24 November (Part 2) - Political interference is admitted, but from where? Elwyn thinks he knows
Elwyn Bryant has looked at the DPS report into the Craske cover up from a
different angle and I think he may have a point.
He reminds me that the investigating officer was hugely enthusiastic about his
look at Bexley police and said his colleagues referred to his ‘Bexley Day’ which
would occupy him once or twice a week for what turned out to be nearly 18 months.
That officer told us of his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how
he was unable to let go of such an interesting case and it kept him awake at night
wondering what he would uncover next.
He told us how the final stage would go, the interviews under caution, the
disciplinary hearings and the possible punishments and promised Elwyn “I will
get you a result”. Now we learn that he didn’t have a case at all. He concludes
that no police officer did anything wrong at all.
OCD or not you don’t spend 18 months on a case which you believe is going nowhere.
Both Elwyn and I think he was got at as every police officer investigating Bexley Council is got at.
There are so many incidences of mistakes and cockups and failures to take the obvious next step
catalogued in the DPS report that Elwyn thinks it must have been written with a different outcome in mind but
there was an order to change that outcome after the first draft was written. Some
parts may well have been edited out but Elwyn thinks that what is left is a coded message by the
report’s author that things should have been very different.
Elwyn has always been very perceptive with this case. He said Craske had written
the blog as soon as he read it in June 2011. He also believes CS Olisa tried to do the honest
thing but was dragged back by Teresa O’Neill’s biggest ally. The man who was
Mayor at the time and the ultimate head of the police in London.
When I put that theory to Victor Olisa he became extremely agitated (the DPS
reports he denies it but it also states that Teresa Pearce MP confirmed it) which
may suggest that the Mayoral comment was too close to the truth for comfort.
If the DP investigator uncovered the truth of that you can see why he might
have been told to drop the case like a hot potato. We can’t
have the Foreign Secretary brought down for interfering in a police
investigation to protect Teflon Tess can we?
Elwyn reminded me that the reason I did not immediately go along with his ‘Craske
did it’ theory was that I was distracted by a series of anonymous emails from
someone who clearly knew rather a lot about Councillors and who provided all sorts
of circumstantial evidence that Councillor James Hunt had authored the obscene blog.
James was most definitely innocent, he is one of Bexley’s few good guys, but at
the time the arguments being put forward condemning him were quite persuasive.
Who would have known James intimately and might want to shift attention to him? Somebody absolutely ruthless with the
sort of manipulative skills that might find a place in No. 10 perhaps.
Let me say it again. Councillor James Hunt was and remains entirely innocent and
the victim of an unscrupulous smear campaign. The sort of campaign you might expect of
a practised spin doctor. And who might that be?