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News and Comment July 2014

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15 July (Part 2) - Police dragging their big flat feet

It’s a long time since I mentioned the Peter Craske affair. For newcomers, some obscenities were posted on the web in my name in May 2011 and the content made it crystal clear that the culprit must be within Bexley council.

The police told me three months later that there was no hope of tracing the originator. Later on it was discovered that was a lie so in June 2012 Elwyn Bryant (fellow victim) and I complained that Bexley police under its then borough commander Dave Stringer had not taken the investigation seriously as part of their protect Bexley council at all costs policy.

After six months Sergeant Michelle Gower of the Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) ruled that no one at Bexley had done anything wrong. Her report was riddled with inconsistencies and nonsense so Elwyn and I passed the papers to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Nine months later they said they agreed with us and that the DPS’s investigation was unsatisfactory.

By that time the obscenities had been traced to councillor Peter Craske’s phone line and the police had admitted that their investigation had been crippled by political interference. Evidence of the truth of that statement emerged.

I wrote to the IPCC to give them the new information which they accepted but only as a new complaint. The two complaints by then in existence approximate to one against CS Stringer and another against his successor, CS Victor Olisa.

In January 2014 Teresa Pearce MP following a seven month tussle with the police, obtained some documents on my behalf that to my mind showed criminal activity by both borough commanders. I sent an allegation of crime to Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe shortly afterwards.

Since then a number of letters have been exchanged between myself and the DPS. Last month I became irritated by the number of questions and their possible motives for making things more complicated than necessary. I suggested that despite its size someone should read the original file, anything less would guarantee a further complaint to the IPCC.

I have just received this letter…
Letter
That’s all of it, just three lines.

Well perhaps not quite all for I received three identical letters, one with the 2012 reference number of the first complaint, another with the 2013 reference of the second complaint and a third bearing an entirely new 2014 reference number.

I don’t really know what that 2014 one is about. One might guess that it refers to my criminal allegation which was acknowledged by a Deputy Assistant Commissioner on 30th January but under a different number. I’ve heard no more under that reference number since February and was about to ask Hogan-Howe what he was playing at. I think I probably still should.

However what is really interesting is that 25 months after making the first complaint the police have finally decided that they ought to dig out the original file. As Elwyn said to me at this evening’s cabinet meeting, “I think they are dragging it out until we are all dead”.

Incidentally, too many commitments tomorrow probably preclude an early report on this evening’s cabinet meeting, not that you will be missing much.

 

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