The IPCC and the Misuse of Law

The first batch of eight complaints that I referred to the IPCC was dealt with by a simple whitewash job on the actions of the police. The three later complaints that I referred to the IPCC were dealt with differently, using a combination of undue delay and misuse of the law in order to defend police malpractice, dishonesty and corruption. The purpose of this page is to give an account of how the IPCC did that. To limit the size of the page, main points from the relevant documents will be linked to the full text on other pages.
Complaint 1
'My complaint is that I was not provided with one of the statements from "4 close neighbours" '. I discovered the cause for this complaint when I found from Sussex Police's report on my first eight complaints that my arrest had been preceded by four witness statements, not the three that I had been given; and from the IPCC's report on those complaints that the author of the fourth statement was probably my next-door neighbour, an ex-policeman who had been subjecting me to harassment for five and a half years and had assaulted me twice.
• 30 May 2006 - I sent my complaint to the Chief Constable.
• 4 July 2006 - PS Moloney of Sussex Police PSD wrote to say that the matter required me to contact the Data Protection Officer.
• 12 July 2006 - I wrote to Sussex Police Data Protection Unit requesting a copy of the fourth witness statement.
• 8 August 2006 - The Information Compliance Manager of the Access to Information Team refused my request.
• 18 August 2006 - I posted to the IPCC an appeal against the refusal to allow me to see the statement.
Time spent by me: 18 days. Time taken up by the police: 60 days.
Complaint 2
"After I had been assaulted by my next-door neighbour, an ex-policeman named C. Mabry, on 23rd March 2002 . . . Sussex Police in their Crime Reporting System . . . corruptly and dishonestly entered under my name . . . a record . . . that is based in important ways on lies told to the police by ex-policeman Mabry."
• 1 June 2006 - date of letter (received 5 June) from Sussex Police Data Protection Unit with copies of pages from the Crime reporting System.
• 26 June 2006 - I sent my complaint to the Chief Constable.
• 2 September 2006: I received a letter from Sussex PSD with a refusal to record my complaint. On the same day I posted an appeal against that decision to the IPCC, accompanied by a letter.
Time spent by me: 21 days. Time taken up by the police: 68 days.
Complaint 3
"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".
• 1 June 2006 - date of letter (received 5 June) from Sussex Police Data Protection Unit with copies of pages from the Crime reporting System.
• 13th July 2006 - I sent my complaint to the Chief Constable.
• 2 September 2006: I received a letter from Sussex PSD with a refusal to record my complaint. On the same day I posted an appeal against that decision to the IPCC, accompanied by a letter.
Time spent by me: 37 days. Time taken up by the police: 50 days.
My third complaint not having been acknowledged, on 25th September 2006 I telephoned the IPCC, and found that the second appeal had been received. The IPCC website declared, "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." From previous experience I knew that this was not true: on 13th October I wrote to the Home Secretary to complain of "dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC".
On 2nd November 2006, I complained to the IPCC Complaints Department of "either dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC, or rejecting a complaint without advising the complainant of the decision".
On 3rd February 2007, I wrote again to the Secretary of State about the dilatoriness of the IPCC.
On May 14th 2007, I sent a letter to the IPCC saying that I was becoming increasingly angry about lack of progress with my complaints. On 24th May, having had no response to my letter, I wrote on the page of this website devoted to the IPCC, "I think that if its Chairman were a hoodied teenager, one might characterise the IPCC's attitude as one of dumb insolence." On 25th May a letter and a report arrived from the IPCC.
Time taken up by the IPCC: From my first complaint, 279 days; from my second and third complaints, 264 days.
In his letter, Nick Broyd, IPCC Casework Manager, said "I have upheld your appeal and agree that it should be recorded as a complaint", but added a warning that "where a complaint is considered repetitious and the police can show evidence of this, or 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." The letter ends, "this decision is final".
That dispensation has since been granted, though I have seen from the police no "evidence" other than a mere assertion that my "complaint" was "repetitious". My three latest complaints are supposedly a repetition of one or more of eight previous complaints. I will list both sets:
Complaints filed in 2004:
    1. Wilful blindness on the part of Sussex Police
    2. Gross prejudice on the part of the Sussex Police
    3. Wrongful arrest
    4. Neglect of proper procedures when I was in custody
    5. Illegitimate use of a caution
    6. Withholding of important evidence [files on my computers and police tapes of an interview]
    7. Contravention of human rights
    8. Negligence, incompetence and misuse of seized property.
Complaints sent to the IPCC in 2006:
1. My complaint is that I was not provided with one of the statements from "4 close neighbours". [This was a witness statement which led to my arrest, the breaking of a camera by the police, and deliberate damage to my computers.]
2. 23rd March 2002, the sergeant investigating the matter [an assault on me] refused to allow me to make a witness statement, because I would not say that I wanted to drop the matter. 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 the ex-policeman who had assaulted me.
3. 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. [This followed assaults on me by the ex-policeman (again) and two of his friends.]
Mr Broyd's warning leaves out vital aspects of what the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004 Regulation 3 had to say about a twelve-month delay and repetitious complaints, so I will quote the start of it in full:
Dispensation by the Commission
3. - (1) For the purposes of paragraph 7 of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act (dispensation by the Commission from requirements of Schedule 3) the complaints set out in paragraph (2) are hereby specified -
   (2) Those complaints are complaints where the appropriate authority considers that -
   (a) more than 12 months have elapsed between the incident, or the latest incident, giving rise to the complaint and the making of the complaint and either that no good reason for the delay has been shown or that injustice would be likely to be caused by the delay;
   (b) the matter is already the subject of a complaint;
   (c) the complaint discloses neither the name and address of the complainant nor that of any other interested person and it is not reasonably practicable to ascertain such a name or address;
   (d) the complaint is vexatious, oppressive or otherwise an abuse of the procedures for dealing with complaints;
   (e) the complaint is repetitious; or
   (f) it is not reasonably practicable to complete the investigation of the complaint or any other procedures under Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act.
   (3) For the purposes of paragraph (2)(e) a complaint is repetitious if, and only if -
   (a) it is substantially the same as a previous complaint (whether made by or on behalf of the same or a different complainant), or it concerns substantially the same conduct as a previous conduct matter;
   (b) it contains no fresh allegations which significantly affect the account of the conduct complained of;
   (c) no fresh evidence, being evidence which was not reasonably available at the time the previous complaint was made, is tendered in support of it;
How these regulations should have affected the IPCC's decision whether or not to grant a dispensation to Sussex Police freeing them from the need to investigate charges of malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption I shall be commenting on later. Meanwhile, I will deal with Mr Broyd's report and subsequent events.
The report makes what Mr Broyd claims is the final decision on my complaints, and according to the IPCC the only higher authority over the matter would be a high court judge. These considerations should be kept in mind as I comment on the work of Mr Broyd.
The very first sentence of the "Background to the Appeal" shows quite astonishing ignorance and incompetence. It reads, "The complaint relates to an incident in which the complainant, Mr Madden, alleges he was assaulted by his neighbour, C Mabry, an ex police officer, in 2002." Two glances at the brief list in "Complaints sent to the IPCC in 2006" above should be sufficient to recognise that I was complaining about police reports written in 2002 and 2004, and the IPCC had copies of my letters of complaint to the Chief Constable: the first is about a document which led to my being "arrested on 12/08/04"; the second is the only one that relates to an assault in 2002; and the third says, "a thoroughly dishonest and probably corrupt entry was made under my name . . . 24/7/2004". I was attacked on my front lawn and knocked to the ground on my drive by an ex-policeman in March 2002. I was assaulted by the ex-policeman again in July 2004, and by two of his friends, after they and three of their accomplices had smashed their way into my back garden. Only the second of my three complaints refers to the attack of 2002. Clearly Mr Broyd thought that scant knowledge of my case was sufficient basis for judgement.
One further item in Mr Broyd's first paragraph is untrue: the last sentence states that "Mr Madden alleges police . . . impartiality". I most certainly do not.
The fourth Background paragraph is seriously at fault. It states, "He alleges that PC Francis wrote a fictitious report relating to the alleged assault, which the complainant signed. He also alleges that following his subsequent charge of harassment, his property was seized and some of it damaged." The second of Mr Broyd's sentences is taken from my brief explanation of circumstances surrounding the actual complaint, which was about a dishonest record entered in the Crime Reporting System. It was not part of the complaint, as the eighth of my first set of complaints had concerned accidental and deliberate damage to my property.
The serious fault is with the first of these sentences, which again betrays astonishing ignorance: having had experience of Sussex Police not allowing me to sign a statement after I had been assaulted in 2002, I wrote and signed a statement myself after the assaults in 2004, which I persuaded the investigating officer to accept, which he did somewhat reluctantly. PC Francis then wrote a statement himself, which I signed. My complaint was that the dishonest report entered in the Sussex Police Crime Reporting System bore little resemblance to either of these statements, or to what had happened.
The one point of interest to me in the "Appeal Findings" section is clearly stated in the penultimate sentence of Part 1: "Dispensation can only be applied for once a complaint has been recorded". I will comment on that in due course.
I ended the first section of this report by totalling time taken up by the IPCC from my first complaint, 279 days and from the second and third complaints, 264 days.
We now have to add to those totals.
Mr Broyd's report had been sent on 24th May. On 30th June I received a brief letter from DI Brice of the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department. It said, ". . . the issues you have raised will be subject to a request to the IPCC for dispensation on the grounds that the events you have complained of occurred more than twelve months earlier and also that it is repetitious as the matter was investigated in 2005 and found to be unsubstantiated." On 7th July I received a letter from my MP's office containing a copy of a letter to the MP dated 11 June from Nicola Williams, a commissioner with the IPCC. The letter from Ms Williams says, "We have spoken to Sussex Police and given that the complaints arise from events in 2004 and they have already been dealt with in a previous complaint, there is a strong prospect that Sussex will be making an application" [for a dispensation]. [One incident was dated 2002, and none had been covered by a previous complaint.]
On 13th July I wrote and uploaded two-thirds of a web page commenting on the time and repetition factors, and showing how according to the relevant legislation a dispensation would not be appropriate in my case. I emailed the IPCC on the same day: "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" . On the morning of 14th July I wrote and uploaded the rest of the web page.
On August 10th I wrote on my first IPCC web page, " 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." On 13th August I received a letter dated 7 August from Abiodun Soremekun, Casework Manager for the IPCC. It said, "If you would like this investigation to continue, you must write to me within seven days of this letter, providing good reasons for the delay in making your complaint or if (and why) you feel that your complaint is not repetitious. I telephoned Mr Soremekun and told him that I had sent my objections to any dispensation a month earlier: he asked me to send him a copy of that email, which I sent at 11.01 a.m. on 13th August.
On 15th August I received an email from Mr Soremekun saying, "I will be granting the Sussex Police their request that your complaint should be dispensed with." A letter from Mr Soremekun dated the same day conveyed the same message, except that "I" had become "we". I shall be examining these two documents as soon as I have reached the end of the story so far.
On 16th August I emailed Mr Soremekun about the start of the second paragraph of his email:
I have made brief comments on your email at www.ggm11.plus.com/ipccmail.htm. My comment on the start of your second paragraph reads: ' "The Sussex Police recorded your complaint"! Really? Which of my three complaints did they record? What evidence is there that they have done so? They have not told me that they have recorded any of my three complaints, and had specifically refused, in writing, to record two of them.'
To discover if Sussex Police have recorded a complaint, one has to pay £10 for a request under the Data Protection Act and wait several weeks for an answer. I shall try to obtain the information from the IPCC instead in the first instance.
In the past I have twice paid for information from Sussex Police about the recording of complaints, with limited success, and in one case having to wait longer for the information than the Data Protection Act stipulates. 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. If you are unable or unwilling to do so, I shall be taking up the matter with Sussex Police myself.'
The reply was prompt but brief: "Please note that the Sussex Police ( or indeed any police force ) could only apply for a dispensation after a complaint has been recorded. I am sure you will recall that my colleague Nick Broyd upheld your appeal against the decision by the Sussex Police not to record your complaints."
Having noted that, and having no faith in what is said either by Sussex Police or by the IPCC, I filed with Sussex Police an application under the Data Protection Act on 18th August 2007:
"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 three complaints has or have not been recorded, I would like to have a positive statement of that fact."
"The Data Protection Act 1998 Chapter 29 stipulates that 'a data controller shall comply with a request . . . promptly and in any event before the end of the prescribed period . . . "the prescribed period" means forty days or such other period as may be prescribed ', so I should be in a position to check whether Sussex Police have complied with IPCC requirements before the end of September.
Meanwhile, I will subject Mr Soremekun's email and letter of 15th August to critical scrutiny.
There is little to be said about Mr Soremekun's brief letter: it adds nothing of substance to the message of the email and omits details, but uses the first person plural pronoun instead of the first person singular used in the email; and as the preceding noun phrase on which the pronoun seems to rely is "IPCC", any adverse criticism I wish to make about Mr Soremekun's decision can I think be applied to the IPCC itself. The last paragraph of the letter does concisely express the nature of the decision and its effect: "we have agreed to grant this dispensation to the Sussex Police. This means that the Sussex Police do not have to investigate your complaints."
Mr Soremekun's penultimate paragraph also requires comment as it is utterly untrue. The paragraph reads, "We have also agreed that it is more than 12 months since the incident that gave rise to these complaints and you have not provided any reason for the delay in submitting the complaints." Mr Soremekun (and "we" the IPCC) is lying. Some of the reasons I provided, and to which I called the attention of the IPCC on two occasions, will be referred to in the following analysis of the email.
The first noteworthy feature in Mr Soremekun's email is the unhelpful way in which three very different complaints are generally referred to in the singular, five times in the first paragraph alone, and four times in the second paragraph, in which also eight earlier complaints are referred to as "one". The lack of discrimination is I think a whitewashing technique, brushing over inconvenient detail. Mr Soremekun, however, is not consistent: in the fourth paragraph, three complaints are acknowledged twice. Thereafter we have only singular references, with the exception of one plural noun and one plural pronoun.
There are two matters of interest in the substance of the first paragraph. The requirement that the police record my complaint (presumably three complaints, accurately recorded in a register available to Sussex Police Authority) is under investigation, as I have explained already. Whether the other requirements for Sussex Police being granted a dispensation have been met I have yet to discover: if the police showed evidence that my complaint was repetitious, I have not seen it; and the last requirement about a year having elapsed since the incident which gave rise to the complaint is so poorly worded that it is untrue. One needs to look at the relevant legislation, which I have printed on this page under the subheading Dispensation by the Commission, to see why this is so.
The Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004 Regulation 3 clearly specifies the requirements for a dispensation by the Commission. Paragraph 3.-(2)(a) states: "(a) more than 12 months have elapsed between the incident, or the latest incident, giving rise to the complaint and the making of the complaint and either that no good reason for the delay has been shown or that injustice would be likely to be caused by the delay. Other alternative requirements follow, but the IPCC's decision seems to depend on the phrases "more than twelve months", "no good reason", and "2(e) the complaint is repetitious" [as defined in 3.-(3)(a), (b) and (c)].
The IPCC email refers to a complaint "made over a year since the incident giving rise to it". Regulation 3 specifies "the incident, or the latest incident". The incidents which gave rise to my complaints did not happen simultaneously, so they need to be examined individually.
Complaint 1
My first complaint was that I was not provided with one of the statements from "4 close neighbours". The "incident" which gave rise to the complaint was the sending to me by the police of one statement by a close neighbour and two statements by not so close neighbours. A fourth - and probably most important - statement was withheld, without my knowledge. I have looked in vain for a precise date for this. Amongst those papers I was sent is a charge sheet dated 31 October 2004, and a Form MG6c 4/2003 which was signed on 16/11/04 by PC Francis and on 3/12/04 by a CPS lawyer. I presume that the last date is the earliest date on which the incident can have taken place.
I sent my complaint to the Chief Constable on 30th May 2006, certainly more than twelve months after the incident. For a dispensation to be granted, however, the condition "no good reason for the delay has been shown" should have been met. Several good reasons for the delay were made available and pointed out to the IPCC on 13th July 2007. When on 13th August I received a letter from Mr Soremekun dated 7 August which gave me "within seven days of this letter" to provide good reasons for the delay, I telephoned him immediately and told him that I had provided those reasons a month earlier. He asked me to send him a copy of my email, which I did at 11.01 a.m. the same day. The email included a web address, www.ggm11.plus.com/time.htm, the page name reflecting part of its subject.
The delay in this case was less than eighteen months. What proportion of that was for "good reason" according to the web page to which I directed the attention of the IPCC on two occasions?
An entry under the Complaint 1 subheading reads, ‘• 26 May 2005 - Tim Guyton, on behalf of Detective Inspector Preddy of Sussex Police Professional Standards Department, visited me and spent two hours making notes on my complaints.’
The next entry under the Complaint 1 subheading states, ‘• 25 October 2005 - I received DI Preddy's report dismissing my complaints. It contained the phrase, "4 close neighbours provided statements of evidence against Mr. Madden", the full significance of which I could not have appreciated, as one of the three statements I had been sent could have presented "evidence" from both Mr and Mrs McCombie.’
That clause in the report provided only the beginnings of a clue to my understanding that I had cause for complaint. Between 25 October 2005 and 30th May 2006 there are only seven months and five days.
The next entry in my email records how thirteen days later I emailed an appeal to the IPCC, and the entry after that how I received the IPCC review of my first set of complaints the following year: '• 19 May 2006 - I received the results of the review by the IPCC of my eight complaints. It contains the sentence, "As you know, Mr Mabry and Mrs McCombie have made counter-allegations against you in each incident, accusing you of violence." This supports the idea that Mrs McCombie could have been one of the "4 close neighbours", as the McCombie statement was signed by Mr McCombie. More importantly, I certainly did not know that Mr Mabry had made counter-allegations against me, and presumed that he was responsible for a fourth witness statement, which I had not been allowed to see.'
So it was after the IPCC had taken up more than six months of the seven months and five days that I began to realise from what police malpractice I had suffered. As my email shows, eleven days later I sent Complaint 1 to the Chief Constable. For the delay between the incident and my complaint, my contribution can be measured in days, compared with the many months required for action by Sussex Police and the IPCC. I know of no good reason for the dilatoriness of the police and the IPCC, but that is surely not within the meaning of the Act: "good reason" means that I could not have made my complaint within twelve months, which was most certainly the case.
Is the complaint of not being given an important witness statement "repetitious" in a sense defined by the Act? Is it (a) "substantially the same as a previous complaint", (b) does it concern "substantially the same conduct as a previous conduct matter", does it contain (c)"no fresh allegations", or (d)"no fresh evidence, being evidence which was not reasonably available at the time the previous complaint was made?
It would be helpful if IPCC whitewashers were required to do more than simply express an opinion without citing specific evidence, for example in this case by saying which one or more of these four conditions, if any, was involved in relation to which of my original eight complaints.
Requirement (a): My complaint about the withholding of a witness statement obviously does not repeat a complaint about wilful blindness, gross prejudice, wrongful arrest, neglect of proper procedures when I was in custody, illegitimate use of a caution, contravention of human rights, or negligence, incompetence and misuse of seized property. There is some common ground between Complaint 1 and original Complaint 6 (withholding of important evidence), but the earlier complaint concerned files on my computers which had been seized by the dishonest PC Francis, and copies of tapes of an interview conducted by the dishonest PC Francis which it took me more than a year and a complaint to HMIC to obtain.
Requirement (b): There is clearly no similarity between Complaint 1 and seven of the earlier complaints, and withholding a witness statement is not "substantially the same conduct" as withholding my computer files and tape recordings, which involved several different individuals.
Requirement (c): An allegation that Sussex Police had deliberately withheld a key witness statement that had led to my arrest, the breaking of one of my cameras, and the deliberate sabotaging of my computers, which contained evidence of the dishonesty of PC Francis, was most certainly a fresh allegation.
Requirement (d): A new allegation required "fresh evidence", which had been provided by the dishonest reports of DI Preddy of Sussex Police Professional Standards Department and Whitewasher Jasper of the IPCC, which had not been available (either reasonably or unreasonably) at the time of the earlier complaints, as they were reports on those complaints.
Complaint 2
My second complaint is that following an assault on me on 23rd March 2002, Sussex Police "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 the ex-policeman who had assaulted me." That entry in the Crime Reporting System, the initial "incident", could well have been made on or soon after the date of the assault. I made my complaint to the Chief Constable on 25th June 2006, after a delay of more than four years. The web page (. . . /time.htm) to which I called the attention of the IPCC on two occasions documented in detail the "good reasons" for such a delay.
For more than three years I did not know of the existence of the Crime Reporting System, let alone what had been recorded in it. On 20th April 2005, using the Data Protection Act, I applied for information from Sussex Police. On 5th June, after more than the forty day limit prescribed by the Act, I received from Sussex Police photocopies of a few pages of data from Sussex Police Crime Reporting System, including under my name a thoroughly dishonest account of the assault on me. My receipt of this data, a "later incident", led to my complaint to the Chief Constable dated 25th June 2006, a delay of twenty days.
So the delay in this case was twenty days, the time between discovering that I had cause for complaint and making the complaint.
Is the complaint about a dishonest crime report "repetitious" in a sense defined by the Act? Is it (a) "substantially the same as a previous complaint", (b) does it concern "substantially the same conduct as a previous conduct matter", does it contain (c)"no fresh allegations", or (d)"no fresh evidence, being evidence which was not reasonably available at the time the previous complaint was made?
(a) A complaint about filing a dishonest report clearly does not repeat a complaint about wilful blindness, gross prejudice, wrongful arrest, neglect of proper procedures when I was in custody, illegitimate use of a caution, contravention of human rights, or negligence, incompetence and misuse of seized property. Earlier Complaint 6 is not repeated either, as I did not complain about the withholding of evidence: without my use of legislation, there was presumably no requirement for the police to have provided that information.
(b) Filing a dishonest report is not "substantially the same conduct" as that involved in any of my eight earlier complaints.
(c) Filing a dishonest report is clearly a new allegation, as I had no knowledge of that report before 5th June 2007.
(d) Similarly, my second complaint presented "fresh evidence". The evidence in the sense of the data itself had of course been available for years, and had been available to Sussex Police and the IPCC at the time of their enquiries into my earlier complaints, but they did not mention the data in their reports, and judging by the superficiality and partiality of those reports, they probably did not even bother to look at it. As evidence of dishonesty, the data was "new".
Complaint 3
My third complaint is that following three assaults on me on 24th July 2004, "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." That entry, the initial "incident", could well have been made on or soon after the date of the assaults. I made my complaint to the Chief Constable on 13th July 2006, after a delay of more than twenty-three months. The web page (. . . /time.htm) to which I called the attention of the IPCC on two occasions documented in detail the "good reasons" for such a delay.
Most of what I have said under the Complaint 2 subheading applies for Complaint 2 also, though the time factor is different in some respects: the initial "incident" was more than two years later, but the "later incident" - the receipt of the data - was the same (5th June 2005), and the date of my complaint to the Chief Constable was 13th July 2006, a delay of thirty-eight days.
So the delay in this case was thirty-eight days, the time between discovering that I had cause for complaint and making the complaint.
This complaint was in no way repetitious. For the reasons why this is so, re-read the last five paragraphs under subheading Complaint 2.
I have yet to consider the last four paragraphs of Mr Soremekun's email, starting with the breathtaking ignorance displayed in, "the issues that you raised in your three complaints ( of 30 May 2006, 26 June 2006 and 13 July 2006) are those that relate to an incident that took place in 2002." Only one of the three complaints concerns that incident, although it is probably true that dishonesty and inaction on the part of Sussex Police on that occasion encouraged the assaults in 2004. This shows that Mr Soremekun knows so little about my case that he was in no position to make a judgment on it. As Mr Soremekun refers to himself as "we", it is the IPCC which is so disgracefully ignorant, and if they read this they might reconsider their policy of declaring their judgments the last word on a subject short of the High Court, and give someone else the time to make a proper appraisal of my case.
Mr Soremekun's prepenultimate paragraph is an amalgam of falsehood and faulty logic. I have already shown in considerable detail that "those issues" were in no way a repetition of "the complaint that you submitted to the Sussex Police in 2005." The second sentence of the paragraph appears to be a complete irrelevance.
The penultimate paragraph contains a series of falsehoods. I will quote it in full:
Moreover, you have not provided me with your views on the grounds stated in the Sussex Police application for a dispensation, neither have you provided a satisfactory response to my letter of 7 August 2007. I have also looked at your website and it does not provide me with a indication on why your complaint was not repetitious or submitted out of time.
Whether I have presented my view on "the grounds stated in the Sussex Police application for a dispensation" must be to some extent a matter for conjecture, as I have not seen a copy of the application. Mr Soremekun's letter of 7th August merely says, "The Sussex Police have applied to us for a dispensation on the grounds that your complaint is repetitious as well as being made more than twleve months since the incident giving rise to it." If the police application amounts to no more than that, I most certainly did provide the IPCC and Mr Soremekun with access to my views via an email I sent to Mr Soremekun on the morning I received his letter, including the text of an email that I had sent to the IPCC a month earlier. That email ended, "'Should the IPCC wish to take my views into account, they are published at www.ggm11.plus.com/time.htm, and can also be accessed by going to www.ggm11.plus.com/ipcc.htm and clicking on the link at the end of the page."
I telephoned Mr Soremekun as soon as I had read his letter, and explained to him that I had sent my views to the IPCC a month before. He asked if I would send him a copy of the email, which I did immmediately. The web page to which I drew Mr Soremekun's attention not only gives my views on the lack of grounds for a dispensation, but backed up those views with a great deal of factual detail.
I do not know what Mr Soremekun means by a "a satisfactory response" to his letter. When I spoke to him over the telephone, he gave no indication whatever that anything more than an email was required from me. That email provided access to a detailed and reasoned response supported by much factual detail, whereas Mr Soremekun restricts himself almost entirely to pronouncing his opinions, showing only small glimpses of the mental vacuity behind those opinions.
I am not sure what to make of Mr Soremekun's concluding sentence, not knowing whether to attribute it to crass stupidity or shameless dishonesty. Mr Soremekun's blindness, whether natural or assumed, and the IPCC's misuse of the law, ensure that I shall continue to add new information about my case to my website, to videos on YouTube accessible by typing ggm11 into the Search box, and to other media as opportunity offers.
I have recently started work on a video which starts, "When Parliament by great decree / Created the IPCC", to be sung to a tune employed by Pish-Tush and Chorus.
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