New arrangement coming. - One day, somewhen........

Eventually we are lead to believe that a new arrangements to handle police complaints is to be put in place. so lets look at how soon and if these will really be any better.

For a long time many people have been calling for a more honest way to look at just complaints by victims of the police. The motivation to make changes came about following the report of the Home Affairs Committee on police complaints and discipline and the Lawrence Inquiry recognized that there is now widespread support for the need to reform the current system with the introduction of a system of independent investigation of complaints against the police.

After much discussion, in the Police Reform Act July 2002, to be established under section 9-14 we find the Independent Police Complaints Commission [IPCC]. Earlier in 2002 we asked the home office how soon this would be and was told March or April 2003 would see it fully staffed and operative.

The police reform website shows implementation plans on varicose sections of the act, but in relation to the establishment of the IPCC it shows no implementation arrangements existing as at mid November 2002.

On the 13th November in a an email response from the Police Complaints Authority [PCA] to the President of the Independent Inquiry Society [IIS] re where the new web site would be for the IPCC,  they said "The IPCC will be a new organisation and decisions on its web site will be taken by the IPCC.  The IPCC will take over from the PCA in April 2004."

So the latest date we have is April 2004.

But who is it being implemented by?

Perhaps we could get more idea as to if it will be worth having when we eventually get it, if we can identify who is implementing it.

The IIS asked, who they should contact to find out about implementation arrangements and an email contact. The response from the PCA was "PLPU Division, The Home Office, 50 Queen Anne's Gate, London SW1a 9at.  I do not know which email address you would use and suggest that you write to PLPU."

A little research shows PLPU = Police Leadership and Powers Unit  http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/pcrg/plpu.htm and that this unit defined purpose is:

A little more research shows that this unit runs the PCA, handles police correspondence to ministers, schemes like to lay visitors of custody suits and Police  public relations. They have a page of publications in relation to modifying the complaints process at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/new_indexs/index_police-complaints.htm but this shows no new documents since the outline while the act was being discussed. So no implementation plans here as at Nov 2002.

 

So when it eventually happens, what will it involve.

Direct on this site we have  Police Reform Act (part of)

and Explanatory notes on police reform act a very long document that may take several minutes to fully load.

Within the explanatory notes it is paragraphs numbered 41 to 166 that are about the IPCC.

We find in paragraph 100 it states that the commission have 4 options for investigations:-

  1. a police investigation on behalf of the appropriate authority;
  2. a police investigation supervised by the Commission;
  3. a police investigation managed by the Commission; or
  4. an investigation by the Commission independent of the police.

Soon after this it says that "Independent investigations will be used on the most serious complaints or conduct matters and those of the highest public interest."

Options 1 and 2 are therefore the same as the existing 'cover up' arrangements.

Option 3 A police officer is still investigating, but a member of the commission is managing the investigation. I don't really see much difference in this is the police officer chooses to be blind, the manager is going to get the blind view. 

Option 4, maybe well much better but only in high PR cases. It also depends on who is in the post, a real independent investigator or a member of the PR handling team.

Conclusions.

It would be a pity to write this off before it was given a chance, but these arrangement are far poorer than the original proposals, when the act was being drawn up, where the IPCC would have managers managing teams made up of police seconded and others from outside the police and investigations on the ground would be carried out by a police officer and independent person working together. It would appear now very few cases will actually be independently investigated at all.

Added to this the establishment and the appointment of the staff for the IPCC appears to be being handled by the home office unit that also has many other interests, and exposing police corrupt practices is not high on their agenda. This unit would appear to be going to manage both  the IPCC and police PR.

So to the victims of the police, is this going to make any real difference. Except for high PR cases, probably not.

In many ways this is another lost opportunity, a bit like when the Police Complaints Authority was introduced, a lot of talk about independent investigation and cutting out the corrupt but having very little impact.

We have to give them a short time to prove if this is going to be an honorable attempt at sorting the problem if not then the answer is for the various bodies who are interested in highlighting this to set up their own investigative team or to come to an arrangement with either the Independent Inquiry Society or Independent FactFinders to do this for them. To start the police would not co-operate with these and would be then down to the press to publicize the failing highlighted and force them to co-operate.

The only other solution is to give more people the knowledge and support to sue the police for damages, and this is the route I feel is more likely to bring about change.