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News and Comment November 2015

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28 November - Know thy enemy

With daily visitor numbers continuing to run at twice the average for this year, most visitors being new to BiB, it may be appropriate to cover a bit of history today. Usually the blog is wound down at the end of the month and at weekends when reader interests wanes, but today may be different.

At the top of this page there is currently an ‘advertisement’ laid over a picture of Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Today it says that he has been sitting on a complaint sent to him in 2012 for 1,270 days and it is still unanswered. Well let’s be absolutely accurate, it was answered after six months but it was a load of old nonsense. The Independent Police Complaints Commission agreed and told him to try again.


CraskeThe complaint was that after someone posted a blog in my name, www.malcolmknight.blogspot.com, that was homophobic obscenities from beginning to end, the then Borough Commander at Bexley, Chief Superintendent Dave Stringer, told me he couldn’t investigate who might have written it. His excuse was that the blog was removed soon after it was mentioned here and so there was no evidence. Apparently Google did not keep a record of who posts blogs to its servers.

Incidentally, the writer’s claim that Bexley council’s computers had been subject to a “vigorous audit” was later confirmed to be total fiction.

However the truth was even stranger. One of Stringer’s officers had persevered and traced the source of the blog but nothing was done with the information until a new Borough Commander came on the scene.

CS Stringer’s decision to derail the initial investigation looked to be yet another attempt to protect a corrupt council but his successor had no idea of the tradition. CS Victor Olisa arrested councillor Peter Craske and impounded his computer provoking panic in the Civic Offices.

Unfortunately at least six and most likely eight months had elapsed since Peter Craske was first identified as the likely culprit. Even before that identification the police and Bexley council had been meeting to discuss the crime. At one of them the possibility of arresting me on some pretext was discussed.

If Peter Craske was guilty and became aware of the first meeting he would have had more than ten months in which to lose the evidence.

When asked why there was an eight month delay from the successful web trace to the arrest, CS Olisa’s reply was less than convincing. He said that the time had been spent on eliminating me from police enquiries. He claimed I might have hacked into Craske’s wi-fi to set him up.

It was an obvious lie. In none the correspondence had there been any such indication, nor was I interviewed. In any case such an investigation should not have taken eight months. The truth was more likely that Olisa had been given certain instructions. Teresa O’Neill is great mates with Boris Johnson (Officially Boris Endorsed), and Johnson is the head of the police in London.

It is known Bexley police and the council’s chief executive got in a huddle with the Crown Prosecution to decide how they would go about dropping the case against Peter Craske. “Resolving the ongoing situation” as they put it.

So Victor Olisa, who was probably not a fundamentally bent police officer, found himself included in the complaint to Hogan-Howe for protecting a colleague.

The complaint is probably difficult to dismiss but the police officers charged with investigating their colleagues have been doing their best. Delay seems to be the name of the game. It was 18 months before the complaints officer even sent for the case file and since then all they are known to have done is send out excuse letters.

This week the current investigating officer, there have been two, sent out the twelfth such letter, thirteen if I count the one that came from the Assistant Commissioner who said her right hand man would phone me to explain the delay. He never did.

So maybe the new readers battling Peter Craske’s plan to sell Old Farm Park will have an even better idea of who and what they are up against. These people are really all powerful. They can do what they like and always get away with it.
Police
A comprehensive summary of the events leading to the arrest of councillor Peter Craske is available.

 

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