Flurry of activity at GMP in the last few days starting with this considerable shocker:
Overall GMP has been known to be a failing organisation for some time but no active intervention to stop the fall in service standards has been made by GMP itself, The Home Office or HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.
On Wednesday the Chief Constable, reckoned to be amongst the worst in a very competitive field, resigned citing “long term health issues”. None of these issues had been apparent or seemed to prevent him discharging his duties prior to Tuesday’s news regarding non-recording of crimes.
On Thursday the force was placed into special measures following Home Office intervention.
That’s a triple whammy of connected events.
Most interesting from my perspective is how GMP denied any failings in regards to service standards until the scandalous failure to record crimes became public. Like every British police force at present the effort made to hide errors and failures is tremendous. The mantra of the modern Chief Constable is that the professional reputation of the force must be maintained at all costs.
How many other forces will end up in special measures by the end of 2021? I’m willing to take bets on at least two.
This blog post is best avoided being read on a full moon for reasons which will shortly become obvious.
In a meeting due to take place tomorrow, Friday 18th December the Ethics, Integrity and Complaints Committee of Leicestershire Police will discuss the reasons why the number of supposed rapes recorded by police are high while the number of prosecutions for the offence are low.
Current Labour Party leader Sir Kier Starmer is known to be one of the individuals behind the mantra of “we believe the victim”, a post-Saville call-to-arms which led to a turnaround in modern policing resulting in the prosecution of thousands of men for supposed historic sexual offences. Many of these men were geriatric and due to the passage of time since the supposed offences their accusers unable to produce physical evidence of wrongdoing. In the post-Saville climate however one person’s word against another remains sufficient to enable a wrongful conviction; particularly over something as emotive as a sexual offence allegation.
Some fifteen years ago the proportion of wrongfully convicted men in gaol was around one in twenty. The figures are likely presently significantly higher.
Yet an accusation of rape remains one of the problematic offences for police to investigate. The number of offences compared to the number of convictions carries a massive disparity. The Leicestershire Police report to be discussed tomorrow helps explain why.
You can read the leaked report into the matter below. It gives an insight into the level of lunacy currently practiced in the British Police overall.
In short the statistics for such offences given to the public are wrong. Police have known they are wrong for some time and that they provide a wholly distorted and prejudicial view of the true extent of rape offences. The report explains why this is so.
The most memorable part of the report concerns a complaint by a woman of assault by a werewolf. An actual werewolf. Not just a hairy bloke. The matter took some four months to investigate at a cost of goodness knows what to the taxpayer.
🐺 – 🌕
The matter of supposed rape by a supernatural being is still recorded as an offence.
More serious is the extract below:
In short when a false claim of rape has occurred police do not obtain a retraction (failure to do so keeping the non-offence as a recorded offence) and police do not appear to seek to obtain a retraction as it would leave the complainant open to prosecution for wasting police time. This stops false accusers and compensation-seekers from being prosecuted and would enable them to “have another go” at a later date. The lucrative gravy-train of false allegations thus rolls on and everyone on the criminal justice system benefits. Except the poor bloody defendant of course.
If enough false accusers were to be prosecuted the well of complaints that the British police have been supping from since “We believe the victim” was introduced would shortly run dry.
This approach however is too common-sense. It would however solve the problem of false statistics and keep innocent men out of gaol.
I’ve written on here before regarding Humberside Police. There’s something about that force that’s rather disturbing: a more blatent flouting of the College of Policing Code of Ethics, a lower standard of behaviour overall from the force towards the public and an open willingness to treat reports of crime and complaints with equal contempt.
Part of this is down to the geographical isolation of East Yorkshire and especially Hull from the rest of the UK. Humberside Police seem to have a genuine and recurring belief that they can do as they wish well away from prying eyes. The largely inept local media such as The Hull Daily Mail pay a part in assisting this of course. Rather than investigateve journalism that would reveal scandals in local policing they opt for click-bait thrill-a-minute headlines that drive traffic towards advertising. The PCC Keith Hunter is perenially inept at holding the force to account and the overall feeling is that he’s happy to sit out his tenure until pension day arrives.
Some of this flouting of the conventions of good policing can be traced back to the period in which Humberside Police were a Chief Constable-less, rudderless and struggling force on the verge of being put into special measures. Audits routinely returned appalling reports by any metrics devised. Nor has the situation and service standards improved greatly in the four years since minor improvements began.
Like most police forces they have a unique ability to both say one thing and do another, as well as shoot themselves in the foot. While professing to detest and crack down on racism within their ranks the actual tale is quite different.
Which brings us to our story for today.
There’s a page on the Humberside Police website which details upcoming misconduct hearings for the force.
Within the last few days this was changed – without any member of the public being informed or the change advertised. The content on the “new” URL as it appears currently (9.12.20) can be seen below.
The reason for this sudden change is that a senior officer has been chaged with the use of racist language. This is Stewart Miller, a high-profile DCI with Humberside Police who correspondingly have a lot to loose if the revelation of his conduct is proven true and receives appropriate levels of national publicity.
Humberside Police’s Stewart Miller pictured outside of Sheffield Crown Court.
The details of the alleged offence can be seen in the “new” misconduct page the image of which I have provided above. If true this behaviour constitutes an exceptionally severe breach of ethical and moral codes of conduct by this officer. Racist language, discrimiation and suchlike are uttely unacceptable in 2020 and repellant to the majority of civilised people.
However aware that the revelation of this allegation may cause a stir in the national media Humberside Police have changed the URL of the misconduct hearings page just before posting details of this forthcoming hearing.
The “old” page that the majority of people would see or have an existing shortcut to as of 8.12.20
This is a deliberate and purposeful act to attempt to stop the public becoming aware of these allegations against a senior officer. To see the “new”
The data about the hearing I have shown above can only be located from a careful search on the force’s website. This in itself is cause for concern: Humberside Police can of course claim that they have published the details of the misconduct hearing: but they have done so in a way tactically designed to hide the allegations and the public’s knowledge of the hearing. This is of course deplorable but entirely in keeping with that force’s general obsession with bad publicity. Of course now this matter is out in the open the changing of the URL looks even worse.
The effective hiding of the data regarding this misconduct hearing is also designed to protect this officer and his professional reputation. One wonders how this matter will play out in the event of a guilty finding by the force’s PSD and to what extent they will be prepared to publicise any disciplinary measures against this officer.
The alleged comments were made in summer 2020 just a few days after Humberside Police posted on their site positive content from The Association of Police Chiefs regarding the (as it turns out) aspirational aim for the UK police to be anti-racist following the death of George Floyd in the USA during contact with police.
This sort of behaviour amounts to that which will not surprise seasoned watchers of Humberside Police.
9.12.20 update:
Having been caught out over this matter and it having received some publicity via Twitter on 8.12.20 Humberside Police have corrected the changed URL as of this morning, 9.12.20 so that the misconduct hearing for Mr. Miller is now advertised on the main page that most journalists and public would have a link to.
Humberside Police are one of those forces that you wonder how they get away with it.
Largely hidden away from the rest of the country on the edges of East Yorkshire they have a reputation every bit as unwholesome as other local forces.
One reason they do seem to get away with it is both geographical distance from the rest of the UK and of course lack of proper oversight. Their perennially ineffective Police and Crime Commissioner Keith Hunter recently showed the level of consideration he has for the local pubic by manhandling a visitor asking perfectly reasonable questions out of his office. As a former officer himself old habits die hard.
The PCC’s behaviour is of course equal to the contempt for the public shown by the force itself in such matters as inadequate custody suites which – on the basis of the last inspection reports I read – were shockingly poor, particularly in regards to the welfare of young people held in custody.
But while holding the public largely in contempt officers can expect lavish prize ceremonies at The Humber Bridge Country Park Hotel, a venue synonymous with chicken in a basket style meals and budget wedding ceremonies. These police awards stem from the days the force were in a Chief Constable-less mess which almost ended up with them being put into special measures. Handing out cut glass awards helped to boost the morale of the troops, albeit on a temporary basis. Clearly no gongs were forthcoming from any other source at that time and so the force decided to award gongs to themselves.
The days in which the force almost ended up in special measures still hang heavily over Humberside Police. The epithet “Where we do what we want” has seldom applied more to a UK force in modern times, Met Police excepted. Overall in those days and to a lesser extent now Humberside officers still tend to do what they want.
The consequence to all of this is that quite a number of officers from Humberside Police end up before their Professional Standards Department and such hearings now appear to be increasing in frequency. This suggests an increasing breakdown in internal discipline and operational effectiveness that needs to be addressed urgently.
Of course PSD generally tend to go for the low hanging fruit which means the officers most likely to be prosecuted are PC’s caught slacking off, pulling a sickie or whose face doesn’t appear to fit around the station. Occasionally officers are thrown to the wolves just so PSD can appear to be exercising some form of oversight. The more serious miscreants and offenders further up the slippery ladder are ignored. In the modern police force assistance over cover-ups are rewarded with promotion and rocking the boat by sacking someone who knows “where the bodies are buried”, metaphorically speaking of course, has the potential to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
So this recent case seen directly below reminded me of a well-publicised matter from a few years back – which is still a shocker – which I will discuss in a short while.
Busted!
As you can see the basic charge is that this PC has been passing confidential police information on to criminals. Guaranteed this data will have been specifically requested by Ronnie and Reggie, will be of considerable use to said criminals and there will have been a payment involved somewhere down the line. That’s the way these things work.
Police databases include something called the PND or Police National Database. This is a huge wealth of half-truth, rumour and suspicion which will have entries on just about any person who has come into contact with the police for any purpose. Unlike the Police National Computer which must be accurate (containing as it does details of convictions, cautions etc.) the PND can contain outright unsupported rumours, slurs and spite.
Do please bear in mind you have no right of access to whatever falsehoods might be stored on the PND about you: although you can make a request for all the data uploaded by an individual force about you to PND. You then have a legal right of correction of the same.
Which brings us back round to Humberside Police.
As we’ve already seen there’s a tendency in the force to dip into and out of police systems for officer’s own benefit. Any access to PNC or PND is logged however so anyone doing so is easy to locate. Officers dipping into databases for their own curiosity or benefit tend to forget this.
Which brings us to DC Julian McGill.
Busted! Again.
The report above isn’t the full story as there’s been several instances of computer misuse from this officer over the years. This resulted in a final written warning and the hearing described below in which his career was on the line:
Believable? You decide!
McGill at the time was serving as part of the local Police Federation. A fact that will have of course been unlikely to influence the position of the misconduct panel in any way! Generally gross misconduct results in only one outcome and since the offending act was admitted (he could hardly deny it given his access was logged) the decision of the panel was very much at odds with the seriousness of the offence.
However this all ties into my original premise that Humberside Police – situated away from prying eyes – seek to do what they like. Accessing police databases for their own use is simply one part of this and the brushing aside of an instance of gross misconduct is a further example.
Many ticklesome articles in the new Private Eye magazine (no. 1535, 20th November 2020) including this choice one on police recruitment.
Private Eye comments on police recruitment.
As always there’s many a truth spoken in jest.
At present the workload of the average Plod would incline anyone with the ability to obtain employment elsewhere to do so. Truly a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.
Nor are matters likely to improve with the new recruits when they’ve finally got some wool on their backs.
The lesson The Ministry of Justice learned to their cost was that sacking every experienced prison officer within range meant that the newer and less experienced were unable to handle the job with subtlety and skill. This caused a further recruitment problem as newly recruited staff also began to leave in droves once they realised the true horrors of the job they’d be facing daily.
So it will be with the new police recruits.
Possibly also unwise to have a large surge of untested youngsters in uniform, pumped up with testosterone and a newly-found sense of self-importance, kitted out with weaponry and the power of arrest let loose on the public.
One can only hope that new recruits will be paired with more experienced officers. But PC George Dixon is long since retired and these days six months or more in the frontline on the force and you’re considered a veteran. Stay for a year and doubtless South Yorkshire Police – the force that loves to hand out awards to underperforming officers – will have a decanter set and tin plaque to pass over to you.
An additional problem. Recent reports in the local press show South Yorkshire Police and West Yorkshire Police finding themselves and their transport under severe attack on entering some estates in Leeds and Sheffield. Police cars and vans were recently destroyed as they have also been outside of Goldthorpe Police Station in South Yorkshire.
Here we can see how spirited local residents have offered their opinion on police service standards.
Can it be long before armoured “snatch squads” operating in a similar fashion to those grabbing terrorist suspects in post-invasion Baghdad are sent in to spirit suspects away from troubled estates?
So if you do see such officers on the streets soon be sure to look out for their armoured snatch too.
Legal Babble 