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.
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.
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.
Nor is Humberside Police the only force to be mired in a racism scandal this week as a post from investigative journalist Neil Wilby shows: https://neilwilby.com/2020/12/04/say-one-thing-do-another/
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.
Legal Babble 