Jane Owen – Legal Babble

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.

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.