Bent Coppers
David Aaronovitch offered a forensic analysis of the 'Plebgate' affair with this piece in yesterday's Times - aided and abetted by a magnificent Peter Brookes cartoon which hits the nail on the head when it comes to describing the behaviour of the Police and the Police Federation.
Bent coppers must get their heads straight
By David Aaronovitch
The catalogue of police misdemeanours must lead to a change of attitude, not just a new ombudsman
There is, apparently, a phenomenon known to US traffic cops as a “sewer ticket”. With an ordinary ticket the officer hands it to a driver who has committed a minor offence and it tells the offender about the details of arranging an appearance in court. But with a sewer ticket, instead of giving it to the driver, the officer throws it into the sewer or storm drain, triggering a failure-to-appear by the uninformed miscreant, the issuing of an arrest warrant and further time-consuming complications.
Sewer tickets are how a cross cop punishes a mouthy or dislikeable citizen, and it begins to look as though the former Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, may have been handed the granddaddy of sewer tickets by the police on duty at No 10 last autumn.
We know he was mouthy on September 19 because he has admitted as much. A version of his mouthiness appeared in The Sun the next day and could only have originated with the police. After Mr Mitchell denied this account, the police log contradicting his denial then turned up in The Daily Telegraph. He then had a private “clear the air” meeting with a trio from the Police Federation, who emerged and declared the air to be horribly unclear. On October 19 Mr Mitchell resigned.
Far from being the end of it, this turned out to be merely the first act. Details in the police log were clearly shown to be falsified by CTV footage shown on Channel 4. An audio tape of the Mitchell encounter with the triumvirate showed that they had misrepresented what was said in the meeting. Officers who claimed to be able to corroborate the original police version turned out not to have been present.
That was the second act. The third is still going on. Five police officers are on bail as a result of Operation Alice, looking into collusion and falsification of police evidence. Senior police officers looked into the activities of the Police Federation men and decided that they shouldn’t face misconduct hearings. The Independent Police Complaints Commission deputy chairwoman, Deborah Glass, this week criticised that decision. The Fedmen had, she suggested, been part of an effort to discredit Mr Mitchell.
At this point all the Labour figures who had originally called for the defenestration of Toryboy Mitchell now executed a handbrake turn and called for the defenestration of the Unknown Policeman. The matter was a Q to the PM in yesterday’s PMQs and Mr Cameron called for a police apology to his former minister.
All of this is, in itself, horribly trivial. No one died. But the important point was the one almost made by the Home Secretary herself. If this could happen to a mate of the top man’s, then what chance would there be for Brian Singh, of Railway Cottages, should he fall out with the fuzz? Yesterday Damian Green, the Police Minister, told the College of Policing that events like the Mitchell debacle could have a “corrosive effect” on the reputation of the police. No 10 repeated this warning.
But of course the Mitchell affair is probably the least important of a slew of cases in recent years involving police untruthfulness. In 2005 the public was prepared to allow that Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by officers who genuinely believed that he was one of the suspects in the July 21 attempted Tube bombings. But what was shocking to many was the way, after the shooting, that people in the Met tried to cover up the extent of the error that had been made.
Again, in the 2009 case of Ian Tomlinson, it was only the deus ex machina of a banker’s phone camera that cut through the police denial that the newspaper vendor had been assaulted by an officer.
And then there has been the slow agony of the Hillsborough inquiry into police behaviour on that terrible day in 1989. Even in 1990 Lord Justice Taylor had described the police as having been “defensive and evasive witnesses”. “I must report”, said the judge, “that for the most part the quality of their evidence was in inverse proportion to their rank.” Last year the Independent Panel concluded that 164 witness statements had been altered by the police, the vast majority to the benefit of the force itself. In addition various senior officers had clearly attempted to shift public blame and responsibility from their own actions to those of the Liverpool football supporters.
I haven’t made this catalogue in order to say that all or most or even many police officers are wicked. But it must be clear that a recurring pattern is visible in which officers are prepared to lie, quite brazenly and sometimes on oath, if it suits them. So when Sir Hugh Orde, the President of ACPO, suggests that a remedy for the present crisis is in the appointment of an independent police ombudsman, my first reaction is that what needs to be changed isn’t something structural but something psychological.
When I was 17 I was arrested and charged with willful obstruction during a demonstration in the Strand. My statement to the duty officer in Battersea nick was: “I didn’t do anything.” The duty sergeant wrote it down and I signed it. By the time it was read out in court the statement had become: “Yes, I admit to having obstructed this officer.” History had been reshaped to fit the story.
I tried to think about it from the policeman’s point of view. It was much more convenient that this bolshy youngster should fess up to what he was charged with, and so — hey presto — I did! It was a form of what you might call “noble cause corruption”. I was the (albeit rather pathetic) bad guy. They were the lawmen.
Most of us must surely have realised by now that one thing almost all the hero cops of book, TV and film have in common is that they bend the rules. They threaten, they use white lies, they leak necessary untruths, all in the name of Good. Or else they are deeply cynical about authority, process and complaints.
What finds moral absolution in popular fiction can also find it in the culture of police officers themselves. They watch telly too. In a survey in the US a few years ago officers said that corruption for personal gain was a much more serious offence than engaging in corrupt actions that could be said “to benefit society at large”. Furthermore our adversarial court system, in which the truth only matters to the judge, helps to make liars out of almost everyone involved. If you know that a clever lawyer is going to drive right through any holes in your evidence, then why let there be any holes?
So the truth becomes dispensable, if not a liability. And the culture of us versus them militates against proper internal investigation, with senior officers afraid of gaining a reputation for not sticking up for their people.
I said the solution was psychological, but strangely what might cause all this to change more quickly is not new thinking but new technology. The camera phone, the Downing Street CCTV, Mr Mitchell’s audio device, all of them conspire to make the lie — noble or ignoble — harder to maintain. Big Brother is watching Plod too.
The catalogue of police misdemeanours must lead to a change of attitude, not just a new ombudsman
There is, apparently, a phenomenon known to US traffic cops as a “sewer ticket”. With an ordinary ticket the officer hands it to a driver who has committed a minor offence and it tells the offender about the details of arranging an appearance in court. But with a sewer ticket, instead of giving it to the driver, the officer throws it into the sewer or storm drain, triggering a failure-to-appear by the uninformed miscreant, the issuing of an arrest warrant and further time-consuming complications.
Sewer tickets are how a cross cop punishes a mouthy or dislikeable citizen, and it begins to look as though the former Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, may have been handed the granddaddy of sewer tickets by the police on duty at No 10 last autumn.
We know he was mouthy on September 19 because he has admitted as much. A version of his mouthiness appeared in The Sun the next day and could only have originated with the police. After Mr Mitchell denied this account, the police log contradicting his denial then turned up in The Daily Telegraph. He then had a private “clear the air” meeting with a trio from the Police Federation, who emerged and declared the air to be horribly unclear. On October 19 Mr Mitchell resigned.
Far from being the end of it, this turned out to be merely the first act. Details in the police log were clearly shown to be falsified by CTV footage shown on Channel 4. An audio tape of the Mitchell encounter with the triumvirate showed that they had misrepresented what was said in the meeting. Officers who claimed to be able to corroborate the original police version turned out not to have been present.
That was the second act. The third is still going on. Five police officers are on bail as a result of Operation Alice, looking into collusion and falsification of police evidence. Senior police officers looked into the activities of the Police Federation men and decided that they shouldn’t face misconduct hearings. The Independent Police Complaints Commission deputy chairwoman, Deborah Glass, this week criticised that decision. The Fedmen had, she suggested, been part of an effort to discredit Mr Mitchell.
At this point all the Labour figures who had originally called for the defenestration of Toryboy Mitchell now executed a handbrake turn and called for the defenestration of the Unknown Policeman. The matter was a Q to the PM in yesterday’s PMQs and Mr Cameron called for a police apology to his former minister.
All of this is, in itself, horribly trivial. No one died. But the important point was the one almost made by the Home Secretary herself. If this could happen to a mate of the top man’s, then what chance would there be for Brian Singh, of Railway Cottages, should he fall out with the fuzz? Yesterday Damian Green, the Police Minister, told the College of Policing that events like the Mitchell debacle could have a “corrosive effect” on the reputation of the police. No 10 repeated this warning.
But of course the Mitchell affair is probably the least important of a slew of cases in recent years involving police untruthfulness. In 2005 the public was prepared to allow that Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by officers who genuinely believed that he was one of the suspects in the July 21 attempted Tube bombings. But what was shocking to many was the way, after the shooting, that people in the Met tried to cover up the extent of the error that had been made.
Again, in the 2009 case of Ian Tomlinson, it was only the deus ex machina of a banker’s phone camera that cut through the police denial that the newspaper vendor had been assaulted by an officer.
And then there has been the slow agony of the Hillsborough inquiry into police behaviour on that terrible day in 1989. Even in 1990 Lord Justice Taylor had described the police as having been “defensive and evasive witnesses”. “I must report”, said the judge, “that for the most part the quality of their evidence was in inverse proportion to their rank.” Last year the Independent Panel concluded that 164 witness statements had been altered by the police, the vast majority to the benefit of the force itself. In addition various senior officers had clearly attempted to shift public blame and responsibility from their own actions to those of the Liverpool football supporters.
I haven’t made this catalogue in order to say that all or most or even many police officers are wicked. But it must be clear that a recurring pattern is visible in which officers are prepared to lie, quite brazenly and sometimes on oath, if it suits them. So when Sir Hugh Orde, the President of ACPO, suggests that a remedy for the present crisis is in the appointment of an independent police ombudsman, my first reaction is that what needs to be changed isn’t something structural but something psychological.
When I was 17 I was arrested and charged with willful obstruction during a demonstration in the Strand. My statement to the duty officer in Battersea nick was: “I didn’t do anything.” The duty sergeant wrote it down and I signed it. By the time it was read out in court the statement had become: “Yes, I admit to having obstructed this officer.” History had been reshaped to fit the story.
I tried to think about it from the policeman’s point of view. It was much more convenient that this bolshy youngster should fess up to what he was charged with, and so — hey presto — I did! It was a form of what you might call “noble cause corruption”. I was the (albeit rather pathetic) bad guy. They were the lawmen.
Most of us must surely have realised by now that one thing almost all the hero cops of book, TV and film have in common is that they bend the rules. They threaten, they use white lies, they leak necessary untruths, all in the name of Good. Or else they are deeply cynical about authority, process and complaints.
What finds moral absolution in popular fiction can also find it in the culture of police officers themselves. They watch telly too. In a survey in the US a few years ago officers said that corruption for personal gain was a much more serious offence than engaging in corrupt actions that could be said “to benefit society at large”. Furthermore our adversarial court system, in which the truth only matters to the judge, helps to make liars out of almost everyone involved. If you know that a clever lawyer is going to drive right through any holes in your evidence, then why let there be any holes?
So the truth becomes dispensable, if not a liability. And the culture of us versus them militates against proper internal investigation, with senior officers afraid of gaining a reputation for not sticking up for their people.
I said the solution was psychological, but strangely what might cause all this to change more quickly is not new thinking but new technology. The camera phone, the Downing Street CCTV, Mr Mitchell’s audio device, all of them conspire to make the lie — noble or ignoble — harder to maintain. Big Brother is watching Plod too.
