Independent Police Complaints Commission
The Independent Police Complaints Commission was set up by the Police Reform Act 2002, replacing the Police Complaints Authority. If one feels that one's complaints to the police were not properly handled, one may be able to appeal to the IPCC.
My initial approaches to the Commission over the telephone were encouraging, with prompt help and advice being available. When the IPCC advised me to send complaints to the Sussex Police Authority, it was the Authority who chose to pass them on to the local commander, as a result of which they were not addressed. When the IPCC advised me to send complaints to the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department, it was the Department who decided to send them on to the local inspector, as a result of which they were not addressed. The IPCC were blameless.
The IPCC's website is also very helpful and encouraging. Its explanation of "The New System" is promising. It starts with, "The IPCC has been given new, stronger powers which means they can supervise, run and, where necessary, conduct investigations into complaints against the police." That statement actually seems to be more than an empty form of words: "IPCC investigators, in certain circumstances, have full police powers and rights of access to premises, documents and other evidence when requested." That is clearly what is needed. The police are incapable of policing themselves.
To rate another improvement, I will have to wait and see how it works out in practice: "for the first time, there is a legal obligation to keep complainants informed of the progress of an investigation which may include giving complainants a copy of the investigating officer's report."
After I had finally managed to have some of my complaints against the police recorded and examined, and I thought the resulting report dishonest, I referred my complaints to the IPCC. Making an appeal proved to be a very simple process, and the casework manager who was dealing with my appeal, Elizabeth Williams, identified herself to me quite quickly. In a letter of 17 November 2005 she wrote, "We will be writing to you about your application shortly."
On 12th April 2006, after discovering that to try to find out which of my complaints about Sussex Police had been formally registered by them I had to pay them ten pounds and wait for up to forty days, I wrote to Ms Williams "to learn if the IPCC endorses the attitude of Sussex Police".
A reply dated 19 April 2006 came from Neil Jasper: my case had been passed on to him, and he said, "I hope to complete my considerations in the near future". He added that the payment for knowing whether my complaints had been registered was "not something that the IPCC would either endorse or discourage".
So it's official then: the police by law are supposed to register complaints made about them by the public, but to find out whether they have done so, members of the public may have to pay the police ten pounds. That seems to me a discouragement for my seeking the information, a corollary of which might be the police quietly forgetting to add to the official registers of complaints; yet the payment is not a condition about which one could complain.
17th May 2006: It is six calendar months since I was told, "We will be writing to you about your application shortly."
19th May 2006: Today I received the results of the review of my case by the IPCC. It is a complete whitewash, none of my complaints being upheld. I shall be adding a detailed analysis of the document to this website. After that, it may be that I ought to inform the Home Secretary that the IPCC is 'not fit for purpose'.
20th August 2006:The first of my three current complaints, involving a witness statement, having been rejected by the Professional Standards Department and the Data Protection Unit, I posted an appeal against the decisions to the IPCC on 18th August. Their acknowledgement, from Imran Khan, Casework Administrator, was dated 22 August and said, "We will be writing to you about your application shortly."
2nd September 2006: Today I received a letter from Sussex PSD with a refusal to record my other two complaints - about dishonest criminal records - or to do anything other than file them away, so I despatched an appeal to the IPCC. More details here.
18th September 2006: So far there has been no response whatever to my latest appeal. According to the IPCC's website, "Once your appeal form is received at the IPCC, we will send you a letter explaining how your appeal will be dealt with and how long it is likely to take." They do not say how long it is likely to take before they tell you how long it is likely to take.
25th September 2006: The appeal documented on 20th August not having, as far as I knew, progressed, and the appeal documented on 2nd September not having been acknowledged, I telephoned the IPCC, and found that the second appeal had been received, and that both appeals were under consideration.
13th October: Having as yet received no written response to my most recent appeal, I emailed the Home Office with a message addressed to the Home Secretary as follows:
I wish to complain of dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC, which though styled “Independent” and an NDPB, is presumably answerable in some ways to the Home Office, though it claims that its “decisions on cases are free from government involvement”. Deciding to ignore an appeal from a member of the public surely makes it not fit for purpose, and in need of correction or replacement.
Six weeks ago, after Sussex Police had refused to record two complaints that false criminal records had been entered under my name by dishonest and corrupt police officers who acted as investigating officers on two occasions when I was assaulted by an ex-policeman, I appealed against that decision to the IPCC, and am still waiting for a written response.
On their website, the IPCC say, “Once your appeal form is received at the IPCC, we will send you a letter explaining how your appeal will be dealt with and how long it is likely to take.” Three weeks after sending them my appeal, I had to telephone them just to find out that they had received the appeal, and have heard nothing since.
Earlier complaints from me about Sussex Police had been dealt with in a dishonest police report (available at www.ggm11.plus.com/psd_cs.htm), which I commented on in my own report (www.ggm11.plus.com/report.htm) before referring the complaints to the IPCC, who, six months later, produced another dishonest report (www.ggm11.plus.com/ipccrprt.htm), which I commented on in a report entitled “An IPCC Whitewash” www.ggm11.plus.com/myreport.htm).
I want the IPCC to have dealt with my latest complaints, whitewash or not, before sending a bill to Sussex Police for my digital camera that they broke and my computers that they sabotaged to destroy evidence, with the loss of hundreds of files.
2nd November, 2006 Yesterday, prompted by an SPA discussion of an IPCC report, I started a new page about a local road accident in which the police were "involved". Today I received a letter answering my email to the Home Secretary complaining of "dilatory practice". The letter from the Police Integrity Team led me to think that I had taken too literally a sentence in bold print in a letter from the IPCC which said, "Please note that the decision made by the IPCC about your appeal is final". I took that to mean that if I sent the IPCC an appeal and they decided simply to ignore it, there was nothing I could do about it. There is, I discovered, an easily-found page on the IPCC website dealing with complaints against the IPCC.
After studying that page, I emailed the case worker initially assigned to deal with my first appeal, mentioned the advice I had received from the Police Integrity Team, referred to my dissatisfaction with the IPCC's report on that appeal as reason for writing my own report on it, and ended as follows:
"Your ‘against_ipcc.htm’ web page suggests that I can complain about ‘delays’, but - a few lines further down - rules out ‘Questions relating to individual IPCC cases’, and as ‘questions’ there presumably means ‘issues’, I could be wasting my time in writing to you about individual cases.
"I have a letter from Imran Khan (Casework Administrator) dated 22 August (2006/011814) saying that the IPCC would be writing to me about my application ‘shortly’. I do not think ‘shortly’ can mean ‘in more than two months’. I sent another appeal to the IPCC on 2nd September 2006. I only knew that it had been received by the IPCC when I telephoned you three weeks later. I have heard nothing since.
"So the formal complaint I wish to make is as expressed in the previous paragraph, and concerns either dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC, or rejecting a complaint without advising the complainant of the decision. Should my complaint about individual cases be allowable, I will of course be willing to fill in any special form or add any further details if necessary."
A reply was sent just over three hours later from Douglas Cleaver, and said, "Your email . . . has been passed to me as the staff Complaints Manager for the IPCC, and to which I respond shortly."
3rd November, 2006 Today I came across some interesting press articles about Lara Vanderberghe and her contribution to the public interest.
14th November, 2006 Mr Cleaver responded as promised: "I have been informed by casework that this matter [my appeals] is currently being processed and that you will be contacted in due course. I am sorry that you feel that your issues have been the subject of delay, and I will forward your concerns to line management in casework for their information."
30th November, 2006 Today I added a summary to my complaints log of progress to date with my three latest complaints. I also started to review the claims that the IPCC makes about itself on its website, and its obligations according to the Police Reform Act of 2002.
3rd February, 2007 Having heard nothing further from the IPCC, yesterday I emailed the Home Office again [ text available here ] as I was becoming impatient with the dilatoriness of the IPCC and had been unable to find in published legislation any requirement for the IPCC to act within a reasonable time.
26th February, 2007 As my email of 3rd February is as yet unanswered and unacknowledged, and as I have heard nothing further from the IPCC, I think that I ought to publicise the dishonesty I have experienced in public services in other ways. I have added a brief note to this website (available here) based on the press articles mentioned in the entry for 3rd November, and have emailed the website responsible for one of those articles, www.spinwatch.org, giving them the URL of my website.
3rd March, 2007 It is now more than six calendar months since I sent my last two complaints, about dishonesty and corruption on the part of Sussex Police, to the IPCC. I received a reply yesterday from the Home Office to my second email to the Home Secretary about dilatory practice by the IPCC. This email from Sarah Muir of the "Police Powers and Integrity Team" added nothing to the first reply I received from the Home Office, and failed to address the reason for my email.
The Home Office email made three points:
1. "the IPCC has statutory oversight of the police complaints system and so, the Home Office has no power to act as an avenue of appeal, and have no power to influence or intervene in any investigations or decisions made by the IPCC."
2. "I can see that your complaints are currently being investigated by the IPCC Complaints Manager."
3. The IPCC'S "decisions on cases can not be overturned apart from through the courts."
My comments:
1. What follows "and so" is a non sequitur. The Chairman of the IPCC was appointed by the Queen, who presumably takes no responsibility whatever for what has proved an unsuitable appointment, but the way the IPCC conducts its affairs is governed by the Home Secretary: I quoted in my email the relevant paragraph in The Police Reform Act 2002, "(5) The duties imposed by this section on the Commission . . . in relation to any complaint shall be performed in such manner . . . as may be provided for by regulations made by the Secretary of State." I was complaining of dilatory practice by the IPCC, and thought that if the Act does not compel the IPCC to act within a reasonable time scale, then it is up to the Home Secretary to make them do so.
2. My complaints are not "currently being investigated by the IPCC Complaints Manager." The Complaints Manager wrote to me on 14th November 2006 saying, "I have been informed by casework that this matter is currently being processed and that you will be contacted in due course," and adding, "I am sorry that you feel that your issues have been the subject of delay, and I will forward your concerns to line management in casework for their information." I have heard nothing since from the IPCC.
3. I have found nothing in the relevant legislation to suggest that it is unlawful for the IPCC to wait for appellants to die before, if ever, making a decision on their case. Meanwhile dishonest police officers and their protectors within the force continue on their way, and it appears that the Home Office is content that members of the public should themselves have to resort to the courts to deal with corruption within their local police force.
There are several reasons for pause before seeking a remedy in the courts:
In a log of complaints about Sussex Police, my entry for 1st January 2005 quotes Graeme McLagan's book Bent Coppers on the subject of dealing with police corruption:
'I was interested to see that on two occasions the book endorses my own feeling that the courts tend to favour the police.
'On page 2 Graeme McLagan attributes to Scotland Yard's Complaints Investigation Branch the opinion that "It was difficult to get enough evidence that would stick in court, where juries were notorious for giving police officers in the dock the benefit of the doubt," and on page187, he says that senior Met officers "recognised that corruption was a serious problem but . . . were also arguing that it could not be dealt with satisfactorily through the courts, where juries tended to give the benefit of the doubt to police officers."
'This makes it imperative that whenever possible dishonesty and malpractice should be dealt with by the police themselves. Complaints from the public are an important source of information in uncovering and dealing with such behaviour; but in my experience Sussex Police either try to ignore complaints, or compound the dishonesty by adding to it.'
Senior police officers felt that bias could be shown in favour of the police, even though annual surveys show that 32% of the public would not generally trust the police to tell the truth. My feeling is that judges would show even stronger bias in favour of the police than would members of the general public.
Secondly, incalculable costs could be incurred by me in an unequal contest with the financial resources that the police can muster, and I might not be willing to ruin myself financially in order to improve marginally the honesty of Sussex Police, an improvement for which the complacent Sussex Police Authority and the government-appointed IPCC should have been working.
Thirdly, my experience of our courts, except as a juror, has been confined to Eastbourne Country Court, my exceedingly low opinion of which is reflected in two pages of this website, Eastbourne County Court and Letter to the Lord Chancellor.
4th April, 2007 Today the IPCC published a report on the Cochrane murders in Wythenshawe. I have started reading press accounts of the Cochranes' problems myself, with a view to possibly producing a critical report on the conclusions of an investigation into the case reached by the IPCC Commissioner for the North West, as far as that is practicable from the brief press release put out by the IPCC.
May 14th 2007: Anticipating little help from my representative in the House of Commons, I sent a letter to the IPCC saying that I was becoming increasingly angry about lack of progress with my complaints. The letter ended:
I think that if the IPCC decides that they will not be investigating my complaints, then they should have informed me of their decision long ago. If the IPCC did decide to investigate my complaints, I believe they are contravening the law by not keeping me informed. If the IPCC has as yet made no decision as to whether it will be investigating my complaints or not, it has been negating for many months the claims it makes on its website about the way in which it deals with complaints.
I hope to hear from you shortly.
May 24th 2007: Having not heard from the IPCC, I think that if its Chairman were a hoodied teenager, one might characterise the IPCC's attitude as one of dumb insolence. The IPCC deserves to feature on YouTube, though the Sussex Police Authority ought probably to take priority.
May 25th 2007: A letter and brief report arrived from the IPCC today, but did little to dispel my feeling that the main function of the IPCC is to exculpate the police from blame whenever possible. I will comment on the letter on this page, and quote from the report, and quote my brief email reply, on another page.
The letter was signed by Nick Broyd, the third IPCC casework manager to deal with my complaints about Sussex Police.
Mr Broyd said: "the delay in responsing to your appeal [there was actually more than one] . . . was caused by a clerical error."
He stated: "I have upheld your appeal and agree that it should be recorded as a complaint." I made three complaints.
He cautioned:"I have to warn you . . . that . . . 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."
Since the IPCC only allowed me twenty-eight days in which to appeal to them, and since it took them nearly nine months to respond to my appeals, Mr Broyd's warning serves to strengthen my feeling that the IPCC's mission is to shield the police from blame whenever possible.
A few days later, the outlook became less clear, as noted in my complaints log entry for June 2007. The last entry for the same month logs Sussex Police's predictable response to the possible opt-out mentioned by Mr Broyd.
On July 7th I received a copy of a letter dated 11 June from the IPCC "Commissioner responsible for Sussex Police" saying, "there is a strong prospect that Sussex will be making an application" for an opt-out.
The case against Sussex Police being allowed to ignore complaints of malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption on the part of police officers is being put on another page.
July 20th 2007 Having heard from Sussex Police that they were applying for a dispensation, I emailed the IPCC on 13th July: "The IPCC have not told me whether I can object to Sussex Police being granted a dispensation to ignore complaints about malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption, but I am objecting anyway . . . Should the IPCC wish to take my views into account, they are published at www.ggm11.plus.com/time.htm"
This was acknowledged promptly by a computer which said, "a member of our Customer Service Team will respond to your email in due course."
August 10th 2007 It is now four weeks since I emailed the IPCC about the dispensation for which Sussex Police had applied, four weeks without any response: IPCC timeservers appear to have reverted to dumb insolence or clerical error mode.
August 13th 2007 Today I received a letter from the IPCC dated 7 August, though its A4 envelope had a 44p stamp. The letter was from Abiodun Soremekun, Casework Manager. Mr Soremekun was unaware that I had written to the IPCC on 13th July. His letter gave me seven days to object to investigation of my complaints being discontinued. I immediately telephoned Mr Soremekun, who invited me to send him a copy of my email of 13th July. That email was sent this morning.
August 15th 2007 Today I received an email from Mr Soremekun saying, "I will be granting the Sussex Police their request that your complaint should be dispensed with." So Sussex Police will not be required to investigate malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption within the force. I am publishing the IPCC's email here, and will be adding my comments on it soon, on the same page.
August 18th 2007 I completed brief comments on the IPCC's email on 16th August. The second paragraph of the report started, "The Sussex Police recorded your complaint . . . ." As that was news to me, I emailed Mr Soremekun on the 16th, "If you have the information about exactly what Sussex Police have recorded of my complaints in a register available to Sussex Police Authority, will you please let me know." A reply sent the same day assured me, "Please note that the Sussex Police ( or indeed any police force ) could only apply for a dispensation after a complaint has been recorded."
Wishing for more detail, today I delivered to Hailsham Police Station a £10 application under the Data Protection Act, which was worded as follows:
Request:
I sent complaints to the Chief Constable in letters dated 30th May, 26th June, and 13th July 2006. The first complaint was that I was not provided with a statement from a fourth close neighbour. The second and third complaints concerned dishonest records in the Sussex Crime Reporting System, about assaults on me on 23/3/2002 and 24/7/2004.
I wish to know if each of these three complaints has been recorded in a register of complaints made available to Sussex Police Authority, and the exact wording of any such entry or entries. If any or all of these complaints has or have not been recorded, I would like to have a positive statement of that fact.
September 2007 The IPCC is now the subject of two YouTube videos, accessible by typing ggm11 in the Search text box. These are called The Independent Police Counter-Complaints Commission and Recent Autobiography, the Sequel.
September 15th 2007 A letter arrived yesterday from Roger Brace of the Sussex Police Corporate Development Department Data Protection Unit. It said, "The enclosed document represents those complaints which have been recorded by our Professional Standards Department as at 24th August 2007." That document lists one complaint in 2002, five in 2006, and two in 2007. I will comment on the first six records at a later date.
My entry for August 18th quotes the person who granted the dispensation to Sussex Police as saying that the police "could only apply for a dispensation after a complaint has been recorded". I made three complaints. Only two were recorded. I emailed Mr Soremekun this morning:
According to your message of August 16th, Sussex Police were not in a position to apply for a dispensation. Using the Data Protection Act, I obtained a list of complaints from me that have been recorded. I made three complaints. Only two were recorded for 2007:
CO/327/07 - 27/06/2007 - Corrupt Practice - Dispensation by IPCC - 17/08/2007
CO/327/07 - 27/06/2007 - Corrupt Practice - Dispensation by IPCC - 17/08/2007
Incidentally, my initial response to your granting of a dispensation is available at www.ggm11.plus.com/ipccmail.htm. Yesterday I started work on a new YouTube video, to be called "Sussex Police Hall of Shame". There will be a small annexe featuring you, Broyd, Jasper and Williams.
On 17th September, I uploaded a video called "The Sequel to the Sequel" to YouTube. It adds a little to my record of 15th September above about complaints, and comments on the unwarranted granting of a dispensation by the IPCC. Between 19th and 30th September I uploaded the "Sussex Police Hall of Shame" video.
11th February 2008: On 26 April 2007 "John", the Home Secretary, wrote to "Dear Ronnie", Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, appointing him to lead the government's proposed "independent review of policing". Four days ago, the 124-page review was published.
In his letter of acceptance, Sir Ronnie Flanagan GBE QPM summarised the terms of reference he had been given as "reducing bureaucracy; ‘mainstreaming‘ neighbourhood policing; making best uses of resources; and enhancing local accountability. This "independent review", he said without a trace of irony, would engage with expertise and advice from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities, the Superintendents Assocation, and the Police Federation.
As I thought "accountability" would include accountability to the public, I was interested to find how my special interest, the system for dealing with complaints, had been treated.
A search using the root "complain" produced only the following:
3.24 "no complaints were recorded against officers who used the [body worn] cameras"
5.20 "Currently, it is difficult to hold individual members of the police to account. We have a duty of care to protect our staff from malicious complaints, but on the other hand, if a person is at fault it is often hard to determine responsibility due to the top to bottom involvement of multiple people in a process."
5.39 "Complainants are dissatisfied because they want help rather than a criminal justice outcome that generates huge bureaucracy."
7.11 "Currently, notwithstanding the extensive efforts of forces and authorities to engage and consult communities, there is insufficient evidence that people know what to do if they believe the police are not sufficiently addressing their needs beyond making a complaint against a specific officer."
7.21 "Embedding a customer service and citizen focused approach to policing, including embedding neighbourhood policing and community engagement, is therefore crucial, and should lead to greater public involvement (including information about crimes etc) and fewer complaints and calls for redress or change, including to and from national government."
7.65 "Everyone should be easily able to find out how and where to lodge a complaint or to challenge incompetent, unlawful, disrespectful or unreasonable service delivery."
Apart from the bodies mentioned in Ronnie's letter of reply, the report cited other organizations and agencies such as Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, the National Policing Improvement Agency, the Audit Commission, the Health and Safety Executive and the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, the Home Office, the Police and Crime Standards Directorate, the Wales Audit Office, the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council, the Better Regulation Executive, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Office of Criminal Justice Reform, National Neighbourhood Policing, and Communities and Local Government.
The IPCC is not mentioned. Today I checked its website, to see if its timeservers and whitewashers had been made redundant, but no, it is still there, and still claiming, "We set standards for the way the police handle complaints and, when something has gone wrong, we help the police learn lessons and improve the way they work."
I think it was a mistake for the Home Secretary to appoint a policeman to conduct an "independent" review of policing.
25th February 2008 Today The Guardian online featured three articles on the IPCC:
1. A leading article, "The charges mount up", is about the Police Action Lawyers Group expressing ' "increasing dismay and disillusionment" over the "consistently poor quality" of the commission's decision-making processes '.
2. An article by Nick Davies, "The IPCC: a catalogue of delays, rejections and basic failures", looks at specific cases of the sort that gave the PALG lawyers reason for disquiet.
3. Another article by Nick Davies, "Crisis at police watchdog as lawyers resign" deals with the failings of the IPCC, and starts, "The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) faces a crisis of confidence after a network of more than a hundred lawyers who specialise in handling police complaints resigned from its advisory body."
I emailed the paper with a few comments on the subject.
11th September 2008 Today, The Independent online included an article by Matthew Norman called "Why are the police allowed to be a law unto themselves?". In part, Mr Norman blamed "that wretched IPPC": "that pliant body's raison d'être is not to police the police, but to lend a transparent fig leaf of credibility to their ritual vindication." As comments were invited, I added a brief plug for one of my own contributions to the topic, which appeared instantly above 43 earlier comments:
As a victim of IPCC dishonesty, I recommend YouTube as a medium for protest. My own attempt is available by typing ggm11 in the YouTube search text box and selecting "The Independent Police Counter-Complaints Commission".
Posted by Geoffrey Madden | 11.09.08, 11:31 GMT Complain about this comment
16th September 2008 Today, The Guardian online included a news blog entitled "The web: fact or fiction, asks Tim Berners-Lee". Mr Berners-Lee, apparently, was concerned about "misleading information" on the web, and thought that to avoid people being misled, the web should "give people a way of discerning which information is accurate and truthful by using a system that proves when sites have reliable sources." Comments were invited, so I added a brief question:
My website asserts, with pages of evidence, that my local police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission are dishonest. What system would judge whether I am a "reliable source" or not?
As The Guardian uses pseudonyms, I appended my real name.
11th October 2008 Today the Mail online featured an article called "A licence to collude? Police's right to confer after shooting questioned by judge in barrister case". In it the IPCC chairman appeared to be on the side of virtue as usual, whereas "the Police Federation says the privilege granted to police is essential because of the trauma and speed of shootings, and the need to check officers' memories are accurate."
Surprisingly, at 10.30 a.m., the article concluded, "No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts?" I limited myself to a single sentence, knowing that "All contributions by members are pre-moderated". My contribution:
"In my experience, not only is there collusion within the local police force to disregard police malpractice, but also between that force and the IPCC."
When I checked back at 3 p.m., my comment had not been printed. One reader thought, "Officers involved in a fatal shooting should be immediately segregated", another said, "Well....what a suprise!! Not.", while the others can be represented by Clint Thrust, who said, "too right the police had to drop the bloke".
21st December 2008 A report of the Sussex Police Authority Professional Standards Committee on its October 2008 meeting - alleged to be by its Chairman - said that, "The Committee welcomed Mr Mike Franklin the IPCC Commissioner for the South East Region". From paragraph 3.9 of the report it seems that the IPCC's whitewashing activities extend beyond the police, to police authorities. Mr Franklin, it is said, "supported fully" this, "was encouraged" by that, "welcomed" the other, and "agreed" with something else. Most laughable of all, he apparently said, "it is to the credit of the Force that people felt able to complain" !
19th March 2009 Today, the TimesOnline published a story called "Babar Ahmad awarded £60,000 damages for assaults by police". Verbatim extracts follow (with use of a bold typeface added by me):
A terror suspect awaiting extradition to the United States won £60,000 in damages from Scotland Yard yesterday after being beaten and assaulted by the officers who arrested him.
The High Court was told that Babar Ahmad was subjected to 'serious, gratuitous, prolonged and unjustified violence' and 'religious abuse' during an anti-terror raid at his home in South London. Mr Ahmad . . . was not charged with any offence after the early morning raid at his home in Tooting in December 2003 . . . .
Lawyers for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who had initially disputed the claim, conceded that Mr Ahmad had been beaten . . . .
In 2005 Mr Ahmad had complained about the conduct of the police during his arrest. However, the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded that none of his complaints was substantiated . . . .
Phillippa Kaufmann, representing Mr Ahmad, told the High Court on Monday that officers dragged her client from his home using handcuffs and subjected him to dangerous neck holds that made him fear for his life.
The court was told that he was struck repeatedly before he could comply with officers' commands and at one point was forced to his knees and instructed to pray after being asked: 'Where is your God now?' . . . .
One officer grabbed his testicles and pulled hard, causing intense pain. He was beaten by five or six officers while his arms were held behind his back. He was wrenched to his feet by his handcuffs, causing him to scream in agony . . . .
21st March 2009 Today, The Guardian online published a substantial follow-up to the above story, with other examples of criminal police violence. I will quote a brief extract:
According to documents submitted to the court, four of the officers who carried out the raid on Ahmad's home had 60 allegations of assault against them - of which at least 37 were made by black or Asian men. One of the officers had 26 separate allegations of assault against him - 17 against black or Asian men.
The Met has confirmed that since 1992 all six officers involved in the Ahmad assault had been subject to at least 77 complaints. When lawyers for Ahmad asked for details of these allegations it emerged that the police had "lost" several large mail sacks detailing at least 30 of the complaints.
The lawyer representing Ahmad said,
The horrifying nature and volume of complaints against these officers should have provoked an effective response from the Metropolitan police and the IPCC long ago.
19th April 2009 The leading article in The Independent on Sunday today was called "IPCC chairman calls for public order debate". Having a particular interest in the topic, I submitted a comment, which appeared five minutes later:
This is a worryingly silly article. There has always been national debate about policing, and for Hardwick, the man responsible for the body that fends off much criticism of police dishonesty and corruption to suggest that parliament needs to properly discuss policing in order to remedy the situation is itself dishonest. The problem is not lack of debate: it is that the voice of the people is usually not heard or regarded. My own local Police Authority (Sussex) are opposed to the direct election of members because elected members might well disagree with the Chief Constable. My own tiny contribution to the debate, as a victim of police and IPCC dishonesty and corruption, is mainly via a website and YouTube. When Sussex Police closed down one website, I opened another. I urge people to speak up in any way they can, and recommend those digital media from the United States of America.
to be continued
