- More ‘Water, water everywhere…’ (Copyright ST Coleridge) part two - 23rd November 2024
- More cityscapes - 22nd November 2024
- Not Wynning ways - 21st November 2024
The latest worrying disclosures about the behaviour of police officers have shone the spotlight on the biggest force in Wales, and that the country has FOUR services for a population of only 3.1 million people.
The police watchdog has referred the case of an unarmed black man shot dead by an officer, to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Father-to-be Chris Kaba was shot by a Metropolitan Police (Met) officer through the windscreen of a car in Streatham Hill, South London, last year.
The family have said that it welcomed the decision but wanted the officer to face criminal charges.
Meanwhile, under the headline in The Guardian: “One of the biggest safeguarding risks to Black children is the Metropolitan police”, a black musician told of his appalling experiences at the hands of officers, after it was shown that the police abused their power to strip-search children, with black children much more likely than white children to be selected by officers for the ordeal.
Data collected by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) found there were at least 2,847 recorded strip-searches of children pre-arrest across England and Wales between 2018 and 2022 under stop and search powers. An official report released yesterday said 38 percent of children strip-searched were black (with the youngest child being just eight years old), and about a quarter were 10-15.
Disturbing information like this, comes after worrying details emerged about how the Met harboured David Carrick (known as ‘bastard Dave’ to colleagues), who had assaulted dozens of women over almost two decades, but was only finally sacked the DAY AFTER his court case, when he’d been a convicted rapist FOR HOURS! Journalists have divulged that NINE opportunities to stop him were missed by the Met.
Carrick was given 36 life sentences at Southwark Crown Court, and will spend the next 32 years in prison for his 17-year crime spree. He pleaded guilty to 85 serious offences including 48 rapes against 12 women. In a television interview, one victim who is also a serving police officer, said: “The culture was if you reported something like that it would label you more than them. I refused to go through my career as the woman who alleges rape”. The Solicitor General, Michael Tomlinson, KC, has declared that Carrick’s sentence will NOT be reviewed.
Before the case hit the news, the Commissioner of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, admitted his force was also investigating at least 800 of 35,000 officers, over allegations of racism and misogyny, and that more than one in every 50 of his officers had been taken off frontline duties while they were being probed. 16 officers have been convicted.
But Carrick was just one of them – worrying figures obtained by The Observer showed that roughly one in 100 police officers in England and Wales faced criminal charges, including for sexual offences, last year alone.
The data also suggested that the number of officers facing criminal charges has skyrocketed by 590 per cent since 2012. The news featured as the paper’s front page lead story.
The admission by Sir Mark came as it was revealed that one of his officers, PC Bonnie Murphy, was facing dismissal from the force after she allegedly asked for a picture of a decomposing corpse, so that she could “share it with her mother”. She received the shocking image from fellow officer Jamie Lewis, who was later jailed for posing for selfies next to two murdered sisters.
The Met was placed in ‘special measures’ after a litany of “systemic” failings like this. Tens of thousands of crimes also went unrecorded and there have been errors in stop and search. Apart from recent scandals, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), has emphasised a series of others – from the murder of Sarah Everard by the serving Met officer Wayne Couzens, the strip-searching of innocent children, stop and search controversies such as that of the champion athlete Bianca Williams, and offensive attitudes among officials shown by racist messages exchanged between officers at Charing Cross Police Station. It also noted the “seemingly incomprehensible failures to recognise and treat appropriately a series of suspicious deaths…”
It has been revealed that the police missed a number of chances to stop Couzens (as with Carrick). He even admitted exposing himself at a McDonald’s days before Ms Everard’s abduction, rape and murder. This was one of several incidents of indecent exposure, involving Couzens which were reported to the police.
Now it has been disclosed that two officers are to face misconduct cases because of them. A Met police constable will be in one formal hearing, and a Kent Police sergeant is also to be asked serious questions, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has declared.
Couzens will never leave prison. That means the real questions now are whether these earlier offences should have identified him to the police as a violent threat to women (although it appears they didn’t).
Earlier this month he was sentenced to ANOTHER 19 months for three offences of indecent exposure before he abducted, raped and murdered Ms Everard. Before these terrible events detectives identified SIX incidents of indecent exposure linked to Couzens – he has pleaded guilty to three, while the others will lie on file.
There is, too, a huge controversy developing over the pension rights of Couzens.
He will no longer receive his Met pension after London Mayor Sadiq Khan applied to the Home Office to deny him of it. But in a letter, Mr Khan claims that he is still entitled to a pension from his time with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) between 2011 and 2018.
There have also been serious issues raised about the conduct of the police in other high-profile cases – and in one of which Wales is central.
The IOPC has announced that former Met Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, was responsible for some of the delays disclosing top-level information to an inquiry about police actions after the killing of Daniel Morgan. Mr Morgan (who grew up in Monmouthshire), was found with an axe in his head, in a pub car park at Sydenham, London, in 1987. In their report they said: “Corruption is endemic in policing…”.
However internal police investigations (about the Morgan case or anything else), take a VERY long time, and are unlikely to result in dismissal from the force.
It has also been shown that attitudes towards women are highly questionable, and in this the slow pace of internal inquiries is evident. Figures paint an alarming picture, with just one per cent of more than 1,500 police officers or staff facing complaints about their treatment of women in a six-month period being sacked.
Data from the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) shows there were 524 complaints made by members of the public against 867 officers and staff in England and Wales police forces generally between October 2021 and March 2022. Yet out of the 290 cases resolved, 91 per cent ended with no further action taken, and NO officers or staff were dismissed.
During the same six months a further 672 police officers or staff faced conduct-allegations relating to violence against women and girls. But so far, a mere 13 officers or staff have been fired as a result of those investigations.
The atrocious headlines strike nearer to home in Wales too, and the nation’s largest police force South Wales Police (SWP). Ex-SWP Sergeant David Meller was banned from the force, after he was found to have used inappropriate language and behaviour towards female colleagues, as well as a teenage detainee in the custody suite. He swore at a 15 year old girl and used sexual references to women in front of her.
After the official disciplinary hearing which followed, officialese language was used by SWP to describe what had happened: ‘Mr Meller had breached the standards of professional behaviour, namely authority, respect and courtesy, showed discreditable conduct, and failed to challenge inappropriate behaviour’. He was to be added to the ‘Barring List’, preventing him from returning to the profession.
So it is obvious that all is not well with police services, and that internal investigations after unsavoury evidence (alleged or otherwise) of officers’ behaviour, are (to use Sir Mark’s word) weak, as well as taking FAR too long. On average 400 days are spent resolving allegations of misconduct, and at the end, less than one per cent of officers involved in two or more cases are sacked.
For the police in Wales, reports of inquiries into claims of intolerance among officers, are the last thing they need.
A police watchdog is also looking into contentions of racism and misogyny in another force – Gwent Police (GP) – as well as homophobia. The IOPC has said that the behaviour of three serving GP officers is being examined, and it would keep the involvement of other officers under review. It’s alleged that they had sent messages, first reported by the Sunday Times (ST), showing evidence of corruption within the force.
This case has worried the leader of the Welsh Conservatives (WC) Andrew RT Davies , and he has written to the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, asking her to intervene at GP, declaring that he fears there is deep “rot” in the force. But condemnation has come from all sides of politics, and the Welsh Liberal Democrats (WLD) have questioned whether the Welsh Labour (WL) Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Jeff Cuthbert, should remain in post.
In the report by the ST headlined “The Toxic Blue Line”, it was published about GP: “There are industrial levels of abuse, racism and potential corruption”. Officers made sick, so-called, ‘jokes’. The paper said that phone records show they had ‘joked’ about sending Jimmy Savile to rescue Thai schoolboys trapped in a cave, and swapped nude pictures of a female footballer. It said there had been “exposed a toxic culture of corruption, racism (and) homophobia in Gwent police force”.
Sky documentaries were also broadcast earlier last year, called Murder in the Valleys (MITV), looking into the horrific Clydach murders in 1999, when four people (Mandy Power her elderly disabled mother Doris, and two young children) were brutally beaten to death.
This, too, has been highlighted by the reports of police actions (or inactions!), despite the fact it is not (in theory) a miscarriage of justice case, although the man convicted of them (David ‘Dai’ Morris) died in jail still protesting his innocence. They were nominated for two awards at the BAFTA Cymru ceremony, including one for best Factual Series.
Another television programme late last year, on 5Star (which pretended to be looking into ‘cold cases’), though was VERY different. and incurred the wrath of many close to what had happened. 5Star is a free-to-air television channel owned by Paramount Networks UK & Australia and a sister to Channel 5, which specialises in documentaries.
One of the daughters of Mr Morris, Janiene Marie O’Sullivan, publicly declared to her dedicated website group: “I am finding it difficult to put into words how it made me feel….Basically it was a whole hour of Martin Lloyd-Evans (who led the investigation into the Clydach Murders) talking rubbish!…South Wales police have done themselves no favours again with this one”.
Mr Morris’s sister Debra Thomas also said on the site: “Can you believe the utter verbal diarrhoea Martin Lloyd was spouting in that cheap channel 5 program…I also know the journalist is on this group so I hope and pray she gets to read this.” And: “What disgraceful journalism!! They should hang their heads in shame”. The website Mrs Thomas helped set up, along with her niece, questions her brother’s guilt and has almost 31,000 members. On it she published a reply from Channel 5 to her complaint about the programme, but above the letter she wrote: “What research did they do????”.
The successful prosecution case against Mr Morris was that he had gone to Ms Power’s looking for sex, high on drink and drugs, been spurned and beat the entire family to death, leaving his chain there in the process.
Yet the evidence suggested Doris had been killed first, NOT her daughter, when presumably it would have been the person doing the spurning who would have died FIRST!
Mike O’Brien was the victim of one of several miscarriage of justice cases by SWP, and he appears on MITV saying that he believes the conviction of Mr Morris is another one. He told the MITV documentary-makers: “When I was released from prison I remember…saying ‘I’m going to be South Wales Police’s worst nightmare for what they did to me’, and I meant every word of it”.
In a formal interview for MITV (they wouldn’t do one with our Editor Phil Parry ), Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) of SWP, David Thorne, made a startling admission, about the mistakes that were made by the police in the earlier miscarriages of justice. During filming for the programme Mr Thorne appeared on, a forensic review found traces of DNA on a sock which it is believed was used to hold the murder weapon, that were “more likely than not” to have come from Mr Morris, and SWP trumpeted the finding. They effectively said: ‘We know we got it wrong in the past, but this time is different. Trust us’.
Yet a long-running campaign has been launched to establish his innocence, and after the first trial when Mr Morris was convicted, his sister Debra gave a tearful press conference with her parents when she stressed her belief that he was NOT guilty. She said: “He just didn’t do these things…they’ve got the wrong man”.
ACC Thorne, though, insisted on MITV, that Mr Morris was the RIGHT man, but acknowledged that mistakes had been made in previous police inquiries. He proclaimed: “It’s safe to say we got it wrong (in the past). We absolutely got it wrong. (There were) HUGE errors in the way investigations were conducted (but) we HAVEN’T found that in this case. This is not a miscarriage of justice”.
However Phil had made a BBC Panorama television programme about the shocking Clydach Murders a few years after they had been committed, and he was the first to question the police actions during THIS investigation too.
As he said in the opening of the programme: “One police force in Britain has a disturbing record of locking up the wrong people in murder cases”.
During MITV, the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) at the time, Detective Superintendent (DS) (Retd.) of South Wales Police (SWP) Martyn Lloyd Evans, is questioned about the apparent mistake of not releasing to the public a witnesses E-Fit constructed soon after the murders, which, it said, had a 90 per cent likeness. He replies that because the man seen was carrying a bag, and it was believed the killer did not have one, it was not put out.
Mr Evans said: “I didn’t think it was relevant”, but the E-Fit matched almost exactly the face of the first senior police officer on the scene, Inspector (at the time) Stuart Lewis, who (against all procedure) had only stayed there a matter of minutes, or that of his identical twin brother (another police officer, Sergeant [also at the time] Stephen Lewis, whose wife was having a gay affair with one of the victims). Inspector Stuart Lewis, had changed his shift to be on that night, however at crucial hours during the murders his whereabouts were unknown. He was driving a red Peugeot diesel, and a car similar to this was spotted near the murder scene. So to say the E-Fit was ‘not relevant’, appeared bizarre in the extreme, to critics of the police.
In the MITV films Mr Evans’ boss as the then head of SWP CID, Wynne Phillips, also said something incredible: “We can’t manufacture evidence”. But events before the murders, showed that SWP have done EXACTLY that.
To take just one of those cases (in which Phil was intimately involved, because he had made ANOTHER programme questioning THAT conviction [The Cardiff Newsagent Three]), the police MANUFACTURED (as Mr Phillips said they DIDN’T do) an overheard ‘confession’ between the young men they had arrested, when an admission was effectively made to the murder of the newsagent, and they presented before the court ‘EVIDENCE’ that the group had run from the scene, but one of the three had bad legs and couldn’t run at all.
But now further questions about the police have been thrown up – and these ones put centre stage how SWP have behaved…
Details of stories like these, after 23 years with The BBC, and 39 years in journalism, by our Editor Phil Parry as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
‘Ill discipline part three’ comes soon.
