Corrupt cops

[David Guyatt]

And yes, the Chief Constable was later sacked. It makes you weep doesn't it.

Such a punishment for corrupt practises. So good to see justice in semi-action.

Next time tickle the guilty with a feather please....

Musicals, flights, big sporting events: The junkets that led to a £4.6m police corruption' inquiry



Private-sector outsourcers treated senior Cleveland Police officials to lavish entertainment

PAUL PEACHEY

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Disgraced senior officials at Britain's most scandal-hit police force were provided with a series of lavish junkets by companies linked to a private sector executive involved in outsourcing deals worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Three firms with ties to managing consultant Rob Beattie supplied hospitality to Cleveland Police, including international rugby tickets and football executive boxes, according to newly released police documents. The season-long football boxes cost Mr Beattie's companies tens of thousands of pounds.
Having helped to secure a lucrative £870,000-a-year private sector deal for one firm to run custody operations at Cleveland, he left to become a consultant at another company which subsequently secured hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of work for the same force.
The lavish nature of the entertainment emerged in analysis of documents and hospitality records released through Operation Sacristy a £4.6m, three-and-a-half year corruption inquiry run by the head of the National Crime Agency, Keith Bristow. It led to the first sacking of a chief constable Sean Price, who was arrested and later dismissed for gross misconduct for 35 years.
In one example of the hospitality being arranged, Joe McCarthy, the former chief executive of the Cleveland Police Authority, wrote an email to Mr Beattie saying: "The [chief constable's] driver will drive us down it would be great if you could also get a ticket for him hope this is not taking the piss [5 tickets in all]!"
The inquiry saw ten people arrested. However, prosecutors last week concluded that the police had not uncovered "direct causal links" between the awarding of contracts and any "alleged rewards and inducements offered or received". The inquiry ended without anyone being charged with any criminality.
Sean Price was the first chief constable sacked in 35 years (PA)
Mr Beattie, 53, helped secure the contract for Reliance Secure Task Management signed one year after the company hosted senior police officers and officials at a Wales vs Scotland rugby match in Cardiff, according to newly released documents. The company already had contracts to build police stations in a major private finance project.
Reliance also later employed Mr McCarthy after he quit Cleveland Police with a £360,000 pay-off. Mr McCarthy left before the company before it was taken over in 2012. Detectives said that the company had not done anything illegal.
Senior police officials attended a Reliance-hosted event at an England-Wales international rugby match in 2007 that cost the taxpayer more than £3,650 in flights and hotel bills for the Cleveland contingent. Meetings with former players and a Welsh voice choir were promised as part of the event, according to an email sent by Mr Beattie, and was designed for a number of forces it did business with. "Such extensive hospitality from a potential or existing contractor is inappropriate," said detectives in a report released last week by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Labour demanded closer scrutiny of private-sector deals as forces face cuts to their budgets. Jack Dromey, the shadow policing minister, said: "Operation Sacristy has highlighted the need for proper national standards on police procurement and integrity.
"We have been pressing the Government to act on national procedures for procurement and collaboration and on an enhanced standards and investigative police standards authority for years and yet all we have seen is tinkering at the edges. It's time for the Government to act".
Reliance Secure Task Management now renamed as Tascor after being bought out by Capita for £20m is involved in deportation work and police custody roles for nine forces, according to its website. "While we cannot comment on the policies that applied before Capita's acquisition of Tascor in 2012, it is now subject to rigorous and audited Group-wide standards," said Capita in a statement. "Individual businesses hold registers in line with Capita's anti-corruption policy that requires them to record all expenditure on hospitality over £150 and such registers are available for inspection by regulatory bodies."
Mr Beattie, who was business development director at Reliance, left the company in March 2007, according to his LinkedIn profile.
That same month he joined the Enterprise Development Group, which secured six-figure deals for work carried out for Cleveland Police over three years, according to documents released last week. He is currently a director at the firm.
Sean Price and David McLuckie were provided tickets to a Six Nations match in 2007 (Getty)
He also worked on a deal that resulted in outsourcing firm Steria securing a £175m contract in 2010. Enterprise paid for a season ticket for six people at Middlesbrough Football Club for 2008/09 costing £11,400 plus VAT.
Mr Beattie was arrested during the inquiry but has been told that he will not face any charges. He denied any wrongdoing, said the executive boxes were not solely for police use and criticised the inquiry. "I worked up at Cleveland Police. As far as I'm aware did a very good job for them, helped them save tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of pounds, and changed the organisation.
"The fact that we had a box at Middlesbrough Football Club has no direct relevance to Cleveland Police in that respect except the number of times where they've registered that they've come along as guests and seen the football… it's not solely for, or specially for, the use of Cleveland Police."
Mr Price added that the investigation "ruined my life and my reputation, and it is now clear for all to see that it was completely unnecessary, disproportionate and unlawful. The on-going and misguided criminal investigation has been a complete waste of £5m of public money".
Abba gold: Some of the perks
Detectives working under the head of the National Crime Agency, Keith Bristow, highlighted lavish spending and lax controls for contract talks at Cleveland Police.
Their inquiry revealed that a former chief constable, Sean Price, travelled to Denver with David McLuckie, who was then the chairman of Cleveland Police Authority, for an awards ceremony with detectives commended for exposing a drugs network.
While the two detectives travelled in economy and their partners paid their own way Mr Price and Mr McLuckie went first class, the report said.
Corporate spending on credit cards amounted to more than £250,000 over five years, including nearly £58,000 spent by Mr Price.
Mr McLuckie gained tickets to Mamma Mia! in New York. Reliance Secure Task Management provided tickets to Mr McLuckie and Mr Price for the Champions League match between Liverpool and Chelsea in April 2008, and for the Six Nations match between England and Wales in 2007.
Mr McLuckie said: "The manner in which information has been presented by the Force is totally misleading.
"Neither I, nor others named in the report, had any chance to study its contents or respond to its claims, opinions and allegations."

[David Guyatt]

Did top cops cover their asses over "appalling" crookedness and corruption at the Met?

Spotlight falls on former Met Police bosses in investigation into 'mass-shredding' of internal corruption files



TOM HARPER

INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER

Monday 24 March 2014

Two former Scotland Yard Commissioners have been asked to explain their knowledge surrounding the destruction of a "lorry-load" of top-secret files that detailed appalling police corruption.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, has written to Lord Stevens and Lord Blair to ask whether they knew of the "mass-shredding" of Operation Othona, an unprecedented four-year investigation into criminality inside the Metropolitan Police.
The sensitive probe, undertaken during the 90s, found police officers trafficking illegal drugs, fabricating evidence, sharing reward payouts with informants, selling confidential police intelligence to criminals.
Earlier this month, an explosive review of how police corruption tainted the investigation of the Stephen Lawrence murder found the cache that had been painstakingly assembled over four years had been mysteriously shredded during a two-day operation in 2003.
At the time, Scotland Yard was led by then-Commissioner Lord Stevens and his deputy was Lord Blair, who was in charge of the Met's anti-corruption command.
The Home Affairs Select Committee is due to take evidence on police corruption from current Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe on Tuesday.
However, Mr Vaz has also written to the former police chiefs to see what light they can shed on the inexplicable destruction.
In a letter to Lord Stevens, the former Labour minister bluntly asks: "Who authorised the shredding of evidence in 2003?"
He later asks whether it was "routine" to destroy "such a vast amount of evidence" and questions what rank of officer would have had to sign-off on such a controversial task.
Former assistant commissioner Roy Clark, who lead anti-corruption at the time of Othona, told the Ellison Review into the Lawrence murder: "I'd be shocked if it doesn't exist. It was gold-dust stuff."
The officer, who retired in 2001, added that it was important the information was used to keep up the pressure on corrupt officers. He said: "How you can go to those lengths and spend all that money and it is not there, I am just amazed."

[David Guyatt]

Metropolitan police whistleblower 'forced to resign'

PC James Patrick, whose evidence forced Met to admit crime figures were unreliable, cited lack of trust as reason to quit

• Kevin Rawlinson
  
• The Guardian, Tuesday 25 March 2014
  

Metropolitan police commissoner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has admitted the force's crime statistics were likely to be unreliable. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The whistleblower who revealed inaccuracies in the Metropolitan policeservice (MPS)'s crime figures, prompting an investigation and the withdrawal of their gold standard status for statistics, said on Monday night he had resigned as a result of his treatment by senior officers.
PC James Patrick gave evidence to a parliamentary committee that led to admissions by the police inspector, Tom Winsor, and the Met commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, that crime figures produced by the force were likely to be unreliable.
He was also subject to misconduct proceedings and faced the sack over a book he wrote, proceeds from which he said were donated to charity, pointing out problems at the Met.
"This resignation arises directly from my treatment as a result of making disclosures in good faith and in the public interest," said Patrick, announcing his resignation.
He added: "My experience led me to see just how flawed the whistleblowing system is, how it fails, but also to firmly believe that no police officer should normally resign or retire while subject to any misconduct investigation. But the circumstances are such that I have no choice."
The accusations against Patrick were downgraded from gross misconduct to misconduct, which meant he would not face the sack. But he said he intended to resign from the force after the proceedings in any case due to a lack of trust and the sustained attacks against his character he said had taken place.
The move calls into question the UK's largest police force's treatment of those who question senior management.
In a statement, released on Monday, he said that the Met's investigation and misconduct proceedings against him had taken a toll on his family; adding: "yet even so I carried on acting in the public interest, resulting in my being effectively bullied at New Scotland Yard and, in the end, with my sparking a parliamentary inquiry into crime statistics which has had a significant national impact.
"In the wake I had to watch senior officers deny it was happening, but I couldn't reply as I'd been warned that it could result in further discipline."
He added: "It is impossible for me to see how I could ever trust the MPS again, that is something which is permanently destroyed."
A spokesman for the Met said it would be inappropriate to comment.

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[David Guyatt]

You have to wonder why Parliament hasn't called both the former Met chiefs, Lord Stevens and Lord Blair to actually answer the questions don't you? Asking a successor, legally, is simply asking for an opinion. It doesn't get to the root of the problem and is not intended to do so.

It sounds to me that this is another case of politically contrived PR. Unless or until people are prosecuted - rather than being allowed to resign - then nothing really is going to change.

Something rotten in the Metropolitan Police: Corrupt officers may escape justice, thanks to mass shredding of evidence



MPs condemn force as out-and-out disgrace' as Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe announces investigation into 1987 murder of whistleblower could be re-opened

TOM HARPER , PAUL PEACHEY

Wednesday 26 March 2014

The head of the Metropolitan Police has admitted that rogue and corrupt officers may evade justice because of the "mass-shredding" of sensitive corruption files held by Scotland Yard.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe suggested the decision to destroy a "lorry-load" of intelligence from an investigation into criminality inside the Met was wrong and said such a decision would now only be taken at a very senior level, throwing the spotlight back on his predecessors Lord Stevens and Lord Blair.
During a fractious appearance in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Britain's most senior police officer professed ignorance across a wide range of embarrassing issues for the Met including which of his current top team wrongly gave Scotland Yard a clean bill of health regarding corruption in the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry two years ago.
With his force facing allegations of a cover-up since a damning review into the Lawrence murder was published earlier this month, Sir Bernard also revealed the force was attempting to open a new investigation into the notorious unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan, a private investigator who is said to have been killed just as he was about to blow the whistle on police corruption back in 1987.
His brother, Alastair, who has campaigned for 27 years to bring Mr Morgan's killers to justice, looked on as Sir Bernard was questioned repeatedly about the destruction of intelligence from Operation Othona a four-year investigation into police corruption, going into the Nineties, which may have contained clues about Mr Morgan's murder.
MPs described the current situation as "terrible", "shocking" and an "out-and-out disgrace" as they ridiculed reports, purportedly emanating from Scotland Yard sources, that suggested the "mass-shredding" of some of the Met's most sensitive files was due to the force's attempt to comply with data protection law. The MP Michael Ellis asked: "Do you think the loss of this material will affect the prosecutions of police officers?"
Sir Bernard replied: "It is difficult to say … it may have an impact, I can't be sure." Asked if he would authorise the "mass shredding" of such files, he said bluntly: "I would expect to keep it." He also said that such a decision now would have to be taken at deputy commissioner level or above, raising pressure on Lord Blair and Lord Stevens, who were in charge at the time.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe gives evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Committee (PA)
Nicola Blackwood also questioned the police chief over a discredited Scotland Yard review of the Stephen Lawrence case published under his watch in 2012, which failed to mention the destruction of Operation Othona.
David Hurley, the detective superintendent who led the review, has since claimed he had "no control" over the "editorial content" which was turned over to unspecified "senior officers" in the final analysis. Sir Bernard apologised for the review and said he did not know which senior officers were in charge of Mr Hurley's work, which he agreed to disclose to the committee along with many other highly sensitive Met reports into police corruption, including Operation Tiberius, details of which were revealed by The Independent in January.
Ms Blackwood asked Sir Bernard about the general practice, saying: "So you wouldn't like to see investigating officers' reports rewritten by senior officers for PR purposes?" He replied curtly: "I wouldn't."
The MPs' committee chairman, Keith Vaz, said the commissioner appeared to be in a state of "shock" and he was worried that he did not have "a grip at the moment" on his organisation. He also revealed he had been in touch with Baroness Lawrence, the mother of Stephen, who was stabbed to death in south-east London by a racist gang in 1993.
Mr Vaz announced his committee would launch a new, wide-ranging inquiry into the structure, governance and culture of the Metropolitan Police. He also said that Lady Lawrence had told him Sir Bernard had briefed her personally on death threats being made against her, but, she told Mr Vaz, nothing more had been done to bring the perpetrators to justice. The visibly-shaken police chief said: "I will look into that immediately."
The officer at the centre of alleged corruption within the Lawrence inquiry, Sgt John Davidson, should no longer be investigated by the Met, the Commissioner said. There have been at least three inquiries into the officer, one by Scotland Yard and two by the police watchdog, the last in 2006. It followed claims by a supergrass involved in the prosecution of corrupt officers that the officer known as OJ for Obnoxious Jock had links with a mid-level criminal and the father of one of the only two men jailed in 2012 for Stephen's murder.
Sgt Davidson retired and was running a pub in Menorca called The Smugglers. But it has been on the market for more than a year because, according to his sale pitch, he wants to return to Britain to be with his grandchildren.
"He has at least been investigated although the outcome has left a doubt," said the Commissioner. Senior officers within the Met have stated publicly that they believed Mr Davidson was corrupt and that the review by Mark Ellison QC, published by the Home Secretary, found there was evidence to back the claim.
Theresa May has also asked the head of the National Crime Agency about possible next steps and investigations into potentially corrupt officers. "Whatever the investigation that may happen next I don't believe the Metropolitan Police will be involved with it," said the Commissioner. He said the force should not be involved in logging into the allegations against Sgt Davidson or anyone else from historic allegations.
In his own words: What Hogan-Howe told the committee
On the shredded documents "I would expect to keep it."
On calls for a wider inquiry into the Met "There's no need, it's absolute nonsense."
On speaking with former Met chiefs "I'd like to reassure you, if there's a need to contact my predecessors we will; if I'm the right person to do it, I will."
On the memo summarising alleged wrong-doing "I can't give you a list of who has seen it."
On the shredding "Did the shredding happen? It sounds like it did. The question is about the motivation to the shredding. There is an innocent one, it's a normal process of… getting rid of documents. There is a malicious one. We have to establish which it was."

[David Guyatt]

Exclusive: Secret SECOND Metropolitan Police corruption probe revealed



Hitherto undisclosed Operation Zloty found dozens' of Met detectives in pay of organised crime. Investigation could fill gaps left by mass shredding of evidence from Operation Othona

TOM HARPER
Wednesday 26 March 2014

The Metropolitan Police corruption scandal has deepened after The Independent uncovered the existence of a previously secret investigation into criminal officers that went much further than the files destroyed by Scotland Yard.

Operation Zloty, a wide-ranging inquiry spanning at least nine years, found dozens of rogue detectives in the employ of organised crime and operating with "virtual immunity".
The "long-term intelligence development operation" included information on police corruption originally gathered by 17 other investigations including Operation Othona, the contents of which were inexplicably shredded sometime around 2003.
Crucially, Zloty included bombshell evidence from Othona about a "persistent network" of corrupt officers that could have been beneficial to a landmark review commissioned by the Home Secretary into how the Stephen Lawrence murder was handled by the Metropolitan Police.
Mark Ellison QC was forced to inform Theresa May earlier this month that he could not finalise conclusions on whether police corruption tainted the Lawrence case because a "lorry-load" of Othona material was mysteriously shredded by the Met more than 10 years ago.
However, the emergence of Zloty means some of the Othona material may still exist and the network of corrupt officers could still be brought to book.
Mr Ellison names dozens of sensitive investigations into police corruption in his report. But Zloty is not among them. The Independent asked Mr Ellison's office whether or not Scotland Yard had disclosed Zloty to his team, but a spokesman said he was "not able to comment".
Earlier this week, the Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe admitted corrupt police officers may escape justice due to the controversial destruction of Operation Othona, which included intelligence on detectives trafficking drugs, fabricating evidence and selling sensitive police information to organised crime syndicates.
[B]READ MORE: SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE METROPOLITAN POLICE: CORRUPT OFFICERS MAY ESCAPE JUSTICE, THANKS TO MASS SHREDDING OF EVIDENCE[/B]

A senior former Scotland Yard source with knowledge of its anti-corruption command said of Zloty: "There is no way the Met would have just stopped its deep-cover inquiries into corruption once Othona had been wound up in 1998.
"It sounds like Zloty may still exist and, if it does, I am surprised there is no reference to it in the Ellison report."
When Scotland Yard was asked whether Operation Zloty was shared with the Ellison review, a spokesman replied: "This is a report marked secret' it is inappropriate to discuss it publicly."
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "Anything less than full disclosure on these issues is unnerving.
"The committee will want to hear evidence from Mr Ellison to be satisfied that he was given all of the information he requested during his inquiry. We will also want to be reassured all other relevant inquiries were disclosed to him."
A leaked police report from 2002, codenamed Operation Tiberius, concluded organised crime syndicates were able to infiltrate Scotland Yard "at will" through the bribing of corrupt police officers.
Buried in the small print of Tiberius is a reference to Othona and Zloty.
"Operation Zloty is a long-term intelligence development operation designed to assess the current threat that organised criminals and their associations with serving and retired police officers pose to the MPS, other law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice system," the Operation Tiberius file says.
"The analysis of intelligence available indicates that a persistent network continues to thrive within the MPS, particularly the north-east London area.
"These subjects have been undermining the MPS with virtual immunity for the last 10 years and were identified during the course of two previous Directorate of Professional Standards intelligence-gathering operations, Othona' and Centaur'."
A spokesperson for the Met said: "We retain a powerful anti-corruption unit and the Met is a hostile environment for corrupt officers. The Met's Anti-Corruption Command investigates allegations and intelligence relating to corrupt police officers and to those that may seek to corrupt them."

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