5 April (Part 3) - The one thousand four hundred days wait
Tomorrow
it will be 1,400 days since Elwyn Bryant and I made a formal complaint about the
then borough police commander’s failure to take any action against the
perpetrator of what was referred to at the time as
Bexley Council’s obscene blog.
And since then not a lot of progress has been made.
We made the complaint to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard
Hogan-Howe exactly a year after
the infamous blog was
accepted as a crime by Bexley police. They took just over two months to tell us
that there was
no chance of tracing the culprit.
That first complaint was thrown out by the Met’s Directorate of Professional
Standards (DPS) who told us that no police officer had done anything wrong. By
then more than enough had come to light for Elwyn and I to be pretty sure that wasn’t true and
where the DPS report strayed into the IT arena it was simply nonsense.
The case was referred to the Independent Police Complaints Department (IPCC) who sat on
it for rather a long time. By the time they came back with confirmation
that they too thought the Met’s response was inadequate, Elwyn and I had come to
the conclusion that it wasn’t incompetence that led to the failure of the crime
investigation, it was corruption.
One of Bexley’s police officers actually said as much to us.
“The case has been crippled by political interference.”
Elwyn and I made a formal allegation of Misconduct in Public Office against two borough commanders.
We knew for certain that something like eight months had gone by between the
police belatedly tracing the source of the blog and arresting the suspect,
Cabinet Member for Closing Parks, Peter Craske. Plenty of time to lose the
evidence if there was any. We also knew, because we had
a
copy of the relevant document, that Bexley Police, Bexley Council and the Crown
Prosecution Service had all got together to devise a method by which “Councillor
Craske’s situation could be resolved”.
Since sending that allegation to the IPCC in December 2013 (they forwarded it to the
Met) I have received 19 letters from the Met Police
apologising for them not having found the time to progress their investigation.
It took six months before they would agree that it might be a good idea to get the file from Bexley.
A few months ago the Met made
an issue in the press of their success in getting
complaint answering down to under twelve months which looked like an excuse for me to chase them up again.
My MP, Teresa Pearce, has always been very supportive, twice accompanying me to
meetings at Bexleyheath Police Station. Elwyn has had nothing but carefully
chosen words from his MP, James Brokenshire. No practical help at all.
On hearing of the protracted delay, Teresa agreed to my request to refer the unresolved complaint
about the five year old crime to the Home Secretary if the DPS could not
demonstrate some progress. I wrote to Hogan-Howe
requesting an update.
An Assistant Commissioner got back to me quite quickly to say the case had been
concluded by the investigating officer but was found lacking by a senior
officer. Is that just another delaying tactic?
Elwyn and I are now being asked what our complaint is so that it can be
reviewed. Maybe I read to much into those words, but I thought we had made that
pretty clear at the outset.
It is no doubt a complex case which is why Elwyn and I twice offered to explain
it in person in 2014. We were ignored. Now, suddenly. a meeting is a good idea.
The date isn’t fixed yet and Teresa Pearce has agreed to keep me company again. Elwyn’s MP
has told him that to offer such assistance is “inappropriate”.
How is it that the Bexley officer who took over the case at the end of the
active enquiry can come clean and say they were got at by politicians but more
than three years later the DPS appears not to have seen the same evidence?
Elwyn thinks they are waiting for us to die off. He may be right.