and Mr Mabry behind the shed, and where I Ihad been assaulted by Mrs McCombie at the side of the shed. As we passed the satellite dish from which the LNB and bracket had been stolen a month earlier, four days after I had told Mabry's next-door neighbour of my interest in satellite broadcasting, PC Francis told me - unprompted - that he was not going to do anything about that. I said to him that with six people avalable for questioning, it should not be difficult to ascertain what had happened in the garden, though as three of the invaders remained in the main part of the garden, they could not have seen two of the assaults. I then showed PC Francis the side gate, with the wood on the post splintered where the bolt had been forced off, the latch arm bent, and the bolt and latch key lying on the ground. PC Francis said that was not good evidence of forced entry by the six intruders.
Fortunately, PC Francis telephoned me the day before he came to write my statement, so that forewarned, I was able to write and sign my own statement. When PC came for the statement, he started by saying that he was recording that I had been involved in an "affray". When I tried to explain what had happened, he said, "Keep quiet and listen to me." It took a little persuasion before PC Francis accepted a copy of my own statement, and an A4 sized plan of my property which showed exactly where I had been assaulted [similar to the plan on this page]. PC Francis then wrote his own version of my statment, but did allow me to correct errors before I signed it; for instance I had described the noise at my side gate before the intruders entered as like a hue and cry, which PC Francis had rendered as "a human cry". What became of my statement and plan and PC Francis's version of my statement I do not know. They are important evidence to set against the dishonest account which appeared in the Sussex Police Criminal Records.
I am publishing here the page from the Sussex Crime Reporting System which contains what purports to be an account of what had happened on my property on 24/7/2004.
The account under the sub-heading AGGRIEVED is not incompetent: it is clearly dishonest, and falls sufficiently far short of the truth to be called corrupt.
I did not see that criminal record until 2006, but had found out much sooner that PC Francis is dishonest. After being told by PC Francis that the damage to my side gate was not good evidence of forced entry, and after PC Francis had said to me, "Keep quiet and listen to me", I added both pronouncements to my website [now on my new website here, with photographs a little further down the page]. Soon after, I was telephoned by PC Francis, who asked me to remove the stuff about my side gate from my website, and to change his order for me to Keep quiet to the polite request he now dishonestly claimed to have made. When I did not do as he asked, he said that he was going to have the website closed down, as he eventually did, as recorded on this page.
On 12th August 2004, PC Francis (who ten months earlier had told me not to notify the police of harassment by my neighbours) and PC Wilkinson (who had defended absuive language by my neighbours in the name of free speech) arrived unannounced at 7.50 a.m., seized my two computers and my two digital cameras, arrested and handcuffed me, and consigned me to a cell in Eastbourne Custody Centre. The charge was "Harassment" and calling neighbours names.
I have already dealt with the dishonesty of PC Wilkinson, so it is now the turn of PC Francis, a much worse case, involving corruption as well as thoroughly and repeatedly dishonest conduct.
The eight complaints that I filed against Sussex Police included several references to PC Francis, which for convenience I will quote here, with numbers added for reference, as I intend sequentially to relate each complaint to its treatment in DI Preddy's report:
1. I said that I wanted to complain about, "PC Francis, who is unfit to be a police officer, unless his behaviour was largely determined by orders from above - responsible for making a wrongful arrest and distorting evidence."
2. After the assault on me by three neighbours: "PC Francis was critical of my behaviour without having investigated the grounds of my complaints (cf. Complaint 2). On inspecting the bolt and part of the latch on the ground as a result of my side gate being smashed open, PC Francis that this was not evidence that the people who invaded my garden did so as the result of forced entry."
3. When PC Francis arrived to "take" a statement: "When I was trying to explain what had happened, PC Francis ordered: 'Keep quiet and listen to me'. I commented on this, as the sergeant who dealt with the first assault had used exactly the same expression. PC Francis refused to take into account previous incidents which had led me to call the police: he said that he was only investigating the present incident."
4. " . . . the investigating officer failed to act impartially: he started his investigation by declaring that I had been involved in an "affray", distorted my interview in his text version, and he may also have been responsible for the grossly prejudiced Case Summary. Despite my attempts to secure the tapes of my interview, requests to the investigating officer . . . have failed."
5. "I was just outside the cell door when I asked a second time to see a doctor, presumably when PC Francis came to fetch me for interview. PC Francis ignored the request."
6. "After I had spent more than five hours in custody, PC 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. When I said that I had not, he added that he might want to arrest me again, and that he was seeking to have my website closed down."
7. "I think it was in contravention of the above [The European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10] that PC Francis caused my website to be closed down."
8. "On August 12th 2004, police seized two digital cameras and two computers belonging to me . . . My property was returned to me on March 2nd. None of it was in working rder."
In the following, quotations - unless stated otherwise - are from the Report by Sussex PSD.
1. In a taped interview held on 30th September 2005, "PC Francis stated that he had little choice but to arrest Mr Madden after repeated visits by police to his home address to try to resolve the issues." It is not true that the police tried to resolve issues. Mostly the police did nothing. In 1999 they showed short-term interest in the delivery of unwanted parcels. After I was threatened with assault by Mabry, the police interviewed Mabry, and gave as a reason for doing nothing the fact that Mabry's account of the incident had differed from mine. When I showed a police officer the fence panel which Mabry had removed to intimidate me, he did nothing. More recently I only had worse than useless visits from PC Satchwell and PC Wilkinson (see above), and by PC Francis, who complained of my notifying the police about dead plants being thrown on my garden and malicious mail.
A comprehensive treatment of the larger subject of wrongful arrest would require reference to many pages on this website, but in the interests of concision I will cite here only the statement I sent to the solicitor appointed to my case, Defence Statement.
2. The words critical and bolt do not occur in DI Preddy's report, and though the first complaint might be thought to have been subsumed under a more general heading, the important subject of the evidence of forced entry to my property has been passed over. What PC Francis said about this was one of two reasons for his having my website closed down, but either PC Francis was not asked about this, or if he was, DI Preddy failed to include it in his report. What is certain is that PC Francis lied to me over the telephone when he asked me to remove stuff about the bolt and latch from my website.
3. PC Francis also lied to me over the telephone when he denied saying to me, "Keep quiet and listen to me." As regards PC Francis's refusal to take previous incidents into account, it cannot be true that he took into account harassment by the McCombies, as he started his investigation by saying that he was recording that I had been involved in an affray, and when I wanted to explain about harassment by the McCombies, and much more importantly by the Mabrys - which Francis and Preddy fail to mention - I was told to keep quiet and listen to Francis.
4. The affray allegation is not mentioned in the report, but has a page on this website. The dishonest text version of my taped interview is not mentioned in the report, but the dishonesty is commented on in some detail in my study of PC Francis's Record of Taped Interview. The Case Summary is not mentioned in the report, but its dishonesty is revealed in my account of it.
The PSD report says that "PC Francis stated he had no objections to the tapes being supplied but the supplying of tapes was a matter for the Criminal Justice Unit and not a matter for him." PC Francis was lying. When I asked the police for the tapes, I was referred to PC Francis, who said that I could not have them. Subsequent efforts to get them from the police, the CPS, the local inspector, the local chief inspector, and the chief constable failed, and it was only after I had complained to HMIC that I was eventually allowed to listen to the tapes and find how dishonest PC Francis's transcription of them had been. Francis's dishonesty here, as frequently in this report, is shared with Preddy.
5. The complaint is not mentioned in the report, so perhaps PC Francis did not have to lie about this.
6. The PSD report says, "He [Francis] states that he explored the possibility of Mr Madden accepting a caution ." That is a lie. Francis simply tried to caution me, and I refused point blank to accept a caution. He second attempt to caution me, backed up with a threat to arrest me again, appears in the report as a more elaborate lie, in the guise of a kind-hearted offer made after consultation with the CPS, which only serves to strengthen my revulsion that Sussex Police should employ scum like Francis.
7. The report says, "Because of repeated complaints from his neighbours about the content of his website . . . PC Francis sought advice . . . as to how to get the website shut down." That is a lie. The catalyst for the action by Francis was my refusal to remove the material about damage to my gate, and to dishonestly reword his order to me to keep quiet. Had I been asked to remove certain phrases about neighbours, I would willingly have done so, as they had served their purpose. It is largely due to PC Francis and other police staff supporting him that such phrases still remain online, as evidence in a case which has yet to be concluded, just as my side gate remains unrepaired, as evidence of forced entry and criminal assault by the people whom I was accused of harassing.
8. The report says, "When I questioned PC Francis about this aspect he explained that the camera equipment had been submitted to the Hi-Tech Crime Unit at Sussex House and nothing evidential had been found and then the equipment had been stored at the Hammonds Drive property store pending the conclusion of the case. He stated that because of allegations by the complainant Inspector Brown decided it should be returned by another officer."
PC Francis was as far as one can know not specifically asked whether he was responsible for breaking a Kodak camera, and for making my computers unusable, with damage to the case of one of them, and the loss of many unique files. My attempts to obtain information from those responsible from the Hi-Tech Unit and the property store were both referred to DI Preddy, who of course made sure that I received no information whatever. One cannot say how dishonest PC Francis was in answering questions about the damage (Complaint 8) for which he was very probably responsible, but it it clear that DI Preddy was being thoroughly dishonest about the matter.
The institutional aspect of dishonesty is evident in its worst form in the PSD report on my initial eight complaints about Sussex Police, which I examine in my report on DI Preddy's report. DI Preddy, like the IPCC, concentrated entirely on evidence provided by the police, and ignored evidence provided by me. This is illustrated in a letter to me from DI Preddy dated 19 October 2005, which says in relation to damage to my property while it was in the possession of the police, "I have no evidence to prove that any damage was indeed caused." I had provided him with evidence myself in my complaints document, as well as elsewhere on my website. I will discuss here just one example from DI Preddy's report.
In his OBSERVATIONS/CONCLUSION, DI Preddy tries to justify PC Francis's attempt to caution me by quoting from a "transcript" (DI Preddy's term) of my taped interview written by PC Francis: "Mr Madden . . . liked the "idea of using abusive language about the McCombies". DI Preddy wrote that after I had complained of serious faults in PC Francis's version of the interview. DI Preddy of course did not think it worthwhile to have the tapes checked. What PC Francis ascribed to me was, "And I'm willing, verbally, to engage in such confrontation." It is clear from the tape that what I said was, "I'm unwilling".
Several other police employees played a part in dishonest activity, by omission or commission, by doing a job in an institution which puts self-service and self-interest before the interests of the public. Leading this aspect of institutional dishonesty were the local police inspector, PI Brown, and the local chief inspector, CI Matthews.
Their part in institutional dishonesty cannot be fully documented, because some of the correspondence with PI Brown directly and with CI Matthews directly and via the SPA was evidently lost as a result of the sabotaging of my computers by Sussex Police. Files from three of my four hard discs I was able to rescue after buying an electronic device for reading data from a hard disc using a USB port, but my main hard disc resisted all efforts to read the data. At a rough estimate, there might have been some forty thousand files on the disc. Many of them would have been unique and irreplaceable data files.
I will not repeat here the evidence presented on the PI Brown page of this site. Instead I will comment on one email, only recently re-discovered, written between the assaults on me by three neighbours and my arrest by PC Francis. The email was sent to PI Brown on 29th July 2004 under the subject heading "Harassment and assault". The latter part of the email is about some unknown person using my bank account to pay for their TV licence, so I will quote only the first part:
I have just posted a letter to my M.P. Normally I would have walked to my nearest post box to do so, but instead I drove to Langney shopping centre, and as I walked to and from my garage I carried the column from a photographic enlarger, as I did yesterday when I retrieved a wheelie bin from in front of my property, and on Tuesday when I worked in my back garden for a few minutes and then put out the wheelie bin.
The letter begins, "I wonder if there is some department of the Home Office to which I can appeal for a review of the disgraceful behaviour of the local police after I dialled 999 in 2002."
I now have three neighbours who have assaulted me and threatened further violence unless I move out of my property.
After I was attacked last Saturday (Incident 1128 of 24/07/04), the visit to me of P.C.Francis on the following day gave me cause for anxiety. P.C.Francis, like the sergeant who dealt with the assault in 2002, said "Keep quiet and listen to me"; P.C.Francis, like the sergeant who dealt with the assault in 2002, said that he was concerned only with the incident of that day, not with preceding incidents, though preceding incidents are essential to a proper understanding of any single incident of harassment. P.C.Francis also criticised my description of two of my neighbours on a website, without having investigated the reasons for it: I had already complained of my neighbours' abusive language to the police and to Eastbourne County Court. P.C. Francis also, on inspecting parts of a bolt and latch on the ground as a result of forced entry to my property, said that it was not "evidence", citing his twelve years' experience as a police officer to bolster this bizarre claim.
I have yet to see if I will be given a crime number for this incident and be allowed to make a statement. On 24th March 2002 I was not allowed to make a statement. Yesterday I added a page on the McCombies, two of the three people who assaulted me on Saturday, to my website. The last two paragraphs read:
"On 24th July 2004, while I was painting a shed at the bottom of my garden, Mr McCombie started shouting abuse from his garden. Instead of retaliating in kind, I told McCombie how he had been described on my website. McCombie called to Mabry, there was the noise of shouting as the side gate to my property was smashed open, and six people invaded my back garden.
"McCombie assaulted me, threatened further assaults, advised me to watch my back, and told me to get out of my property. Mabry then assaulted me, and then Mrs McCombie. A blow to my left ear from Mrs McCombie is still causing me some disquiet."
I did not walk to my local post box to post my letter, and I carried the enlarger column, on account of the threats of further assaults if I did not move house.
I was assaulted on 24th July. I wrote the email to PI Brown on 29th July. I was arrested by PC Francis (presumably under the control of PI Brown) on 12th August, on a charge of harassing the McCombies. Although it is possible that PI Brown is guilty of gross incompetence rather than deliberate individual dishonesty, as the inspector in the police station from which PC Francis operated he is clearly responsible to a large degree for the dishonesty of PC Francis. My correspondence with him about the incompetence of PC Francis's "Investigation" into the assaults on me, asking for someone else to examine the evidence, seems to have been lost.
CI Matthews contribution to institutional dishonesty seems to have been a combination of inactivity and ignorance. When the IPCC advised me to send complaints to the SPA, the SPA sent them on to the local commander, CI Matthews. As a result, I sent correspondence to CI Matthews myself. Most of this correspondence was not answered, so it might have been filtered out by underlings.
As far as I can ascertain, I received three letters from CI Matthews. The first (11/03/2005) consisted of two lines written by Lauren Williams asking to be allowed time to look through correspondence. The third (04/05/05) consisted of five lines saying, apparently, that papers relating to my complaints had been sent to the PSD. The second (22/03/05) seems to reveal the extent of CI Matthews' knowledge of police malpractice which I had been complaining about for months, though presented as the wish "to clarify a few points":
"That in your correspondence with Sussex Police you would like two specific issues addressed; Firstly the alleged damage to your property and secondly that you are seeking our views on the information you propose to publish."
The remainder of the letter was about the damage, saying that CI Matthews "would benefit from seeing any relevant receipts of purchase and an official quotation for the repair".
I had asked for many more than two issues to be addressed. As regards the damage, CI Matthews seems unaware of losses not covered by receipts, and in any case seems only interested in money, and not in the much more important matter of possible malpractice by employees for which he was to a large degree responsible. As to the "seeking our views" matter, I had complained to the police about their closing of my website, and had asked what had caused them to do so, as I intended, if they did not allow Tiscali to reinstate my website, to reinstate it myself using another ISP, and wanted to exclude subject matter to which the police had valid objections.
It is extraordinary that a force which depends greatly on the voluntary cooperation of the public in providing them with information should take such great care to withhold information themselves. Many Sussex Police employees are engaged in this enterprise, at public expense.
To illustrate the theme, let us start with the interview tapes. When I was arrested, I was taken to Eastbourne Custody Centre, and interviewed. The interview was recorded on two cassette tapes. At the end of the interview, I was told to sign a form. I was not able to read the full document, as explained on this page, but was told to sign it. My signature was the only thing I added to the form. The image of the form on my web page is not very clear, so I will reproduce the most important part of it, with comment, here.
On the "Notice to Person Whose Interview Has Been Tape Recorded" form, a list of three items beside empty boxes is headed with the instruction, "Tick one box only." I did not tick any box. The three items comprise: 1. "I do not wish a copy of the tape(s)." 2. "I wish a copy of the tapes to be sent to my solicitor - details below." 3. "I do not have a solicitor and do not intend to seek one. I wish a copy of the tape(s) to be sent to me - details below." The third box has been ticked, the text beside it, apart from the first six words, has been crossed out, and "AND DON'T KNOW IF I WILL HAVE ONE" has been added in its place. The tick, the crossing out, and the added text were presumably added by PC Francis after I had signed the form.
When I received documents about my arrest from Sussex Police, they included a Record of Taped Interview in text form, but no tapes. A reading of PC Francis's version of my interview showed it to be seriously inaccurate, as indicated in the web page that I wrote before I acquired the tapes and was able to create a more detailed review of them.
The web page with my comments on the interview text and the web page with the bottom half of the form were available to DI Preddy when he wrote his dishonest report on my eight complaints about Sussex Police.
I obviously wanted the tapes: I knew that the text transcription was seriously inaccurate, and I had previous first-hand experience of the dishonesty of PC Francis and would not trust anything he produced without corroborative evidence. I telephoned the police to ask for the tapes, but was referred to PC Francis, who said that I could not have them. Eight months later I was still trying to get the tapes which should have been sent to me "as soon as practicable", as is evident from this extract from a letter that I wrote to the Chief Constable on 24th April 2005:
"In a letter to you dated 11th November 2004 I wrote:
"I said [to PC Francis] that I wanted copies of the tapes PC Francis had recorded during my interview on 12th August. PC Francis said that I could not have copies, but that I could or might (I am not sure which he specified) have a text version. That is not acceptable. I have a pink form which says that I am entitled to have copies of two tapes if I am charged – it does not say transcripts.
"I also sent that letter to CI Matthews and PI Brown. I wrote to the solicitor appointed to help with my defence, who confirmed that I had a right to the tapes, and advised me to write to Grove Road. My letter to Grove Road was answered by a telephone call which suggested that my tapes might have been sent to my solicitor – they had not – and then by a telephone call to say that my tapes had been given to the CPS. The CPS told me that I would have to get the tapes from the police.
"On 4th February 2005 I wrote to PI Brown at Hailsham:
"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.
"If I do not receive these tapes very soon, I shall be making a complaint to the Home Office."
I subsequently complained to HMIC about the matter, and six months after the letter to the Chief Constable, and fourteen months after the interview, I received copies of the interview tapes and was able to document the extent of the dishonesty of the transcript on this website.
When the dishonest PC Francis arrested me on 12th August 2004, he seized my two digital cameras and two computers. Later in the year I telephoned the police as camera manufacturers recommend that batteries should not be left unused in cameras for a long time. The matter was referred to PC Francis, who told me that batteries do not lose power unless they are used.
On 7th January 2005, the CPS issued a notice of discontinuance for the case against me concocted by PC Francis. On 2nd March 2005 my property was returned to me. None of it was in working order. One digital camera has not worked since, and both computers had been rendered unusable, though an official police form (MG 6C) states, "it was deemed by both the OIC and the Computer crime unit that no examination of the computer equipment be made." PC Francis claims to have some sort of qualification in computing. An account of my futile attempts to get information from the local Property Store and High Tech Unit about how the equipment was damaged, either accidentally or deliberately, and how my enquiries were sent on to the chief withholder-of-information, DI Preddy of the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department, together with a small sample of the handwriting of the person responsible for the loss of unique and irreplaceable computer files, can be found here.
I have yet to write a web page on the Sussex Police complaints system, as system is far too orderly a word to define the shambles of defensive manoeuvres that constitutes practice in Sussex, led by the Professional Standards Department, so I will make a few comments about the dishonest treatment of complaints on this page.
About complaints, the IPCC website declares, "all complaints, by law, must be recorded by the police force itself." The Sussex Police website repeats that formulation word for word.
Four paragraphs further on, the IPCC says, "If the police force does not record your complaint it has to give you reasons for not doing so." Sussex Police do not add that qualification to their web page. Both statements seem to have been taken from the Police Reform Act 2002 Schedule 3 Part 1 Handling of Complaints. The words in the passage below, apart from those in square brackets, are taken from the Act:
Where- (a) "a complaint is made to a chief officer about the conduct of a person under his direction and control, or (b) a chief officer becomes aware that [such] a complaint . . . has been made to the Commission [IPCC] or to a police authority, the chief officer shall take all such steps as appear to him to be appropriate . . . for obtaining and preserving evidence relating to the conduct complained of.
Where a complaint is made to a chief officer, he shall- (a) determine whether or not he is himself the appropriate authority; and (b) if he determines that he is not, give notification of the complaint to the person who is.
Where- (b) a chief officer determines, in the case of any complaint made to that chief officer, that he is himself the appropriate authority, or (c) a complaint is notified to a police authority or chief officer under this paragraph, the authority or chief officer shall record the complaint.
This paragraph applies where anything which is or purports to be a complaint . . . is received by a police authority or chief officer . . . If the police authority or chief officer decides not to take action . . . for notifying or recording the whole or any part of what has been received, the authority or chief officer shall notify the complainant of the following matters- (a) the decision to take no action and, if that decision relates to only part of what was received, the part in question; (b) the grounds on which the decision was made; and (c) that complainant's right to appeal against that decision under this paragraph.
The position according to the 2002 Act - briefly - seems to be that if one has a complaint about the police, and makes that complaint to the police either directly or through the police authority or through the IPCC, the Chief Constable or someone deputed to act for him has either to record that complaint or tell the complainant that the complaint will not be recorded and explain why that is the case.
Then there is the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004 which, on the subject of "Keeping of records", declares, "Every police authority and chief officer shall keep records, in such form as the Commission shall determine, of - (a) every complaint and purported complaint that is made to it or him".
Whatever the true position in law, Sussex Police in dealing with my complaints have sometimes not responded to them at all - though DI Preddy's dishonest report was produced in response to the group of eight complaints published on this website - and refused to record my two latest complaints about the production of dishonest and corrupt criminal records filed under my name.
The IPCC says, "The IPCC's job is to make sure that complaints against the police are dealt with effectively." Their recommended recording practice ( 5.2.3) is, "Start with the presumption that where a member of the public expresses dissatisfaction which, on the face of it, is a complaint about conduct, it is valid under the Police Reform Act 2002 and should be recorded."
In my experience, the practice of Sussex Police was to ignore or stonewall complaints, unless one complained to the PCA or HMIC, and only in the second case was a complaint progressed in any meaningful way.
Most of the complaints that I have made to and about Sussex Police have apparently not been recorded, if recording means adding the complaint to an official record or register that is made available to the Sussex Police Authority.
The Sussex Police Authority is by law required to "secure the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force for its area." On its website, the Authority says that its duties include "Overseeing the process of complaints", part of its job being "To inspect the record of complaints and completed action taken upon them."
I think that if Sussex Police did not habitually and dishonestly fail to comply with the requirements of the law, they would not need to hide behind the Data Protection Act when one asks if a complaint has been recorded, and in what terms.
After my arrest I sent a succession of emails and letters to the local inspector, the SPA, and the local chief inspector, which were not answered, and there is even doubt whether the eight complaints on a police witness statement form have been added to the "record of complaints."
On 12th April 2006, in an attempt to clarify what had happened about my complaints, I emailed Sussex Police as follows:
"I would like to know whether complaints that I have made about Sussex Police have found their way into the police complaints registers, and in what form. So I would like to know the precise wording of any of my complaints that have been officially recorded in the registers, and thereby made available to the Sussex Police Authority."
A reply informed me that "any such requests can become ‘subject access’ requests under the Data Protection Act 1998," if I filled in a form and paid the police ten pounds.
Surprised by this response, I emailed Elizabeth Williams of the IPCC saying, "I would be interested to learn if the IPCC endorses the attitude of Sussex Police." A reply from Neil Jasper said, "this is not something that the IPCC would either endorse or discourage." On its website the IPCC states, "We set standards for the way the police handle complaints"; so the IPCC are satisfied that the police can make it difficult for a member of the public to know whether a complaint they have made has been officially recorded.
It does not of course end there. I filled in a form and paid ten pounds, and in response received a letter dated 1 June 2006 from R. Amos, Administrative Assistant, Data Protection Unit, who wrote, "I have spoken to the Professional Standards Department who have informed me that you have made three complaints to them. One in 2002 and two in 2004." Enclosed with the letter were copies of pages from the Sussex Police Crime Reporting System.
The photocopies were of crime reports, not complaints reports, so I wrote to the chairman of the Complaints Committee of the Sussex Police Authority, Councillor Rogers, outlining the difficulties I had experienced in obtaining information and suggesting it "might be that the SPA do not have access to many of the complaints made to the police about the police". A reply from the SPA deputy clerk, Patric Welch, says, "I can assure you that the processes put in place by the Sussex Police Authority and Sussex Police to monitor complaints is robust."
Not much hope of improvement there, then.
On 30th May 2006 I wrote to the Chief Constable a letter starting, "I have a complaint which I would like recorded, and remedied as soon as practicable," and ending, "My complaint is that I was not provided with one of the statements from "4 close neighbours". I believe I have a right to a copy, and ask that you send me a copy as soon as practicable of the neighbour's witness statement not listed in my fourth paragraph."
A reply dated 4th July from PS Moloney of Sussex Police PSD said nothing about recording the complaint, and said that I would have to request the statement from the Sussex Police Data Protection Officer, so I paid ten pounds for a Mr Burtenshaw to tell me on 8th August that I could not have a copy of the statement.
On 26th June 2006, I wrote to the Chief Constable a letter starting, "I have a complaint which I would like recorded immediately in a register of complaints available to the Sussex Police Authority . . . . My complaint is that Sussex Police in their Crime Reporting System largely ignored the evidence that I had provided, and instead corruptly and dishonestly entered under my name . . . a record (Date: 23/3/2002, Serial 959) that is based in important ways on lies told to the police by ex-policeman Mabry."
On 13th July 2006 I wrote to the Chief Constable a letter starting, "I have a complaint which I would like recorded immediately in a register of complaints available to the Sussex Police Authority. In the Sussex Crime Reporting System, a thoroughly dishonest and probably corrupt entry was made under my name, OIS Ser No: 1128 Date 24/7/2004. The investigating officer was the dishonest PC Francis CF898."
A reply dated 31st August from Acting Inspector Moloney of Sussex Police PSD treated my two complaints as "a complaint", and said it would "not be recorded as a new complaint", though both complaints were new complaints which had only been made possible when accompanying the letter dated 1 June 2006 I had, fortuitously, received copies of dishonest criminal records made under my name instead of copies of complaints that I had made.
So I have no evidence if and how Sussex Police actually record any complaints: the only evidence I have is that they have refused to record two of my complaints, which might be taken to imply - although not necessarily so - that they do sometimes record complaints. The PSD had said that I had made three complaints to them (I had actually made eight in one document alone), but they did not say - in R. Amos's account - that those three complaints had been recorded in a way that made them available to the Complaints Committee of the Sussex Police Authority.
March 2007 Some light has been thrown on institutional dishonesty in the Sussex police force following the resignation of one of its officers. The Argus (9:45am) on 14th March reported that Johnno Hills, a training detective constable, had "resigned" after complaining to a national newspaper of his force's emphasis on paperwork and statistics rather than preventing crime. A Sussex Police spokeswoman said that his comments compromised his role as a police officer: "police regulations state that officers must maintain political neutrality."
At 11.21pm on the same day, the same reporter added more detail in a story under the headline, "Detective lifts lid on ‘fiddled’ crime figures", which starts, "Sussex Police has been accused of manipulating crime figures by one of its own detectives." Mr Hills provided insights into police work which will not appear in Home Office studies or HMIC reports, and provided a valuable public service not at the expense of the taxpaper, but at the cost of his career.
A few contiguous paragraphs from the story illustrate the nature of policing in Sussex under the leadership of Puffer Edwards:
Mr Hills said officers were spending more time on paperwork recording inconsequential incidents to boost police figures than on trying to prevent crime.
He gave one example of an incident when a man was found hanging from a tree having committed suicide. When officers found a weapon in his pocket they seized on the opportunity to report it as an offence.
When the body of a drug dealer was found in a flat, he claimed officers were more interested in recording a detection of drugs found on the scene than investigating the death.
Mr Hills said that after he was called to a fight between a jogger and a dog-walker he was encouraged to fill out paperwork treating both as suspects even though he knew who was at fault. By treating both as offenders the incident counted double in the force statistics.
He said: "This happens all the time. Officers report two crimes for one or even one when there should be none. It is widespread."
A couple of brief sentences from Mr Hills highlight the quandary in which honest police officers find themselves in an institutionally dishonest force:
"This has cost me my career but that is a price I am willing to pay. I took up this career because I wanted to serve my community and I'm not sure I am doing that any more."
Following the referral of my three complaints to the IPCC, there was a lull of nine months, during which I wrote twice to the Home Secretary, once to my MP, and twice to the IPCC, as I was becoming impatient for a response. It came on May 25th 2007, and in it a casework manager, Mr Broyd said, "I have upheld your appeal," but added,
"where the complaint was made over a year since the incident giving rise to it, the police may apply to the IPCC for a dispensation to cease investigation into that complaint."
Sussex Police applied for a "dispensation", and despite my objections, the IPCC granted it. I stated my objections both before and after the event.
Dishonesty by Sussex Police is involved here because what Mr Broyd wrote is far short of the whole truth. DI Brice of Sussex Police PSD wrote to me on 27th June 2007, saying that the police were requesting a dispensation "on the grounds that the events you have complained of occurred more than twelve months earlier and also that it is repetitious . . . ." Either DI Brice or the person instructing or advising him was being dishonest. As to the twelve months' delay, I suppose that the police might plead ignorance of the law, but that cannot be so as regards the falsehood, "it is repetitious". I quote in full the relevant clauses from the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004 on the web page which can be accessed using the second link in the previous paragraph, and both links connect to pages with a wealth of detail showing that a dispensation was clearly and entirely inappropriate, so I will not repeat it here. A ten-minute video on YouTube, Recent Autobiography, the Sequel outlines what happened. It can be found by entering ggm11 in the Search text box.
In September 2007 I received further evidence of dishonest record keeping. A dispensation by the IPCC to ignore a complaint requires that the police first record that complaint, so I had made a further application under the Data Protection Act to know which of my complaints had been recorded, and received a complete list, with entries from 11/06/2002 to 17/08/2007. The 2002 entry relates to the assault on me in March 2002. I complained to the PCA that the investigating officer had refused to take account of a history of threats and harassment by my attacker, that the officer prejudged the matter in the light of what my assailant and his wife had said, that he did not allow me to make a signed statement of what had happened, and that his manner was rude and threatening. The PCA passed my complaints on to Sussex Police, who registered them in a single word: "incivility". Worse was to follow. After I was assaulted by three people in 2004, I made several complaints to the local inspector and chief inspector: these complaints were not recorded at all. Complaints in 2006 were reduced to five, worded in unspecific terms. And for 2007, only two of my three complaints were recorded, despite which the IPCC granted Sussex Police a dispensation so that they would not have to investigate allegations of malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption.
To be continued
