Aaaah Bless!

Today’s blog is an actual representation of just how petty and narrow minded our uPSD are. It involves a colleague who for a reason only known to himself makes four anonymous telephone calls over a two day period to a female acquaintance enquiring if she wanted to have an affair. A second whammy in this incident is that he used his police telephone to make all four calls. Once challenged he fully admits his role in the matter. His head was in a bad place and he was completely stressed out from long hours at work and pressures of supervision because he was of rank.

Without his admissions then I doubt that there would be any case against him and certainly if there was, his admissions cut short the investigation by the local divisional police by weeks if not months. Also negated the requirement for potentially expensive telephone enquiries being done undere the RIPA legislation. So, over to the uPSD who were informed that a cop had acted like a prat. How disappointed they were when they told me that our colleague was not going to be prosecuted for his misdemeanour following an adjudication by the CPS who had looked at the evidence in the case to arrive at their decision. The next step, surely, is to give him a final written warning and have him resume his very responsible role as a competent and well respected police officer of rank.

That would be too simple for our jaundiced uPSD. Our heroic uPSD prosecutor investigator, following representation by me, believed our colleague to be a serial sexual predator!!!!! What? That’s right, in my force four anonymous telephone calls to a female asking for an affair makes you a serial sexual predator. The uPSD must be right because the uPSD said she was an Inspector and knew best. I nearly fell off my chair. As a detective I think I am qualified to comment on what attributes a serial sexual offender possesses and it certainly isn’t someone who acts totally out of character for 2 days in his life. After all, judging by some of the other carryings on by the senior ranks they must be major perverts!

The sad part of this case is that 19 months later…….yes you read it right…….19 months later our colleague, facing an uncertain future, realising the bias against him and pre-conceived notions about him as a person, got a job earning £3000 a year less than he was on for his rank but provided with a company car, permanent weekdays, no shifts and certainly no weekends and so resigned his post in my force. A sad loss of a very good ranking police officer with the respect of his colleagues and the skills and abilities to get the job done efficiently and competently. He signed his resignation in the presence of a senior officer on his division and asked me to deliver it to our uPSD Inspector.

As Defined by uPSD

I have to report that the uPSD Inspector refused to take the resignation form from me because it had not been signed in her presence. She was gutted by the outcome believing that I had somehow been complicit in preventing her from complete gratification and exposure of a sexual deviant.  She further lambasted me for allowing our colleague to resign before she could get him to a misconduct tribunal (by the way the matter was progressing probably in the next 6 to 12 months) and stated that she was disgusted with me, “After all you are a policeman first.”

“No Ma’am. I’m a Detective………”

Result of incivility report in due course!

The Right of Reply

Normally I just approve comments and let them sit on the post they have been appended to but on this occasion I have decided to give special mention to this comment quoted which is also a comment on the Panorama blog. So here it is:

“Lightfoot got what he deserved, violent knobheads like him only work as a Specials so they get their fix of violence. Regardless of Mark Aspinall’s behaviour, he still needed to be dealt with in a professional manner. The distraction punches aside, the rubbing of his face into the road was unacceptable. Lightfoot clearly knew what he was doing as he was looking around to see if anyone was watching him. We Police have a demanding job to do as it is, without nasty no marks like Lightfoot making us all look bad.”

I always enjoy debating with intellects, in particular those who choose to use such professional comments such as “knobheads” (I actually think that there is a hyphen between the word knob and head to be exactly grammatically correct but I will bow to the evident Master Exponent of English). The interest to me about this comment is the fact that from a brief and uninformed position, a police officer (possibly) decides guilt and innocence on the basis of an interpretation by the television and the fact that there was a special involved.

Another Uncivil Police Officer

In answer to his extremely well constructed argument I hereby respond. I will write slowly for you Andy so you can actually take it in. Just let me know if any of the bigger words require the provision of a definition. By the way, to actually send me a message containing unprofessional language from a police computer which captures not only the IP but your email address (including the force you serve with) is, well, pretty stupid. You have no idea of who I am or my motives. A word of advice, look after your career!!!

Comment

Without wishing to delve into the details of the drunken and abusive squaddie, I would just put forward a simple comment to potentially defeat your argument. To get to the point of the appeal by Aspinall, the following must have occured. The cctv was watched by:

1. The Control Room Operator
2. The Control Room Inspector
3. The Evidence Review Officer
4. The Reviewing CPS Official at Police station for charge
5. The Reviewing CPS Official at relevant office for assessment of evidence
6. The Prosecuting CPS Official at Magistrates
7. Three Magistrates convicting Aspinall
8. The Appeal CPS Official
9. The Appeal Barrister
10. The Defence Solicitor at Magistrates
11. The defence Barrister at the Appeal

Big Brother. Only when you are a cop

I make that 13 people who did not have an issue with the cctv until the Judge at the Appeal decided that there was something untoward. At that point the enquiry started. Even then, from information supplied to me, the Judge had to take the images into his chambers because he could not see what actually went on on the screen in the court room. If you actually watched the cctv in its entireity expecting to see something untoward then you would be disappointed. It simply does not look as it is portrayed by the media using effects they have at their disposal. Blink and you miss it. Hence, Sky news and others concentrate on the perfectly legitimate distraction blows as if they are the offence.

All I can say, Andy, is that you have won the prize for short sightedness in the field of operational duty. Makes me think you are the ideal calibre for the uPSD. Thick and unjustifiably opinionated

Reg 15’s are in the post

Yates of the Yard

In an astonishing admission has John Yates  admitted a Police Misconduct offence to the world? His admission that he did not fully perform his duties in the News of the World hacking case will come as great comfort to the half dozen or so fellow officers now disciplined or sacked for failing to perform their duties in my force in the last 12 months. Mr Yates’ admission in the Daily Mail article that he is “not going to go down and look at bin bags” is typical of the senior officer rank who head investigations but, as we all know, do nothing, say nothing and generally add nothing to an enquiry except interference. We all knew something fishy had gone on. All except John Yates who simply failed to grasp the basic principle of investigation that you leave no stone unturned and that means if you need to get your coat off and get your hands dirty in a bin bag full of evidence then you do so.

Many years ago this type of enquiry would have been carried out by fully trained detectives headed by a fully trained senior detective who had experience of complex investigation. It would have done in good time and charges brought against offenders.

Now we have enquiries headed by senior officers who have no real experience of policing and are really pseudo politicians. This Midsommer Murders propensity to believe that because someone is ACPO rank that they must be a brilliant police officer is naive and crass. Most senior officers are great at writing bollocks and talking bollocks because their world is a round of non stop briefings and meetings and not real police work. Despite this commitment to ridding the world of tea, biscuits and trays of sandwiches, little else is achieved by them. It is about time that the public understood this.

I now watch this matter with interest from a police discipline point of view. Will John Yates be served regulation 15 notices and be investigated just like many of my colleagues have been in the last few years because they failed to adequately progress their crimes? Wait and see. Bear in mind that most of our colleagues had proper jobs and were going under due to the stresses and strains of their workloads which will now get higher due to redundancies and reductions in numbers. Somehow I think that this minor point will be glossed over. You know the one, the fact that a senior Metropolitan Police officer is incompetent, lazy and has brought the force into disrepute.

When he was brought in to review the previous enquiry what did he actually believe he was required to do? It beggars belief but I bet a pound to a pinch of sh*t that he survives. My colleagues will be so pleased for him.

The Contagion is Catching!

In Salford which is part of the Greater Manchester Police area the District Judge sat at the Magistrates’ Court has made a valiant effort to be considered as having made the most ridiculous legal decision ever. If you want to read about it then check out the Manchester Evening News for details. I am sure it will be national news in a bit.

The decision essentially is that he considers that the detention clock should run when a suspect is not in detention! That means that the bailing of suspects for a few weeks whilst further enquiries are made should now cease to happen. This Judge must be extremely well qualified, you would think, so how has he come by this decision. However, this example of sheer stupidity has been ratified by the High Court. Are the Judges on the side of the right and proper thinking. If they are, how can they possibly interpret that this is the message the law makers intended when the relevant law was drawn up. Therefore, his interpretation of the legislation is so poor that he deserves not to be a Judge presiding over the law and should be sacked.

It is simply stupid to think that this invite to criminals getting away with their wrong-doing can improve the efficiency of the judicial system. What should happen is he should be hauled in front of the people charged with ensuring the judiciary act in the best interests of the country and interpret the laws as the man on the “Clapham Omnibus” would expect them to be. Once there he should be disrobed and banished to paper clip counting where he is unlikely to have to make another important decision again.

If only there was an offence of outright stupidity in a public office we could save the country from rack and ruin.

“High Stakes Guessing Game”

Big Brother. Only when you are a cop

A matter of concern is being put upon us by that well known business namely ACPO involving the use of cctv images in evidence. Their belief, via their chief policy writer in this field (who, incidentally, is not even a cop any more), is that officers must write out their witness statements without any recourse to the cctv that refers to the same incident. They say that this gives a true reflection of the incident through the officer’s eyes and means that the officers are less prone to criticism or challenge at court. What an utter load of bolleaux! What it does is give ammunition to a defence solicitor or counsel who boldly pronounces that every police officer is a liar because the cctv says so. The only crime 99.9% of officers are guilty of is making an honest mistake!

Beware the ACPO CCTV Policy

The truth is that memories of an incident often do not match the real picture as painted by the cctv images captured. Whether this is due to stress, narrowing of vision or other field of psychology is not my concern. But what is my concern is the fact that there are police officers up and down the country facing honesty and integrity allegations simply because they failed at the “High Stakes Guessing Game” that ACPO wish them to undertake. It would not be so much of a travesty if the current author of ACPO policy was not protecting his own position. Being a tier 5 interview advisor, it is obvious he is bolstering his own empire within this field. (Tier 5 interview advisors, wash my mouth out, that’s another subject in itself!)

Why are officers not allowed to view the cctv before they put in a statement? After all, the cctv is the best evidence. Why don’t ACPO simply allow the officers to exhibit the cctv rather than trying to guess what order the incident took place and who did exactly what? Is it because ACPO simply don’t understand real policing and think that us front line workers are getting a one-upmanship on them? More sinisterly is the question over why ACPO immediately assume the officer is lying when the statement differs from what the cctv portrays. I’ll leave you all to answer that question.