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News and Comment November 2015

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17 November (Part 2) - Bexley police’s arrest records appear to be less than reliable

I almost laughed out loud for a moment when I read Anna Firth’s Tweet early this morning but soon realised that she was confining her comments to the current security situation and I was taking a much wider view.


TweetThere is no alternative but to hope that the police and security services are doing “a brilliant job” right now but unfortunately their top brass is comprised of men (if there are women too I have not yet encountered them) proven to be capable of extraordinary corruption.

Long term readers will probably guess that I am referring to Daniel Morgan who would have been my daughter’s brother-in-law had he not been brutally murdered in 1987. It is widely believed that he was on the brink of exposing the corruption among South East London’s police, Catford in particular, and they were very much behind the axe that was embedded in Daniel’s skull.

Home SecretaryTwenty eight and a half years later there have been five police investigations all of which have been subverted in one way or another. Right now there is a Hillsborough style inquiry going on authorised by Theresa May the Home Secretary.

Every previous Home Secretary, David Blunkett, Hazel Blears and Jack Straw in particular, didn’t want to know presumably fearing what an inquiry might reveal. Theresa May’s speech to the Police Federation last year (click image) indicates she has a pretty good idea of what has been going on.


ShreddedThe police had a go at subverting the current inquiry too but I’m not allowed to talk about that. Things seem to be running on a more even keel now. Perhaps the Met. is feeling relaxed after shredding so much paper.

Despite that, new information continues to come to light. The News of the World employed many of the people suspected of the axe murder. Most were recruited by Andy Coulson who went on to work in the Prime Minister’s office.

When the police commenced the fifth enquiry headed by a Detective Chief Superintendent who showed no sign of being corrupt, bent cops and crooked newspaper associates were worried. The two groups connived together to derail the new investigation. They kept the CS under surveillance and the newspaper reported his ‘affair’ with a BBC Crime Watch presenter. The presenter was his wife.

They were more successful with the accusation that the Detective CS had leaked information. Surrounded by corrupt officers intent on continuing the cover up and presumably very well aware of the Met’s inclination to use the shredder, he stored some documents on his home computer. The allegation forced an early retirement and a near four year investigation. The events recently became public knowledge. The Metropolitan Police is fundamentally corrupt. They attacked the only honest senior police officer the Morgan family had ever met.

Unfortunately corruption is not confined to Scotland Yard. The police in Bexley are not exactly squeaky clean either.

Maybe you remember the Bexley schoolboy, attacked in his school playground and all caught on CCTV. The case went nowhere once the police discovered that the attacker was part of the wider police family. The judge at Dartford County Court found Bexley police to be “wrong” and “inaccurate” with its investigation and the victim won his case against them. Despite the police promising sanctions against the guilty policemen, none was ever applied.

Being deliberately wrong and inaccurate is part of the armoury that Bexley police employs to fend off complaints against themselves and their friends. Who can forget that the former Bexley blogger known as Olly Cromwell was accused of encouraging the posting of dog faeces through a councillor’s letter box? The police and Bexley councillor Melvin Seymour put it all down in black and white while the actual evidence made no reference to dog faeces, a letterbox or any name or address. They just made that up to strengthen a weak case. It was thrown out on appeal but no lying police officer or councillor ever faced charges.


FantasyThe police indulged in another bout of fantasy after Michael Barnbrook and I exchanged jokey comments with two police officers in the council chamber two years ago. The pair was so concerned that we might be criminals that they neither asked our names, made any comment in their notebooks, nor entered any reference to the conversation in the official records when they got back to base in Arnsberg Way. I was so impressed by them that I reported how pleasant they were in the following day’s blog. An enquiry from the press to find out what had gone on was answered by the police with ‘nothing criminal’.

Yet a year later, when the the truth did not suit Bexley council, the two police officers were leaned upon to record that Michael and I - and others - refused to leave the council chamber when requested and had to be forcibly ejected. Every police officer is as capable of corruption as their seniors.

So what brought all this on? Well stuck for a blog before the next round of council meetings I thumbed through the papers relating to the lady who was arrested at Heathrow while on her way home to Bexleyheath.

She had been on holiday in Montana with her husband, sharing a ranch, him buying her presents. It was an attempt to forgive and forget his affair discovered two years earlier. It turned sour when a message came through from the girlfriend. A distraught wife returned home alone on 29th April 2013 where she found herself arrested. The girlfriend scorned had apparently taken revenge.

It couldn’t have been too difficult, the bit on the side was employed by Bexley police. One of several allegations was that the Bexleyheath lady had slashed her husband’s car tyres on 19th April 2013, six days before the couple flew to the USA. You might think that such an act would have put paid to the holiday, but it didn’t. That's because the husband made no complaint. It was all nonsense and you might guess who was responsible for it.

Further allegations; assault and theft - but not the tyre slashing which even Bexley plod knew was a non-starter - went to court. The judge threw everything out. There was no evidence and the wife does not have a stain on her character. The stolen property was eventually found at a Croydon address.

Naturally she was not best pleased by the turn of events and filed a formal complaint. It has rumbled around the IPCC and the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards - oh and MOPAC too - for two years and most of the complaints have gone the way police complaints nearly always do. They were thrown out by the police who stand in judgment of their colleagues; but not all of them.

I must be careful what I say here because one or more police officers may yet find themselves back in court, however there are definitely indications that the arrest at Heathrow which could easily have been made in Bexleyheath was a stunt to amuse named police officers and their employee, that is, the girlfriend.

One reason to think that is that like my non-existent ejection from the Civic Offices, no record was made of the arrest at the time.

Police records state that the arrest was made on the 6th May 2013, I have a copy of the relevant document. It rather looks as though someone belatedly realised that a formal complaint might require the existence of an arrest record and that someone remembered it took place on a Monday but wasn’t quite sure which one. They picked the wrong Monday for the retrospective report. (The arrest was a week earlier.)

It is so similar to the police’s false and much delayed report that Michael Barnbrook and I were ejected from the council chamber. Plugging evidential gaps with lies appears to be standard practice among Bexley’s police officers. Fortunately the date of the incoming flight and the date on the arrest papers are both inviolable. It will be interesting to see how bent cops manage to wriggle out of that one but they will try. Honesty is just not their thing.

 

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