West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards Department

November 5, 2022November 5, 2022

Evading Scrutiny – West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s problem with the truth

You will be advantaged by learning four things from this blog entry:

The means by which police force’s skew complaint investigations in their own favour.
How local Mayor’s office’s deliberately mishandle appeals regarding how police have handlined a complaint.
How the Mayor’s office then themselves avoid accountability for their behaviour.
The degree of contempt with which all of the above hold the public.

The issue concerns a mishandled complaint to West Yorkshire Police, then subject to an appeal to West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office. The appeal to WYCA was actioned so poorly as to amount to an unacceptable breach of standards and so a complaint was made about this. That office’s Jane Owen then arguably commits misconduct in public office with a misleading response designed to avoid any accountability for West Yorkshire Combined Authority.

Prior to reading this blog entry you may wish to look at the other post regarding how West Yorkshire Combined Authority deflects complaints made about itself and minimises complaints made about West Yorkshire Police. This can be found at:

Turning a Blind Eye. How West Yorkshire Combined Authority Helps Local Police to Evade Accountability.

My prior blog post on how West Yorkshire Combined Authority assists police to evade accountability.

Well it appears that little has been learned from that prior matter and appeals to the Combined Authority that West Yorkshire Police have mishandled a complaint made are still subject to evasion and avoidance by the office of Deputy Mayor Alison Lowe, who has ultimate responsibility for the mishandling of the appeal.

Alison Lowe, Deputy Mayor and the person responsible for policing issues at West Yorkshire Combined Authority.

Here’s how this happened in this specific instance…

A complaint was made to West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards Department (PSD). The result of this was the usual lazy evidence-free shonking off of the complaint. The matter was referred to the Deputy Mayor’s Office at West Yorkshire Combined Authority who deliberately or accidentally failed to spot where PSD skewed their complaint investigation.

There are a number of investigative criteria for the Deputy Mayor’s office to follow.

These are:

[Whether due regard was given to relevant guidance]

In this matter reference was made in the PSD or Deputy Mayor’s responses to College of Policing guidelines and how these were supposed to have been followed. The Deputy Mayor’s Office failed to locate the College of Policing Guidance to compare the outline of how police should have behaved in the incident subject to the complaint with objective standards.

The response of PSD was not set out in a format that showed a correct formal investigation had taken place. This was ignored by the investigator for the Deputy Mayor, Karen Gray.

The next line of investigation missed by Karen Gray was:

[Whether reasonable lines of enquiries were undertaken to be able to provide a reasonable and proportionate outcome] [Where any aspects of your complaint were not addressed, or any lines of enquiry were not pursued, whether there were sound reasons given for this]

Neither the Mayor’s Office nor West Yorkshire Police made any enquiries with third party witnesses to establish what happened.

In similar prior incidents it is known that and attempt has been made to contact witnesses by PSD, but not in this matter.

Again this shows that the standards outlined above in regards to the following of reasonable lines of inquiry have not been undertaken by PSD. The Deputy Mayor’s Office failed to consider this matter.

[Whether enough information was given to the complainant to address the complaint and support the outcome]

PSD failed to respond to a request for information in their complaint response. Again the Deputy Mayor’s Office fail to spot this. Here a potentially significant breach of established protocol at the incident complained of has not been addressed by PSD & the matter has been ignored in the appeal to the Combined Authority.

[Where any aspects of your complaint were not addressed, or any lines of enquiry were not pursued, whether there were sound reasons given for this]

The initial response of PSD failed to reply to the issues raised in the original complaint. This was again not addressed or spotted by Karen Gray in her appeal investigation. And the format for a formal, structured complaint response from PSD was not used.

[Whether reasonable lines of enquiries were undertaken to be able to provide a reasonable and proportionate outcome]

The Deputy Mayor’s office failed to consider that the actions of the officers complained of forms a pattern of behaviour from West Yorkshire Police.

In short then the appeal investigation by West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Karen Gray was the usual mix of evasion of issues that she would have to find against police. Combined with a total failure so spot the ways in which police had skewed their own investigation to favour themselves.

A complaint was made about the exceptionally poor service provided in the appeal investigation by Karen Gray.

This was responded to by Jane Owen, Casework Officer at West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office.

The response was:

Having carefully considered all your complaint points, I have concluded that this is not about the service this office has provided but rather is about how West Yorkshire Police handled your complaints CO-1490-22, CO-3251-20 and CO-2771-21 and is also about the outcome of the review of CO-1490-22 which was provided to you by Karen Grey on 20 October 2022.

This is clearly outright mendacity. The complaint was clearly directed at Karen Gray’s seeming inability to be able to conduct a proper investigation and avoidance of consideration of key issues within the single complaint raised of poor service in this matter.

It is also an outrageous attempt to deflect any investigation into the very poor service standards at West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office. This is the kind of response provided when an organisation knows full well that their behaviour would not stand up to any form of scrutiny.

Jane Owen goes on to state:

As you are aware, the statutory guidance does not make provision for review outcomes to be challenged through the complaints process and consequently, if you wish to challenge the outcome of Karen’s review of CO-1490-22, you should consider seeking independent legal advice.

This is also clear misdirection and also untrue. The link seen above details the complaint investigation into a prior mishandled appeal to WYCA carried but by Jane Owen’s colleague Julie Reid.

There is an offence in law of misconduct in public office. Attorney General’s Reference No 3 of 2003[2004] EWCA Crim 868.

The offence is committed when:

a public officer acting as such;
wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself;
to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder;
without reasonable excuse or justification.

Let’s pause a moment and consider the overall picture.

The police failed to investigate a complaint made correctly and in line with their own prior procedures for so doing. When this was referred to West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office as an appeal to their Karen Gray, Gray lets police off the hook by failing to investigate several issues that show police failed to act correctly and in line with The Police Reform Act 2022. When these are pointed out in a complaint her colleague Jane Owen intervenes and outrageously claims that the issues raised as complaints about West Yorkshire Combined Authority Policing and Crime office are not in fact about that office as a means of deflecting any investigation into the suboptimal nature of their appeal investigation.

If you can think of a more blatant effort to conceal a public body’s failings performed in such contemptible way then please let me know. The actions of both Karen Gray in failing to conduct an appeal investigation correctly (not for the first time, it must be said) and those of Jane Owen in attempting to conceal or deny the failure of Gray by refusing to action a complaint amount to misconduct in public office.

You can see a video below of the hot air West Yorkshire Combined Authority spouts about their Police and Crime Plan. None of this concerns efforts to hold Plod to account for misdemeanours.

Outside of the Met West Yorkshire Police is regarded as the most corrupt and incompetent force in the UK.

February 7, 2021February 7, 2021

The Force Won’t Be With You! Illegality at West Yorkshire Police

BEING the story of how a data access request led to a breach of the law by West Yorkshire Police.

Few people would argue against the notion that West Yorkshire Police has an international reputation for corruption and incompetence. One of the less enviable roles to have at the force is in the Data Management departments dubbed, rather imaginatively as Information Compliance and Right of Access. Those pesky members of the public requesting data they’re perfectly entitled to must grate! This in those departments you stand as gatekeeper for great swathes of your information that must not be released as it could show your brother officers out to be inept, lazy or actually corrupt.

Consequently the job of anyone in a data access role at West Yorkshire Police is more akin to a doorman at the gates of Hell stopping Desmond from escaping than the role suggested in legislation as a facilitator of access to information.

Consider Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act which states that a person…

“is guilty of an offence if he alters, defaces, blocks, erases, destroys or conceals any record held by the public authority, with the intention of preventing the disclosure by that authority of all, or any part, of the information to the communication of which the applicant would have been entitled”.

…at West Yorkshire Police data access employees certainly consider this. Particularly the blocking and concealing aspects. And it probably keeps them awake at night.

A data access request was made to Right of Access department at West Yorkshire Police in early October 2020.

Eventually the data was provided (in February 2021) and as is par for the course this was considerably outside of the time limits allowed in law for the production of it and is thus is a breach of the law.

Additionally the mishandling of the original requests suggests misconduct in public office and willingness to commit a Section 77 offence on the part of a person or persons at Right of Access dept. It is for you, dear reader, to decide if this also constitutes a criminal offence of misconduct in public office.

A complaint was made to the (equally imaginatively named) Professional Standards Department (PSD) which they fudged. They were then instructed to re-investigate the complaint by The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) for West Yorkshire.

Part of the re-investigation instructions relate to data that was clearly withheld by Right of Access Dept. from PSD in contravention of their duty of care and candour. That this withholding of data skewed the result of the PSD investigation resulting in the matter being referred to OPCC.

I’m willing to take a pretty safe bet that Right of Access did not inform PSD of the matters below in the original complaint investigation…

The original request for data made in October 2020 resulted in a letter of 4.11.20 from Right of Access dept. which stated that the request was rejected for 60 days as ROA had decided to impose an arbitrary and illegal ban on my making data access requests. The illegality of the ban was pointed out to ROA.

The pointing out that the ban was illegal appears to have generated a change of heart. A few days later (16.11.20) this ban was lifted and a further letter of 16.11.20 assigns the request a reference number. Great! It’s finally moving forwards! The letter of 16.11.20 claims the request is being processed.

However illogically the following day the request was then again refused in a letter from Right of Access dept. of 17.11.20.

This attracted an internal review request from me. The response from ROA to this was:

“internal reviews [has been set up]… an independent member of the team who was not involved in this decision will assess your requests and whether they should be processed.

The matter was also referred to the independent watchdog for data access rights, The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a formal complaint.

ICO considers that 40 days is sufficient for the production of an internal review. The internal review was of course not concluded after this time and so the reviews were both chased with ROA after 40 days on 12.1.21.

West Yorkshire Police staff hard at work.

The result of the internal reviews were inconclusive and weak in that they upheld the original failure to produce the data without giving sustainable grounds in law.

Now here’s a hot tip next time a police force refuses your data access rights:

In order to act as a check on Right of Access dept. at West Yorkshire Police (experience leads me to not believe a word they say) I occasionally request the same data as has been requested from ROA from another police force to check matters such as the right of access in law to the data and entitlement to the same. This is something I specifically do as in the case discussed here where there is an outright refusal to supply the data. Having an uninvolved second party check what you’ve been told is truthful is frequently invaluable.

A letter in response from Humberside Police from them confirmed the rights to the same type of data requested from West Yorkshire Police.

So I wrote back to ROA on 20.1.21:

I refer to the attached correspondence with Humberside Police in relation to [reference number given]. In this correspondence I requested from that force the same documentation that has been requested from West Yorkshire Police…

Following the usual game of silly bastards that police force’s like to play in their initial response letter the data was provided in accordance with the obligation on Humberside Police in law.

The same legal obligation that has compelled Humberside Police to provide a copy of the data also obliges West Yorkshire Police to provide the same to me. Your internal review of the matter and the provision of the same from a local force must mean that the law compelling disclosure of this data from Humberside also compels the disclosure from your force.

I await a copy of the data requested…

A copy of the covering letter from Humberside Police confirming the right of access to the data requested was also sent to ROA on 19.1.21.

ROA wrote back on 21.1.21 saying the matter is with the ICO but that I am not prevented from making further requests.

I request again on this date a copy of all the data originally requested in October 2020. This request is acknowledged on 22.1.21. The data was finally provided in February 2021.

After the original refusals and messing around by ROA it must have galled the that they’d been backed into a corner with no further escape route. If the data is obtainable from one force it must logically be obtainable from all.

The point of the lengthy backstory above is this: ROA habitually seek to retain data that the production of would prove embarrassing to West Yorkshire Police. This purposeful retention of data breaches the law as it activates both yours and my Section 77 rights under data access legislation and the illegal retention of it is an example of misconduct in public office as the law is habitually flouted to avoid the production of data access requests.

In the above matter once the entitlement to data had been established from another force ROA had no option than to provide the data requested, but of course prior to this the data had been subject to so much hand-wringing and wrangling to avoid its disclosure, including the illegal imposition of a ban on requests being made and the arbitrary refusal of a legal and legitimate data access request.

Conclusion

I should not have to fact-check the legal position with requests to other police forces when a request for data has been refused by West Yorkshire Police. But it does help! Equally I should not have to do this for the purpose of getting ROA department backed into a corner from which they cannot continue to refuse access to data. Again though this does help! This is wasting my time and public money simply because ROA sees its position as a gatekeeper for information rather than accepting its actual position in law as a facilitator.

Section 77 cited above is clear: it is an offence to attempt to block access to data that the public has a right to.

Recently The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire Police has had a number of members of the public complain about the police’s Right of Access dept. Will this lead to a broader investigation of systemic and purposeful effort to block public access to data by delay, dithering and denial? Watch this space.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021

Daylight Robbery! How Police Evade Accountability on Data Access Requests

In a November 2020 report The Information Commissioner (or ICO) wrote the forward to a report and stated:

“It is my hope that police forces, and other organisations, will read this report, understand their current position and identify actions they can take to improve or maintain good performance. We will continue to work with the police to support their compliance with information rights laws.”

Some hope of that!

When the Commissioner wrote of “their current position” she was using soft-soap language for what would have been more accurately described as clear flouting of the law and institutional efforts to evade disclosure of information.

The full report can be read at https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/reports/2618591/timeliness-of-responses-to-information-access-requests.pdf

Let’s take a look at West Yorkshire Police as being a recent example of this failure to comply with both the law on data access requests, ICO guidance and their general obligations to maintain good relations with the public.

The Office of The Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire has for some months now been aware of suboptimal handling of data access requests by West Yorkshire Police. They have noted an increasing number of complaints from members of the public about poor service and inadequate provision of data by Information Access departments at that force.

A Professional Standards Department investigation into a complaint brought by a member of the public that subject access requests made had been delivered late, were missing data and had been purposefully frustrated by police was mishandled by Professional Standards Department. The Office of The Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire (the PCC) found that the investigation had been substandard in several areas.

As per usual for a police Professional Standards Department the conclusion to the investigation ran along the lines of “We have investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong”. This outcome is usually achieved by PSD adjusting the frame of reference to the complaint to disregard all that inconvenient evidence that proves the complaint is correct. This indeed appears to have been done in this instance.

Accordingly PCC wrote in their examination of the complaint handled by PSD:

“The decision I have reached is that the outcome of the complaint was not reasonable and proportionate… [that a proper complaint investigation involved] Full consideration of the Information Management Department’s handling of [the complainants] requests over the last year, including all the ones he brought to the complaint handler’s attention and the involvement of the ICO in those requests”

Which is as I stated: police complaints department ignoring evidence which proves the force has misconducted itself.

PCC wants a re-examination of major aspects of the complaint and also wants to see:

“Full consideration of the wider context concerning the timeliness of replies to Subject Access requests by West Yorkshire Police, including the engagement with the ICO. This should take into account the findings and recommendations from the ICO’s report from November 2020 “Timeliness of Responses to Information Access Requests by Police Forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland”

…in other words the report I referenced above.

This is to say the least mildly inconvenient for police. An examination of the timelines for a dip-sample of data access requests made (but not fulfilled on time) is one of the easiest ways to see that police have broken the law in relation to these requests.

But of course if West Yorkshire Police were to investigate themselves and report to PCC the errors made in supplying data requested by members of the public then it would be impossible to hide the scale of information deliberately hidden.

So the response of Rene Prime, Reviewing Officer at Professional Standards Department to PCC states:

“Unfortunately, I do not agree with the actions you propose should be taken to resolve the complaint. I agree that full consideration should be given to [the complainant’s] contact and requests to Information Management over the last year and the issues that have arisen around those requests, however I do not consider that it is appropriate to consider the wider context of perceived issues within the Information Management Team.”

Which is as slippery a way as can be found to avoid PCC discovering the full extent of West Yorkshire Police’s efforts to evade the production of data requested by members of the public. This reply also in effect “cuffs off” (to use a West Yorkshire Police term) the recommendations of PCC which have been made in the light of the many other individual complaints from members of the public regarding failed data access requests.

The standard approach to data access requests made by police forces is not compatible with legislation allowing the public access to data.

Secretive, evasive and mendacious: police hate requests for information from the public.

Instead they seek to frustrate access requests, deny even the production of non-contentious materials and in most cases seek to delay the production of data beyond time limits in law so that the requester will be liable to forget all about the request and go away. At all stages the intention is to frustrate, vex and delay. This is often because the police operational mindset is focused towards evading any form of insight into their working practices or accountability. Ergo the more the public get to know about police methods and actions by data access requests the less the freedom for police to do more or less as they wish. An informed public is aware of the abuses of power and the bending of the law that the police perform daily.

The above correspondence gives you something of an insight into the attempts police make to avoid production of data which would make them accountable. This time last year the police complaints process was subtly changed to make the local PCC engage more with appeals into poorly handled complaints. It will be interesting in the light of the above to see if West Yorkshire Police’s PCC has the guts to challenge ongoing breaches of the law over data access requests to West Yorkshire Police.

November 13, 2020November 14, 2020

Reign of Terror: The Long Shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper

The recent death of Peter Sutcliffe (a man dubbed in the media as The Yorkshire Ripper) presents a practical public-relations problem for West Yorkshire Police. It again raises the spectre of how Sutcliffe was able to kill so many people for such a sustained period. The answers make uncomfortable truths for that force.

West Yorkshire Police’s failure to catch Sutcliffe in what was one of the UK’s biggest manhunts plays a significant part in their present international reputation as a force beset by incompetence and corruption. It is a reputation with considerable justification.

Sutcliffe was not blessed with high intelligence enabling him to evade capture. Nor was he the popular fiction version of a serial killer: a creature of almost animal cunning and divine luck. Granted he was aided considerably in his activities by the relative infancy of forensics in the late 70’s. But this does not tell the whole story.

For the most part the reason Sutcliffe was able to carry on killing was down to long-identified administrative and operational failures on the part of the police. He is known to have been interviewed several times by officers in the course of their investigations but each time was discounted for further investigation. Other operational errors are known to have included an excess of paperwork generated in the course of the investigation. Detectives were hindered rather than helped by the weight of data generated and the primitive storage of such.

I would argue another failing contributed to the deaths of thirteen women. This is that police officers both at the time and now have a particular mindset which pre-disposes them towards both a closed minded approach to investigations and a form of “tunnel vision”. This comprises some of the issues I’ll discuss below.

Personal characteristics

To start with it’s popularly said that a Yorkshireman is a particular sort of stout character. Gruff, uncommunicative and 100% convinced he’s right in the face of all opposing evidence. Bluff and stiff-necked. The Harry Enfield comedy version of a Yorkshireman isn’t far from the mark. You know as well as I do the popular stereotype. For some reason beyond my capacity to fathom West Yorkshire Police provides a home to people very much of this mindset: there is a poisonous organisational culture which incubates some undesirable personality characteristics.

Consider the absolute certainty with which the senior officer in the Sutcliffe investigation, George Oldfield, was sure the killer was the voice on the Weirside Jack hoax tape is a tragic example of this unwillingness to admit to error once a set path has been taken. In the police both of the 70’s and today face-saving is also a strong motivating force. Especially so when consistent underperformance or failure are likely to result in downgrade to civilian worker status.

A former Australian Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdry produced a book called “Getting Justice Wrong” in which he argued that tunnel-vision on the part of officers (…he must have done something even if we can’t get him on what we’ve arrested him for!) plays a significant part in police failures. Tie this into the inability to admit to errors being make and you’ve an already toxic mix.

The “right” sort of victim

Sutcliffe’s first few murders were women largely at the margins of society. It is only with his killing of Jane Macdonald, a shop worker, in 1977 that the investigation increased in speed and urgency. This was partly in response to media pressure. But police then and now categorise crimes reported to them in an internal value system based partly on the perceived “worth” of the victim in society (socio-economic status etc). Sutcliffe attacked a young woman outside of Bradford in 1974 who sustained horrific injuries but police handling of the complaint and their investigations were at best suboptimal. The same occurred later when he attacked a lady who was a member of the BAME community in Leeds. Her complaints were “cuffed off” (to use the current parlance of West Yorkshire Police) rather than investigated. it is likely because of her background and low educational attainment that she was not considered a significant enough figure for her complaint to be deemed “worth” investigation.

Presented without comment. BBC News report on the day Sutcliffe’s death was announced.

The “right” sort of crime

Easy to solve crime is preferred. Especially if it’s hitting targets or addressing an issue of public concern. More complex investigations are likely to be shunned on the basis of the time, expenditure and difficulty of prosecuting successfully. Then and now police have one eye on the crime statistics and are more likely to address issues of public concern based on recent media exposure of such crimes. There’s a reason The Serious Fraud Office are so notoriously unsuccessful despite The City of London being rampant with financial corruption. In the matter of the Sutcliffe investigation it is arguably only when he began to operate outside of the red light areas from 1978 onwards that the police ramped up efforts due to increased public concern. This public concern increased again from 1980 onwards.

Conclusions

Ultimately Sutcliffe was caught by sheer luck and the most basic of police work.

He was picked up by uniformed constables from South Yorkshire Police in a situation in which he was likely preparing to kill again. Having disposed of his weapons behind a toilet cistern under the pretext of needing to urinate it is the quick-thinking of a South Yorkshire PC which led to the discovery of the weapons and the eventual confession of Sutcliffe that he was the killer.

The hugely expensive and lengthy investigation by West Yorkshire Police had been an excruciating waste of time and money. Arguably by tying itself in knots by a combination of weak administration and blinkered mindset the investigation had allowed Sutcliffe to carry on killing.

Serial killers are thankfully exceptionally rare and unusual. The advances in forensic technology and other policing methods in the forty nine years since he was caught render another Yorkshire Ripper type of killer thankfully even less likely.

However a weak spot remains in the mindset and attitude of police officers as I have discussed. Then and now significant barriers exist in investigations due to habits it’s almost impossible for police officers to break. This is partly fostered by an inherited organisational culture and thus will remain with us for some time yet.

November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

Malfeasance at the Office of West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner

The West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner is Mark Burns-Williamson, a largely gaff-prone failed politician. Heaven knows there’s sufficient data out there in the public domain to show that by any stretch of the imagination the man is unsuited to any role requiring public trust.

My favourite one details how he sent an inadvisable letter in a “love triangle” which would ordinarily have rendered him open to criminal prosecution. This was however covered up by West Yorkshire Police’s (then) DCI Simon Bottomley leading to the eternal gratitude of Burns-Williamson to the force he is supposed to scrutinise.

It also appears his office is prepared to manipulate and ignore facts to protect the very organisation it should be holding to scrutiny.

This blog entry tells the story of one such incident.

Burns-Williamson demonstrates the degree to which he hold the local force to scrutiny.

In May 2020 The Ministry of Justice’s Data Access Office sent data to a person (who we will call the recipient) in error.

This data was information on a third party who lived in the London area. This amounted to a serious data breach as the disclosure included the subjects name, address, date of birth and bank account details etc. as well as other disclosures regarding a series Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against the data subject.

The recipient of the data informed The Information Commissioner’s Office and The Ministry of Justice as well as the data subject whose information had been disclosed. He also posted regarding this on Twitter but did not reveal any confidential information in so doing.

Data Access at MoJ requested the recipient remove the mocking tweet. The recipient of the data refused citing his freedom of expression under The Human Rights Act and that no offence in civil or criminal law had been committed by the tweet.

Three days later the recipient of the data was arrested at his home by West Yorkshire Police on the basis that he had breached The Data Protection Act. The allegation being that he had shared the confidential data sent to him in error on Twitter.

This was palpably untrue as an examination of the tweet would have confirmed. However police did not examine the tweet for themselves but took it “on trust” from MoJ that a supposed offence had taken place. Of course it hadn’t but MoJ were burning with indignation that a serious data security error had been made public and to their official regulator on data matters the ICO.

Police were aware that no offence had occurred.

The bar for arrest for any offence is set very high as recent cases such as Rachid v. The Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police (2020) show. Instead police took it on trust from The Ministry of Justice that an offence had occurred in a situation in which the Security Manager for MoJ’s correspondence (seen by this blogger) reveals his desire to give the recipient “a nasty shock”.

The recipient’s home was entered by police on his arrest. In the middle of the Spring 2020 pandemic a vulnerable family member who was shielding was subject to interaction with police who did not wear PPE or take any form of precautions regarding introducing COVID-19 infection into the home. Electronic devices were removed and the home was ransacked in the search. The officer leading this was PC Alan Jackson. Police actions amount to trespass to property (since there were no reasonable grounds for arrest) alongside trespass to goods and wrongful arrest.

The home of the recipient of data was raided by police without PPE in the middle of the spring pandemic.

Predictably no charges were brought. Emails seen between the Officer in Charge (OIC) and The Ministry of Justice reveal MoJ immediately loose interest when the recipient was arrested which fits in with the prior email claiming MoJ wanted to give him a nasty shock. No further action resulted to the recipient from either Police or MoJ.

A complaint was duly made by the recipient to West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards Department (PSD). Their internal investigation under The Police Reform Act 2002 confirmed – but only internally to the police – that the arrest was wrongful on the basis that WYP had not seen or been provided by MoJ with any indication that a criminal offence had taken place. Other aspects of the complaint made were ignored by PSD and not investigated.

An organisation such as West Yorkshire Police which has an international reputation for both corruption and incompetence needs to be able to head off complaints and minimise them early on. The investigation concluded in a document called an Assessment and Progress Log that there had indeed been no reasonable grounds for arrest, therefore logically the arrest was unlawful. This document was an internal document not for public or complainant’s consumption.

Police of course cannot admit that they have erred to the complainant. It opens the door for civil action for wrongful arrest and payment of compensation. It also amount to loss of professional reputation.

Thus the results of the PSD investigation which were presented to the complainant in August 2020 were totally at odds with the actual true findings of the investigation. The official line was that nothing untoward had occurred and that the arrest was legitimate: the unseen internal report stated quite the opposite. A copy of this report has since been obtained from WYP and examined.

If you find that the above shocks you then I would respectfully point out you may have little experience of the police complaints process and the extent to which it seeks to hide the conduct of misconducting and underperforming officers.

The complainant found some 21 issues with the PSD investigation response which were either suboptimal or evaded examination of the facts. Of course if you’re prepared to commit mendacity on such a scale as a police complaints office then it’s best to keep any communication simple. The response provided by PSD’s Vicky Silver was clearly exceptionally evasive and the errors in it were manifest.

Police Professional Standards Departments go to any length to dismiss valid complaints.

The complaint was progressed as an appeal to The Office of The Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire, this being a body with supposed oversight of the local force. Karen Gray at PCC was tasked with the examination of the appeal.

It is a basic element of any investigation that the investigator should have access to all of the data available to be able to reach a reasoned conclusion. This is common sense. In the course of the PCC’s investigation they either failed to obtain copies of documents such as the PSD Assessment and Progress Log or else were provided with a copy of the relevant data but chose to ignore it in favour of a rubber-stamped approval of the earlier PSD investigation.

Thus the office of West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner have shown themselves to be either as throughly dishonest or professionally incompetent as the police force they are supposed to supervise. Further they are prepared to support the local force in their dishonesty.

A further complaint was made regarding the failure of the PCC to obtain all relevant data meaning that the Karen Gray investigation was fundamentally flawed. This was responded to more recently by PCC’s Jane Owen who has stated that Karen Gray could not have been aware of the Assessment and Progress Log on the basis that it was produced after the conclusion of the original PCC review.

However the document in question from PSD is dated 5.6.20.

Therefore it was produced BEFORE the complaint was referred to PCC by around two months. The response that it was not available in the original PSD investigation is therefore an outright lie.

It is of course inconceivable that an investigation properly conducted would not have requested a copy of, assessed and examined the PSD Assessment and Progress Log which was in existence by this point and therefore PSD’s position that Karen Gray had access to all of the required documentation to enable correct conclusions is not only incorrect but also deliberately misleading.

The essence of the complaint to PSD regarding wrongful arrest etc. was proven – as that office was well aware – by 5.6.20.

All subsequent efforts of PSD and the office of the PCC for West Yorkshire have sought to bury the facts under an increasing mound of guff and nonsense.

PSD chose to issue a response completely opposite to the facts they had themselves established and The Office of The Police and Crime Commissioner has assisted them in this cover-up and continues to do so.

In a desperate final attempt to avoid further scrutiny Jane Owen writes:

I have concluded that you have used the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner’s complaints process to try and change the outcome of your complaint… and the subsequent review undertaken by this office but – in line with the statutory guidance that has been issued that sets out how reviews have to be handled – you do not have a further right of review

Is it any wonder that both West Yorkshire Police and The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner have such a poor reputation both locally and nationally?

Certainly both are prepared to bend the truth into impossible angles to avoid any admission of error or loss of professional reputation. Perversely this ends up in a situation as described above in which loss of face and reputation end up occurring both from the original issue and the labyrinthine efforts made to conceal it.