2 November (Part 1) - Patience evaporates
The dearth of interesting stories continues and until next week’s council meetings that doesn’t seem likely to change. Those who have followed the Peter Craske/Obscene blog situation may care to read the following but perhaps for some the tale of police incompetence gets to be monotonous, in which case they will know not to read further.
I
shall cease the pretence that the person arrested for the obscene blog might not
be councillor Peter Craske. That person was arrested on the same day as Peter
Craske (see News Shopper reports) and discharged from bail on the same day as
Peter Craske (News Shopper again). It was Peter Craske who tripled the price of
residents’ parking permits and had his arithmetic torn apart by Nicholas
Dowling. It was Nicholas and I who went into the Cinema Car Park, were spotted
on CCTV, identified and subsequently libelled and it was Peter Craske who was in
charge of CCTV and parking operations.
It was Peter Craske who was questioned by Elwyn Bryant about the £4m. contract placed
with Parsons Brinckerhoff and it was Elwyn who publicly argued with Craske after
he
told lies about it at a council meeting. It was me who reported all those
anti-Craske stories here and it was all three of us who
featured heavily in Bexley council’s obscene blog. Finally the icing on the cake was tracing recent
obscenities to Parsons Brinckerhoff with whom approximately £4m. changed hands. Maybe it isn’t enough to convince a court
of who was behind the crime but it surely does look suspicious. That
Brinckerhoff trace took
fewer than 48 hours, the police take months to, possibly not, do the same thing.
When the police said they had released their suspect from police bail the words they
used were “The option to 'not proceed' is used by police where
persons have been on police bail for some time and the restriction placed upon
that person by being on police bail is no longer required. I need to be clear
that this does not mean that the person concerned is no longer under suspicion”
I called Mick Barnbrook who has been an Inspector at Bexleyheath police to ask if he
could explain further. He said that in all his 31 years of service he had never
come across it before but he would make enquiries of various retired colleagues.
None had ever heard of such a thing and some offered theories. Among them that the
case is being left in limbo because it gets a councillor off the hook while
disallowing FOIs and the like because it is still officially a live case.
Another is that the police cannot bring anyone to justice because to do so would
show the previous investigatory team, against whom there is
an outstanding
complaint with the Directorate of Professional Standards, to be incompetent or
dishonest when they declared
all leads exhausted
on 23rd August 2011.
While the police refuse, in contravention of their own guidelines on hate crime,
to tell the victims anything of note, speculation will flourish.
It is 12 days since the investigating Detective Inspector said “I have asked DS
P*** M********* to make contact with you to obtain the full transcript of the
e-mails to which you refer and establish whether any offences have been
committed or whether indeed they impact upon any current investigation. He will
make contact over the next few days” and no such call has been received. (My
phone logs all calls whether answered or not.) On the same day I voiced my
dissatisfaction (extract below) with the way the DI had handled the case.
The previous Borough Commander Stringer assured me and my MP in February 2012
that I would be updated monthly on that related matter. The last time any
information was volunteered by the police was in June. When pressed in early
September DS M********* refused to tell me anything in terms that would almost
certainly fall foul of the Metropolitan Police's guidance notes on how to deal
with victims of hate crime.
This month I have heard nothing and what little information I have has come via
my MP and Mr. Elwyn Bryant.
Elwyn has received a message this afternoon addressed to both him and me at the
same address. He has passed a copy to me.
Just because the perpetrator of Bexley council's obscene blog wrote that Elwyn
and I are a homosexual couple does not mean it is true and that we live under
the same roof. The police assumed that was so in June 2011 but I had hoped that
you may have got a grip of the facts by now.
I am appalled that after 17 months of investigation you have so little
understanding of the real situation.
In another indication of police incompetence Mr. xxxxxx advised me that he was
concerned that Bexley police continued to believe I write under the pseudonym Olly
Cromwell. CI Gowen made that mistake with the result that my identity was
published in newspapers nationally, he was fortunate that I did not include his
name in my formal complaint to the DPS, but he apologised. I had hoped that CI
Gowen's recognition of Bexley police's failure would ensure it was not repeated.
Do I have to get the IPCC to find against you again? Do you think any part of
this email shows you to be performing in a professional manner? All I see is constant incompetence.
I
believe the time has come to make an official complaint against Chief Superintendent Victor Olisa and his team
for failing to provide even the tiniest clue as to what is going on and for disregarding their own
guidance notes. When CS Stringer was in charge he hinted at just enough to keep
Elwyn and I satisfied and made a request that I did not jeopardise his enquiries
by talking about the case here. The blog revealed nothing new for four months because
of that. The current team has made no similar request since Craske’s arrest and is proving even less helpful.
Their failures are very considerable in number and I suspect it
will be a week before they can be assembled into a readable complaint document.
Because I have been waiting for the police to contact me about the offensive
emails received 16 days ago a separate crime report will be submitted almost
immediately. I am convinced that CS Victor Olisa and his team have been persuaded to
cover up a crime and if I am wrong they have only themselves to blame through keeping the victims less well informed than the local newspaper.