Complaint to the Metropolitan Police & the IPCC
My efforts since December 2010 to expose the evidence disclosed amongst these pages, including that of both MRI scans, have resulted in my having to report a series of incidents to the police. These incidents involve a series of attempts on my life. The police have ignored evidence I have tried to present to them of a plot, in December 2010, by members of my family to have me murdered. They have also consistently refused to accept material evidence I have tried to present to them of attempts to poison me (from sources other than my family), and which began when I requested a copy of the first Brain MRI scan from the Information Governance Dept. of St Thomas’ Hospital in December 2010; i.e., at the same time that I renewed my allegations against certain members of my family. Similarly, the police have ignored reports I made to them of an illegal entry to my flat in February 2011 (these issues are addressed in more detail in Part 2 of my report, pp.83-99). In addition, the police have failed to respond to my reports to them of the respective cover-ups of the evidence of each MRI scan by Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Trust, and by UCLH NHS Trust.
The failure of the police to respond appropriately to my report to them of the December 2010 plot by members of my family to have me murdered necessitated my making two successive complaints to the Metropolitan Police. The progress of the first of these complaints is reproduced in the four documents linked below:
Complaint to MetPolice Directorate of Professional Standards – 08/09/2011 [pdf – 83KB]
Outcome of Complaint to DPS – 21/09/2011 [pdf – 56KB]
Appeal against Outcome to the IPCC – 11/10/2011 [pdf – 86KB]
IPCC Appeal Decision – 18/11/2011 [pdf – 309KB]
My appeal to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and their response are linked above. If one compares the content of the appeal alongside the content of the response from the IPCC, it is clear that the individual officer responsible for this document has barely read the content of my appeal, as it addresses none of its key concerns. It is essentially a blank reinforcement of the original Outcome from the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), without any detailed reflection whatsoever on the specific issues raised in my appeal.
For instance, p.2 para.5 of the IPCC’s response states: “The CRIMINT report says that the officer who received your call felt that you were suffering from delusions”; and this casual assumption is somehow used to support the conclusion in the following sentence: “The [Investigating Officer] is correct to state that on the balance of probabilities there was no evidence to indicate that a crime had been committed”. In the context of so serious an allegation as I had made to police, it was not reasonable for the police or the IPCC to make a judgement ‘on the balance of probabilities’, based upon a lay assumption about my mental health, especially when I had given the police evidence, on 28/12/2010, which contradicted this assumption (re: p.3 para.4 of my letter of appeal to the IPCC). It also ignores the fact that in refusing to accept a statement from me regarding my allegations, the police had themselves resisted the collection of relevant evidence.
The IPCC had the opportunity to review all of the evidence presented on these pages at that time, which might have illuminated the shortcomings in the police’s handling of my allegations. However, what the IPCC have produced is a complete ‘whitewash’ of my complaint and my appeal, in line with an apparent imperative of finding no fault on behalf of the police. The IPCC’s response is totally inadequate, and might be taken to be exemplary of the general failure of the IPCC to provide any effective regulation against the actions (or the inactions) of the police where the complaint has not been referred to the IPCC for investigation by the discretion of the local police force.
I understand that this failure arose from an implicit ambiguity in the role held by the IPCC (itself now superseded by the IOPC). A common misunderstanding was that the IPCC ‘handled’ complaints against the police. The reality of this was that the IPCC acted only as routing agent for complaints in the first instance, and forwarded all complaints upon receipt to the local police Directorates of Professional Standards, which are internal police departments, and did not generally investigate complaints, unless the DPS considered the complaint serious enough to refer it to the IPCC for investigation. Most complaints were investigated by the DPS locally, who would then decide upon the outcome. If a complainant were dissatisfied with the outcome of a complaint he or she could appeal to the IPCC, in which cases the IPCC was required only to review the procedure of the DPS in the handling of the complaint (the IPCC FAQ stated: “The role of the IPCC within the appeals process is not to re-investigate the complaint”). The DPS needed only to respond to the IPCC’s request for information with a veneer of procedural correctness in order to effectively smother the substance of any complaint, with no realistic prospect and no obligation on the part of the IPCC to look any further. The appearance of procedural correctness is no guarantee that a complaint is adequately investigated, as is shown in my own case, and as the IPCC’s decision was final and unappealable, there was no option whatsoever under this system for an independent re-investigation of any complaint.
Moved by my frustration with the IPCC over its treatment of my appeal, I sent the following letter to both the Metropolitan and Staffordshire Police forces (with reference to my major allegations regarding events in 1967-68):
Letter to Metropolitan & Staffordshire Police forces – 07/01/2012 [pdf – 68KB]
I received the following (equally frustrating) reply from the Major Investigations Dept. of the Staffordshire Police nearly two months later (I have received no reply at all from the Metropolitan Police):
Response from the Staffordshire Police – 02/03/2012 [pdf – 241KB]
In his letter, DI Pattinson states: “..having carefully examined the detailed information I have also come to the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence that would warrant the initiation of an investigation by Staffordshire Police.” He does not refer specifically to the key prima facie evidence – that of the MRI images – or state that he has sought the opinion of any specialist medical expert in forming this conclusion, and we must assume that he hasn’t, or surely he would have mentioned it. So, are we to infer that clear and distinct visual evidence (at the very least, strongly suggestive visual evidence – combined with the historical and circumstantial evidence revealed in Part 1 of my report) of an illicit surgical implantation, is not sufficient in the eyes of the police to warrant further investigation? One wonders what kind of evidence would be required to motivate their suspicion. Considering the rather exceptional nature of what is revealed by the MRI evidence, and the seriousness of its implications, are there not grounds for reasoning that to rely on the explicit voluntary corroboration of any individual medical expert, in the first instance, would be rather less than a proportionate response to the evidence, and would only act as an impedance to the furtherance of justice?
At the end of June 2012 I made a subject access request to the MetPolice Public Access Office to obtain copies of the information held by the police in relation to the reports I had made to them in December 2010, regarding the allegations that my family had conspired to send two men to my flat to harm me. This included a request for copies of the evidence I had submitted to police on 28/12/2010 (specifically, copies of two email exchanges between my sister and myself, occurring between the 12th and 28th of December 2010; plus a copy of an official letter from my social worker at the START Team attesting to my mental health). This evidence should have given grounds for the police to revise their initial assumption that my allegations against members of my family were delusional.
I did not receive the information from the Public Access Office until 22/11/2012; i.e., more than three months beyond the 40-day deadline prescribed by the Data Protection Act. This resulted in a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which included the complaint that the information received from the Public Access Office was incomplete, as it did not include copies of the evidence I submitted to police on 28/12/2010. The information I received included the police incident log from the 12/12/2010 (the day the police had visited my flat in response to my allegation over my family), and CRIMINT reports from 12th & 28th December. Not only had the police refused to take the evidence of a formal statement from me, but from these reports it was clear that they had misrepresented the facts I conveyed to them on the 12/12/2010, and completely ignored the additional evidence I presented to them on 28/12/2010, which it appears has been mislaid or discarded. In conclusion, I decided to submit the following further complaint to the MetPolice Directorate of Professional Standards, on 17/12/2012 (by way of the IPCC routing address):
2nd Complaint to MetPolice Directorate of Professional Standards – 17/12/2012 [pdf – 88KB]
In response to this, I received a letter from the MetPolice DPS dated 15/01/2013, advising me that the DPS would apply to the IPCC to have the complaint ‘disapplied’, on the grounds that it was a) out of time; and b) repetitious:
Reply from DPS – 15/01/2013 [pdf – 100KB]
I replied to this with the following letter with reasons why the complaint should not be disapplied on either of thosse grounds:
Letter to DPS – 20/01/2013 [pdf – 50KB]
The response from the DPS was a decision to disapply the complaint anyway, on the grounds previously stated, without giving any indication at all of having respectfully considered the arguments I had raised against this. Surprisingly, the decision letter makes no reference to any recommendations or decision from the IPCC on the proposed application, and the decision to disapply the complaint has been made entirely internally. Following an enquiry with the IPCC itself, I was informed that, since a change in the law on 22/11/2012, the DPS needed no longer to refer applications to disapply complaints to the IPCC, but was indeed able to make those decisions internally. In stating that he intended to apply to the IPCC to disapply the complaint, PS Marshall’s initial letter was therefore procedurally incorrect and misleading, yet he offered no explanation for this anomaly in his decision letter:
DPS Decision – 12/02/2013 [pdf – 33KB]
The decision letter was remarkably concise and devoid of any actual reasoning of why the grounds for disapplication should still apply in this particular case, considering the arguments I had raised against those grounds in my letter of 20/01/2013. PS Marshall stated obliquely that he ‘had seen’ my letter, but made no other reference to its content whatsoever. The decision letter was a blank restatement of the grounds as initially stated in the first letter, in a response which can only be interpreted as both autocratic and impervious to reason.
In response to this decision, I submitted the following appeal to the DPS Appeals Unit, on 06/03/2013:
DPS Appeal – 06/03/2013 [pdf – 46KB]
I received the following response from the Appeals Unit, dated 08/04/2013:
DPS Appeals Unit Decision – 08/04/2013 [pdf – 122KB]
The decision of the Appeals Unit was to uphold my appeal in relation to the four fresh grounds of complaint, which were summarised in my appeal as follows:
- That the content of the police CRIMINT reports and incident log misrepresent, both by omission and distortion, what was actually discussed between the two officers and myself on 12/12/2010, during their visit to my flat.
- That the officers had relied upon a casual (as well as ill-informed) assumption that my claims were delusional in nature, and then used this assumption as justification for ignoring the factual content of my allegations against members of my family.
- That due diligence was not shown by the officers in referring either to Scotland Yard regarding that office’s earlier investigation of my sister in 2003-4; or to my social worker at the START Team for clarification over my mental health.
- That no attention was paid to evidence I handed to the officers at Kennington Police Station on 28/12/2010, which is indicated by the failure of the Public Access Office to provide copies of this evidence in response to my subject access request.
However, although Sgt. Cochran recognised (in p.2 para.6 of his decision letter) these four grounds as separate points justifying the recording of a new complaint, in his subsequent sentence he defined the complaint as: “a new complaint about the content of the [CRIMINT] reports” (only), in effect collapsing the substance of the four separate points into that of point 1 alone.
It seems that the concession of recording a fresh complaint is one that Sgt. Cochran felt begrudged to make, as the remainder of paragraph 6 went on to forewarn of the likely ‘inhibited’ nature (“given the time frame concerned”) of any ensuing investigation (“should one occur”), in a manner which is difficult not to see as prejudging the outcome of any eventual investigation. It is also difficult to see how he could justify such a warning without undermining the substance of his own decision to uphold my appeal against the complaint being ‘out of time’, with consideration to my arguments that all of the delays contributing to the extended time frame were exclusively the result of delays or failures in the provision of MPS services. The letter went on to advise that the complaint would be forwarded to the Lambeth section of the MPS Professional Standards Unit (‘PSU’) for local resolution or investigation, and who should: “only address the 4 new points that you have raised”.
Following an investigation lasting 23 weeks, I received the following outcome to my complaint from the Lambeth PSU, in September 2013:
Lambeth PSU Outcome – 16/09/2013 [pdf – 372KB]
The PSU had delegated the complaint investigation to a police sergeant at Streatham Police Station – an officer not dedicated to the investigation of complaints, but whose role as investigator was additional to his normal operational role as a police sergeant, and who was, essentially, a close colleague of the two police officers under investigation. In view of his report, I suggest that PS Scott’s generally lax approach to the investigation was encouraged by the rather glib representation of the complaint made in Sgt. Cochran’s decision letter, which had effectively approved the use of inhibition as a method of eliding the substance of the complaint. The latter’s directive that the PSU “should only address the 4 new points that you have raised” also provoked an ambiguity, as it appears that PS Scott then interpreted this strictly to imply that he should consider only the summary of the grounds (above) given in my letter of appeal to the DPS of 06/03/2013, in isolation from the original letter of complaint. Hence PS Scott’s investigation report managed to elide any reference to the key item of evidence (the letter from my social worker Jane Hughes) presented to police at Kennington on 28/12/2010, as this item is not specifically referenced in the summary, while reference to it is unavoidable in any reading of the original complaint letter itself.
Furthermore, his investigation has missed key points of enquiry, and was conducted in the absence of any constructive interrogation of the two officers regarding the substantial elements of my complaint; but with a general acquiescence towards their unwillingness to recollect details of the events in question from December 2010. PS Scott unfairly excused the officers’ selective amnesia over these events on the basis of the gap in time between the events and the complaint investigation (considering the delay was the result of a succession of MPS failures). Having elided much of the substance of my complaint, PS Scott’s decision was, unsurprisingly, not to uphold the complaint against the two officers. Therefore, I saw the necessity of a making a second appeal to the IPCC:
2nd Appeal to the IPCC – 10/10/2013 [pdf – 71KB]
In their letter of acknowledgement of my appeal dated 14/10/2013, the IPCC advised me that it may take “up to 36 weeks” to allocate my appeal to a Casework Manager. This compared to a period of 4-5 weeks mentioned in their acknowledgement of my appeal against the outcome of my earlier complaint in October 2011. This would be to add a further nine-month delay to what was already (in October 2013) a two-year delay in the investigation of my complaints over events in December 2010 – this accumulated delay incurred principally due to failures in Metropolitan Police services (as explained in my letter and appeal to the DPS against their ‘disapplication’ of the 2nd complaint, above).
IPCC Appeal Decision – 05/06/2014 [pdf – 193KB]
The IPCC’s Appeal decision was eventually received dated 05/06/2014. The review considered five points in relation to the complaint. Its response to the first of these – on the key question of whether the findings of the MPS investigation need to be reconsidered – has determined its response to the three subsequent points (whether there was a case of misconduct to answer; over the adequacy of the proposed actions of the MPS; and over the necessity of a referral to the CPS). The IPCC’s decision on this first point was not to uphold the appeal, having found that the findings of the police investigation were an appropriate/proportionate response to the complaint.
On the fifth point, over the question of the adequacy of information provided following the complaint investigation, the decision of the IPCC is to uphold the appeal, although its reasoning on this point (as well as that on the first and key point mentioned above) was rather obscure. Although it upheld the appeal on the question of the adequacy of information provided in relation to the complaint investigation, it did not recommended that any further action was required on behalf of the MPS, having already decided on the adequacy of those actions in respect of point 3.
The IPCC’s response in respect of point 5 (p. 4) was to state:
“The[Investigating Officer]’s report dated 16 September 2013 provides adequate information about the complaint investigation, but could have been clearer about the inclusion of the matters raised in your letter of 17 December 2012 in conjunction with your appeal documentation. Whilst the heart of your complaints have clearly been addressed this could have been communicated better.”
The effect of this statement is to interpret the clear inadequacies of the complaint investigation detailed in my letter of appeal to the IPCC – its failure to follow key points of enquiry by ignoring the text of my original complaint letter – merely as a lack of clarity in information provided, thereby granting a weak concession over the adequacy of information provided, in order to avoid a stronger concession over the glaring inadequacies of the investigation, which would have necessitated the IPCC directing the MPS to reinvestigate the complaint.
With regard to the first and key point, over the adequacy of the MPS investigation, my letter of appeal had listed 3 grounds:
- That the investigation of my complaint has considered only the succinct grounds of the complaint, as stated in my subsequent letter of appeal to the DPS against its motion to disapply the complaint on 06/03/2013, in abstraction from the substance of the original letter of complaint.
- The investigation unfairly excuses the general ‘lack of definitive recollection’ on behalf the officers involved, based on the length of time between events in December 2010 and the complaint investigation.
- The investigation is incomplete with regard to the events at Kennington Police Station on 28/12/2010.
In relation to the first ground, I understand that this failure resulted from PS Scott’s response to the directives provided by the DPS in referring the complaint back to the Lambeth Borough for investigation. It is clear from section A.1 of PS Scott’s investigation report that he understood the complaint to be a repetition of the earlier complaint made in September 2011; in spite of the fact that the DPS had upheld my appeal against disapplication on the ground that the complaint was ‘repetitious’, on 08/04/2013. As detailed previously, Sgt Cochran’s directive to the PSU was that the new investigation should consider only the four grounds (as listed above) which had been summarised in my letter of appeal to the DPS of 06/03/2013. The correct interpretation of this directive was that a reading of the original letter of the second complaint (of 17/12/2012) in terms of the grounds as summarised would permit a clear distinction to be drawn between between the first and second complaints, so that the new complaint would not then appear as repetitious. It seems then that PS Scott missed the objective here, as it is clear he still considered the new complaint to be a repetition of the earlier complaint, and has interpreted the directive glibly to imply that he should consider only the text of the succinct grounds set out in their summarised form, in isolation from the text of the original complaint; and as a way of eliding the substance of those grounds detailed in the original complaint letter. In reading his report of the investigation, this certainly seems to have been the effect of the directive from the DPS, as the report nowhere mentions the detailed substance of those grounds; i.e., with respect to the key points of enquiry regarding the issues from 28/12/2010 of the refusal by the officers involved to acknowledge the evidence I presented to them at Kennington Police Station on that date. I suggest this misinterpretation of the directive from the DPS amounted to a procedural error in the MPS investigation, but which was not addressed in the IPCC’s response. The IPCC touched upon this issue in p.2 para.8 of their response, where they acknowledged that the MPS had not referred to my complaint letter when addressing the investigation points; but the Casework Manager then mysteriously overrides this objection with the vacuous statement that: “I am confident that the relevant areas are covered and that the heart of your complaint has been addressed”.
In relation to the second ground listed above, the IPCC’s response generally excused the lack of thoroughness in the MPS investigation based on the gap in time between events in December 2010 and the date of the complaint. The IPCC does not appear to have considered my arguments against this tactic expressed in my letter of appeal. Aside from the fact that it is not really credible that the two officers involved should have no recollection at all of the salient details of events – particularly with respect to the issue of their refusal to take a statement, and the evidence of the letter from my social worker submitted on 28/12/2010 – I had made it reasonably clear on pages 2-3 of my letter to the DPS of 20/01/2013 that the combined delay in bringing the complaint was the result of a series of failures in MPS services (see also p.1 paras.2-3 of my appeal to the IPCC). The refusal to acknowledge these arguments by the IPCC implies therefore that the MPS need only deliberately ‘drag its feet’ at each stage in the progress of a complaint to effectively scupper the chances of a complaint’s success.
In relation to the third ground listed above, my letter of appeal stresses that the investigation cannot reasonably be considered as complete in the absence of the testimony of SPCSO Cornelius (the desk officer responsible for photocopying the evidence I gave to the police on 28/12/2010, as well as the writing of the second CRIMINT report). Officer Cornelius would certainly be able to corroborate my submission of the letter from my social worker Jane Hughes, and the fact that PC Phipps had also seen and read that letter (my copy of that letter should contain both officers’ fingerprints). I tried to stress all along the centrality of this item of evidence to the substance of my complaint, as it ought to have undermined the officers’ overriding assumption that my allegations against my family were ‘delusional’.
References to this item were a key feature in all of my representations to the MPS and the IPCC; yet the item is significant in its absence both from the MPS investigation report, and from the IPCC’s response to my appeal against that investigation. This item of evidence appears to have been systematically suppressed by both organisations. PS Scott’s investigation report stated (section B.4) that SPCSO Cornelius is no longer working in the Lambeth Borough and that he has not responded to PS Scott’s email contact with him during the investigation. Despite the fact that p.3 para.3 of the IPCC’s response stated that no clear evidence of attempts to contact SPCSO Cornelius had been submitted in the background papers (itself an error in procedure), the Casework Manager concluded that: “it would not be sensible to send this case back to be re-investigated purely to obtain this account, which will not materially affect the findings”. As the letter from my social worker is material evidence that has so far been disavowed by both the MPS and the IPCC, it cannot be reasonably asserted that SPCSO Cornelius’ account will not affect the findings.
In not recommending that any further action over my complaint was required on behalf of the MPS, the IPCC’s response relied upon a repeated assertion of its confidence that “the heart of your complaint has been addressed”. If there was such a ‘heart’ to my complaint, it was that the two officers I spoke to on 12 & 28 December 2010 had wilfully ignored evidence I tried to present to them that contradicted their initial assumption that my allegations against members of my family were ‘delusional’. The key item of this evidence was the letter from social worker Jane Hughes attesting to my mental health, dated 23/09/2010. It cannot be merely a matter of oversight or accident that the IPCC’s investigation has patently disregarded the repeated references to this item made in all of my correspondence over the complaint, just as the PSU’s investigation before it had done.
September 2018