The Time Factor

[P.S. Two-thirds of this page was written and published on 13th July 2007. Publication was completed on 14th July 2007. The IPCC was informed of the availablility of this document on 13th July 2007.]

When my three most recent complaints about Sussex Police - concerning malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption - were brushed aside by Sussex Police, I appealed to the IPCC as I thought my complaints should be answered.

In a letter dated 24 May 2007 from Nick Broyd, IPCC Casework Manager, I was told, "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."

In a letter dated 11 June 2007 to my MP, Nicola Williams, IPCC Commissioner, said that the IPCC had told Sussex Police that they could "apply to the IPCC for a dispensation under grounds prescribed by the statutory framework of The Police Reform Act 2002."

In a letter dated 27 June 2007 DI Brice of Sussex Police Professional Standards Department wrote to inform me "that the issues you have raised will be subject to a request to the IPCC for a dispensation on the grounds that the events you have complained of occurred more than 12 months earlier and also that it is repetitious as the matter was investigated in 2005 and found to be unsubstantiated."

In an email dated 9 July 2007, in response to a request for information about the legislation on which dispensations depend, the IPCC specified The Police Reform Act 2002 Schedule 3, paragraph 7; and The Police ( Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004, Regulation (2). The URL supplied took one to the correct Regulation (3).

• The Police Reform Act 2002 Schedule 3, paragraph 7 gives the Commission power to grant a dispensation to Sussex Police to simply "handle the complaint in whatever manner it thinks fit, or take no action in relation to the complaint".

• The Police ( Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004 Regulation (3) limits ways in which a dispensation can be allowed. Complaints that are subject to the dispensation are

(2) . . . 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 . . .

(e) the complaint is repetitious . . .

(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 . . . .

The extract from the 2002 Act allows no scope for dispute, so this study will examine 2004's time factor, and whether "it" is repetitious.

The PSD's "it" comprises three complaints. As each involves a different time scale, I will examine them individually.

Each complaint was sent to the Chief Constable. I will include only brief extracts on this page, but those will be linked to the complete text of each letter.

Complaint 1
Letter dated 30th May 2006: "I have a complaint which I would like recorded, and remedied as soon as practicable . . . My complaint is that I was not provided with one of the statements from "4 close neighbours".

Timeline:

• 24 July 2004 - Six people smashed their way into my back garden, and three of them, including an ex-policeman, assaulted me and threatened further assaults if I did not leave my property.

• 2 August 2004 - PC Francis (accompanied by P.C.Wilkinson) visited me. I gave PC Francis a signed statement about the assaults, and a plan of my property showing where each of the three assaults had taken place. PC Francis wrote a statement himself for me to sign.

• 12 August 2004 - PC Francis (accompanied by P.C. Wilkinson) arrested me, and seized my digital cameras and computers. I was charged with harassment of two of my attackers.

• 11 November 2004 - In a letter to PI Brown, CI Matthews, and CC Jones, I wrote that I would need "Copies of the witness statements collected by PC Francis." So the "incident" which was to give rise to the complaint must have occurred after this date. The papers I was sent, including three witness statements, do not seem to have a specific date, but I suppose that I received three witness statements either in the latter part of November or in December. The nature of the "incident" I was unaware of at this stage.

I had started complaining to the police in July 2004 about the way the police had treated me following the assaults on 24 July.

• 24 April 2005 - I wrote to Chief Constable K. Jones: "I am becoming impatient with the way Sussex Police ignore complaints . . . If I do not receive these tapes very soon, I shall be making a complaint to the Home Office." The tapes were of my interview at Eastbourne Custody Centre on 12 August 2004.

• 10 May 2005 - I wrote to HMIC: "My complaints to the police over the last eight months have not as yet been dealt with in line with the procedures set down by the IPCC."

• 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. On 16th June he emailed me a five-page summary on an official "Witness Statement" form, which I used as the basis for my own version of my complaints, which I emailed to Tim Guyton on 22 June 2005. Those complaints are published at www.ggm11.plus.com/witstat.htm.

• 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.

• 7 November 2005 - I emailed the IPCC an appeal to them against the outcome of DI Preddy's investigation.

• 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.

• 30 May 2006 - I wrote to the Chief Constable to complain that I had only been sent three of the four statements referred to by the PSD, and to ask that a copy of the fourth statement be sent to me as soon as practicable.

• 4 July 2006 - PS Moloney of Sussex Police PSD wrote to me to say that the statement I wanted was "no longer subject to disclosure", and that "This matter will require you to contact the Data Protection Officer at Sussex Police and request the statement through that office."

• 12 July 2006 - I wrote to Sussex Police Data Protection Unit enclosing £10 and requesting a copy of the fourth witness statement.

• 8 August 2006 - Peter Burtenshaw, Information Compliance Manager of the Access to Information Team, refused my request to be given a copy of the statement.

• 18 August 2006 - I posted to the IPCC an appeal against the refusal to allow me to see the statement.

• 13 October 2006 - I emailed the Home Secretary complaining of dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC.

• 2 November 2006 - I emailed the IPCC to complain of "either dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC, or rejecting a complaint without advising the complainant of the decision."

• 26 March 2007 - I wrote to my M.P. expressing dissatisfaction with dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC.

• 14 May 2007 - I wrote to the IPCC saying that I was becoming increasingly angry about lack of progress with my complaints.

• 24 May 2007 - Nick Broyd of the IPCC wrote to me: "I have upheld your appeal and agree that it should be recorded as a complaint."

• 27 June 2007 - DI Brice of Sussex Police PSD wrote to me: ". . .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 12 months earlier and allso that it is repetitious as the matter was investigated in 2005 abd found to be unsubstantiated."

• 7 July 2007 - I received a copy of a letter written to my M.P. on 11 June by Nicola Williams, IPCC Commissioner. The letter said that my appeal had been upheld, but that Sussex Police had been told by the IPCC that they could apply for a dispensation to do nothing about my complaints. It also avers that my complaints "have already been dealt with in a previous complaint".

• 12 July 2007 - Time passes, and I do not know whether the IPPC will grant a dispensation, and whether I can appeal against such a decision; and if I can, whether any appeal should be made before or after the decision is taken.

The timeline currently stretches from November or December 2004 to July 2007, more than thirty months.

The incident which gave rise to Complaint 1 happened in November or December 2004, but I was only in a position to deduce what had taken place when I read the IPCC's report on my first batch of complaints on 19th May 2006. So there was - in the words of the 2004 Regulations - "good reason" for the delay thus far.

Entries in the timeline after 19th May 2006 show that undue delays during the year since then have been caused either by Sussex Police or by the IPCC. The IPCC therefore have no grounds for granting a dispensation to Sussex Police because "more than twelve months have elapsed". Sussex Police and their ally the IPCC should not be allowed to benefit from delays which they themselves have caused.

Repetitive aspects: None

(i) The complaint is not "substantially the same as a previous complaint": the previous complaints [www.ggm11.plus.com/witstat.htm] did include "Withholding of important evidence", but that complaint did not include and could not have included the fourth statement, because I emailed the eight complaints to Sussex Police on 22 June 2005, and only realised that I had cause for complaint after receiving the IPCC's report on 19th May 2006. Moreover, both DI Preddy's report and N.Jasper's report assume that I had been sent four witness statements.

(ii) The complaint does not concern "substantially the same conduct". The previous Complaint 6 concerned evidence for which I was responsible, on my computers and on audio tapes. The current complaint is about evidence provided by (presumably) ex-pc Mabry.

(iii) The complaint contains a very significant fresh allegation.

(iv) It contains "fresh evidence" in the sense that the withholding of the fourth witness statement was hidden from me until 19th May 2006; and it appears that it was also hidden from the authors of the Sussex Police and IPCC reports on my complaints, though they were in a much more favourable position than I to discover the truth, and should have done so had they properly considered evidence provided by me.

Complaint 2
Letter dated 26th June 2006: I have a complaint which I would like recorded immediately in a register of complaints available to the Sussex Police Authority. 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 (Date: 23/3/2002, Serial 959) that is based in important ways on lies told to the police by ex-policeman Mabry.

Timeline:

• 23 March 2002 - Ex-PC Mabry assaulted me on my front lawn and and knocked me to the ground on my drive. The investigating officer refused to let me make a signed statement, because I would not agree to not pursue the matter further. I therefore made a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority, which included a statement of what had happened. This led to a token visit to me by Acting Inspector Barrasford, who seems to have done nothing whatever about remedying my complaint.

• 20 April 2005 - Having waited almost five months for any response from the IPCC to an appeal, and having become convinced that Sussex Police were not following the proper procedures for dealing with my complaints, I sent Sussex Police an application under the Data Protection Act asking which of my complaints had been officially recorded, and what records had been made about me.

• 5 June 2006 - I received a few pages of data from Sussex Police CRIME REPORTING SYSTEM, including under my name a thoroughly dishonest account of the assault on me by Mabry. The "incident" about which I was to complain was the writing of this report. I only learned of its existence on 5th June 2006.

• 25 June 2006 - I wrote a letter (dated June 26th) to the Chief Constable to complain that Sussex Police had corruptly and dishonestly placed a record under my name in the Sussex Crime Reporting System which relied heavily on lies told to the police by ex-policeman Mabry.

• 2 September 2006: Today I received a letter from Sussex PSD with a refusal to record my complaint on the pretext that it was merely a repeat of a previous complaint. On the same day I posted an appeal against that decision to the IPCC.

• 13 October 2006 - I emailed the Home Secretary complaining of dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC.

• 2 November 2006 - I emailed the IPCC to complain of "either dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC, or rejecting a complaint without advising the complainant of the decision."

• 26 March 2007 - I wrote to my M.P. expressing dissatisfaction with dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC.

• 14 May 2007 - I wrote to the IPCC saying that I was becoming increasingly angry about lack of progress with my complaints.

• 24 May 2007 - Nick Broyd of the IPCC wrote to me: "I have upheld your appeal and agree that it should be recorded as a complaint."

• 27 June 2007 - DI Brice of Sussex Police PSD wrote to me: ". . .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 12 months earlier and also that it is repetitious as the matter was investigated in 2005 and found to be unsubstantiated."

• 7 July 2007 - I received a copy of a letter written to my M.P. on 11 June by Nicola Williams, IPCC Commissioner. The letter said that my appeal had been upheld, but that Sussex Police had been told by the IPCC that they could apply for a dispensation to do nothing about my complaints. It also avers that my complaints "have already been dealt with in a previous complaint".

• 12 July 2007 - Time passes, and I do not know whether the IPPC will grant a dispensation, and whether I can appeal against such a decision; and if I can, whether any appeal should be made before or after the decision is taken.

The timeline currently stretches from March 2002 to July 2007, more than sixty-three months.

The incident which gave rise to Complaint 2 probably happened on or soon after 23 March 2002, but I only found out about it on 5 June 2006, so there was - in the words of the 2004 Regulations - "good reason" for the delay thus far.

Entries in the timeline after 5 June 2006 show that undue delays during the year since then have been caused either by Sussex Police or by the IPCC. The IPCC therefore have no grounds for granting a dispensation to Sussex Police because "more than twelve months have elapsed". Sussex Police and their ally the IPCC should not be allowed to benefit from delays which they themselves have caused.

Repetitive aspects: None

(i) The complaint is not "substantially the same as a previous complaint": the previous complaints only refer to a record of an "altercation", which is what Sergeant Hansen accused me of having been involved in - over the telephone - when I tried to follow the advice of the PCA to discuss my complaint with a local superintendent.

(ii) The complaint does not concern "substantially the same conduct". I only learned of the main substance of the false record a year after filing my earlier complaints.

(iii) The complaint contains a very significant fresh allegation, and gains additional weight by paralleling my third complaint.

(iv) It contains "fresh evidence" as the false record only came to light when I learned of it on 5th June 2006 and drew attention to it. There is no mention of this evidence in the reports on my complaints by Sussex Police PSD and the IPCC.

Complaint 3
Letter dated 13th July 2006: 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:

Timeline:

• 24 July 2004 - Six people smashed their way into my back garden, and three of them, including an ex-policeman, assaulted me and threatened further assaults if I did not leave my property.

• 2 August 2004 - PC Francis, the investigating officer, visited me. He wrote a statement himself for me to sign. The entry in criminal records under my name about which I am complaining purported to be an account of what had happened, and was probably entered on or soon after this date. I did not know what had been written.

• 20 April 2005 - Having waited almost five months for any response from the IPCC to an appeal, and having become convinced that Sussex Police were not following the proper procedures for dealing with my complaints, I sent Sussex Police an application under the Data Protection Act asking which of my complaints had been officially recorded, and what records had been made about me.

• 5 June 2006 - I received a few pages of data from Sussex Police CRIME REPORTING SYSTEM, including under my name a thoroughly dishonest account of the assault on me by Mabry and the McCombies. The "incident" about which I was to complain was the writing of this report. I only learned of its existence on 5th June 2006.

• 13th July 2006 - I wrote a letter to the Chief Constable: "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 . . . ."

• 2 September 2006: Today I received a letter from Sussex PSD with a refusal to record my complaint on the pretext that it was merely a repeat of a previous complaint. On the same day I posted an appeal against that decision to the IPCC.

• 13 October 2006 - I emailed the Home Secretary complaining of dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC.

• 2 November 2006 - I emailed the IPCC to complain of "either dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC, or rejecting a complaint without advising the complainant of the decision."

• 26 March 2007 - I wrote to my M.P. expressing dissatisfaction with dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC.

• 14 May 2007 - I wrote to the IPCC saying that I was becoming increasingly angry about lack of progress with my complaints.

• 24 May 2007 - Nick Broyd of the IPCC wrote to me: "I have upheld your appeal and agree that it should be recorded as a complaint."

• 27 June 2007 - DI Brice of Sussex Police PSD wrote to me: ". . .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 12 months earlier and also that it is repetitious as the matter was investigated in 2005 and found to be unsubstantiated."

• 7 July 2007 - I received a copy of a letter written to my M.P. on 11 June by Nicola Williams, IPCC Commissioner. The letter said that my appeal had been upheld, but that Sussex Police had been told by the IPCC that they could apply for a dispensation to do nothing about my complaints. It also avers that my complaints "have already been dealt with in a previous complaint".

Repetitive aspects: None

(i) The complaint is not "substantially the same as a previous complaint": the previous complaints only refer to a record of an "altercation", which is what Sergeant Hansen accused me of having been involved in - over the telephone - when I tried to follow the advice of the PCA to discuss my complaint with a local superintendent.

(ii) The complaint does not concern "substantially the same conduct". I only learned of the main substance of the false record a year after filing my earlier complaints.

(iii) The complaint contains a very significant fresh allegation, and gains additional weight by paralleling my second complaint.

(iv) It contains "fresh evidence" as the false record only came to light when I learned of it on 5th June 2006 and drew attention to it. There is no mention of this evidence in the reports on my complaints by Sussex Police PSD and the IPCC.

Conclusion

The Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2004 give no grounds whatever for the IPCC to grant Sussex Police a dispensation to ignore complaints from me of malpractice, dishonesty, and corruption. The eight earlier complaints from me were dealt with dishonestly by both Sussex Police and the IPCC, as my reports on their reports - all four are available on this website - demonstrate. If the IPCC grant a dispensation to Sussex Police to ignore my three current complaints, I shall not let the matter rest.