12 January (Part 2) - Police corruption
If
this face looks familiar to you it is because it has appeared in some of today’s newspapers and
last night’s Evening Standard.
The man’s name is Dave Cook and he used to be a Chief Superintendent in the Met. He now
works for the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Yesterday he was arrested.
As long term readers will know, if he had not been murdered in 1987, Daniel
Morgan, the private investigator killed with an axe to his head, would have been
closely related to me. It has been said many times that he was about to reveal
extreme corruption at Catford nick. Catford CID made a complete hash of the investigation
and the man in charge of it stepped into the dead man’s shoes by taking over his company,
Southern Investigations. Southern Investigations have been at the centre of the
News of the World phone hacking scandal. The murder is
rated as the most notorious of the Met’s unsolved crimes and the Acting
Commissioner (just before Bernard Hogan-Howe’s
appointment) said “that corruption had played a significant part in failing to
bring those responsible to justice”. He was not wrong.
All the Met. Commissioners before Paul Condon had played their roles in the
cover up. Paul Condon admitted the corruption in general terms but did nothing about
it and it wasn’t until GLA member Len Duvall took an interest and Dave Cook was
appointed as investigator that the police did anything useful at all. CS Cook
was the first policeman to be honest with Daniel’s family, he was the only one
they felt could be trusted. Along the way he must have seen for himself how much
corruption at the very highest level had gone before. Because of his knowledge those who we now
know were involved in phone hacking were concerned that their involvement in murder
might be discovered. So they hacked and tailed Cook. When Cook challenged the News of the
World editor Rebekah Brooks she said that they were going to break a story about his
affair with then Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames. It was a very lame excuse
for shadowing CS Cook; Jacqui Hames was his wife.
Although Cook’s investigation of the Daniel Morgan axe murder ultimately failed
he was by then a very dangerous man. He knows far too much about bent
ex-Commissioners. He says the corruption levels in the
Met are still “obscene”. With the distinct possibility that he will spill a whole
load of beans when he is called before the Leveson Enquiry, he has to be silenced
or at least discredited. From what I can gather from my daughter (a journalist who
obviously watches the case closely) and Alastair’s brother, CS Dave Cook may have
sailed close to the wind on occasions in gathering evidence to solve a murder but
they are adamant he is the only totally honest policeman they have encountered in
25 years. In the words of Alastair Morgan, the victim’s brother who was called to
the IPCC yesterday because of Cook’s arrest and is with the 'phone hacking' MP
Tom Watson this afternoon, Dave Cook is being “stitched up” to protect the guilty.
Those of you who keep tabs on developments between me and Bexleyheath police by email
will know that I am expecting to meet local policemen soon. As I see it, what goes on
between them, Will Tuckley and Bexley council is a microcosm of the axe murder. I hope
to meet a ‘Dave Cook’ in Bexleyheath nick, but I fear that they will want to
protect their friends just as Met. Commissioners did years ago when trying to
protect murderous policemen. I shall take a great deal of persuading that
history is not about to repeat itself.