Examination of Witnesses (Questions 31-62)
MR JOHN
CRAWLEY
23 FEBRUARY 2010
Q31 Chairman: Mr Crawley, thank you
very much for being present today to be part of our very short
inquiry into the work of the IPCC. The Committee was very keen
to do this before Parliament rose, as this is one of the inquiries
that we have been hoping to have over a number of years. You served
as Commissioner on the IPCC for a number of years. Nick Hardwick,
the Chairman, has suggested that one of the indicators of the
success of the IPCC has been the increase in the number of complaints
that have been made to the IPCC. Do you think that is a valid
benchmark, a valid measure of success?
Mr Crawley: In the early stages,
I think it was. There was a new system. There was a lot of publicity
about a new, reformed complaint system. Clearly, that was going
to invite people to complain who perhaps had not considered doing
so before and to have greater confidence to do so. Six years into
the system, to continue to say the increasing number of complaints
and formal investigations of complaints against a background of
a very, very low percentage of such complaints being substantiated—which
are the statistics I have put before you in my written evidence—I
have described in my written evidence as a little bit of an `Alice
in Wonderland' argument.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q32 David Davies: Mr Crawley, do
you think your lack of confidence in the IPCC could stem from
the fact that you obviously felt, rightly or wrongly, that it
should have a different agenda from the one that it has? For example,
looking at the paper you submitted to us, you obviously have concerns
about the use of stop and search powers under section 60, in particular.
Whether you like it or not, whether we like it or not, that is
a lawful power which Parliament has conferred upon the police
and allowed them to use in certain areas. Who are you to demand
that that be something that be investigated by the IPCC, when
we as parliamentarians have already given the police the ability
to use that power?
Mr Crawley: I am not questioning
the powers. The examples I gave were where those powers are being
seriously abused. I gave three examples: one of potential abuse,
which has been reported in the media fairly recently; a very detailed
and extensive set of investigations I conducted in the West Midlands
which demonstrated, I think, to all involved that a particularly
intrusive power, Section 60, was being widely misused; and I also
gave the example, in 2008 I think it was, of the climate camp
in Kent and the need eventually for complainants there to bring
judicial review proceedings before the Kent Police accepted that
they had misused, again very extensively misused, their PACE powers.
My point in my paper is that stop and search has always been,
and I think always will be, a very sensitive touchstone between
the public and the police. It is where you are stopped in public
view. It is where it can be very embarrassing, very humiliating.
That is a very important example where the current IPCC complaints
oversight does not bite adequately.
Q33 David Davies: I would agree with
you that there are issues around the use of some of these powers
in some circumstances, but where I would differ is that I would
not have thought this was a matter for you to take upon yourself
given that the IPCC was set up to look at specific complaints
about police officers. Given your obvious concern about the way
that policing is carried out in this country, fair concerns though
they may be, has that perhaps clouded your whole perception about
whether the IPCC is a good or a bad thing?
Mr Crawley: No. All the cases
I dealt with were based upon actual complaint cases that have
been investigated and upheld. I made it clear in upholding those
complaints (West Midlands but also the Metropolitan Police) that
it was not the IPCC's role to reach a finding in law; in other
words, that the actual detention was unlawful. It was its role,
clearly, to get to the bottom of why these powers were being inappropriately
used, and complainants would expect such an investigation.
Q34 Mr Clappison: Can I take it that
the job of the Commissioner is a full-time job?
Mr Crawley: Yes.
Q35 Mr Clappison: You say in your
evidence to us that there have been changes in the organisation
of it with some of the roles being taken away from the Commissioners,
greater delegation to managers, and the Commissioners no longer
deciding the seriousness of the complaint and the role the IPCC
should play in investigation. You have used the word "ornamental"
for them. What do they do now?
Mr Crawley: That is what I am
questioning. I am saying that the Commission, as a body corporate,
is a very expensive way for the taxpayer to oversee an organisation—almost
uniquely so. My criticism is that Commissioners, although full-timers,
do not engage with sufficient detail in the oversight of the complaints
system. I give a specific example of the appeal system where I
think 99 times out of 100 it is delegated too far down the system,
but also I have set out in my written evidence the need for a
much more robust approach to reforming how the police investigate
complaints. That must be the fundamental reform. I give the figures
in here for the Metropolitan Police, which in many ways are the
most astonishing: 152 complaints out of 3,807 they investigated
were found to be substantiated. I do not believe that is credible.
That was the last year statistics were published. It is not credible
that virtually all of those complainants' complaints had no merit.
Fundamental to this issue is how to reform the way in which the
police themselves deal with complaints, including, as the Chairman
suggested earlier, obviously pre-empting the need for complaints.
When there is a complaint, when a complaint arises, it has to
be dealt with by the organisation. That is a good bit of my argument.
I have gone on to consider the kind of very difficult, Article
2 type investigation, of which you have been hearing an example
earlier today. Culturally it seems to me that dominates and organisationally
it dominates the IPCC, it dominates its public profile. I have
broadly concluded that to have a more robust Police Ombudsman
system, which really drives reform of the basic complaint system,
needs reconsidering. One option I have outlined—the only
model I am aware of where this applies in a broadly similar way
at the moment—is in Australia, New South Wales. I have argued
that there is a case for having, if you like, a Commission that
would handle serious corruption and criminal allegations against
the police, which would be geared up to conduct full criminal
investigations and so on, but with a beefed-up and separate Police
Ombudsman Service to oversee the ordinary complaint system and
make sure that it gets properly reformed. One option for that
might be to have a regional approach to such an Ombudsman Service,
rather than there being just one national service. I mean genuinely
regional in terms of all the English regions. The IPCC has regional
offices, but in the last two years it has moved to being a centralised
national organisation, so it is not really, in my view, operating
any more in any sense as a regional organisation.
Q36 Mr Winnick: Mr Crawley, you were
four years a Commissioner. During that time you have said that
you have managed to bring about some changes in investigations,
including, as previously referred to, stop and search by the West
Midland Police. In carrying out your duties during those four
years, were you in any way obstructed by the more senior people,
the Chair or the Chief Executive?
Mr Crawley: No. I would not say
I was obstructed in terms of my individual activities, no.
Q37 Mr Winnick: During those four
years did you make your views known about how the organisation
could change, as you are now doing?
Mr Crawley: Yes. I argued, for
example, quite frequently for the importance of elevating the
significance of the appeal system. I was the only Commissioner
who ever issued press statements, for example, about more significant
appeal cases, because only if the public are aware of how the
IPCC has a responsibility to handle and oversee appeals against
police investigations will they gain confidence in the system.
Clearly, I was a minority voice—I do not pretend otherwise—in
terms of arguing for it.
Q38 Mr Winnick: Being in a minority
did not in any way lead to you being undermined or told to take
a different view, if you were allowed to carry on in the usual
way as a Commissioner, would that be correct?
Mr Crawley: Obviously I had to
work within the system broadly as it was. I sought to stretch
the boundaries, I think it is true to say. I probably, for example—and
I think this is statistically true—had more independent
investigations that I undertook when I thought it was necessary
into complaint cases as opposed to the Article 2 type statutory
duty cases, if I can put it like that, than other Commissioners.
I sought to stretch the system, but I was not in a position obviously
to reform it.
Q39 Mr Winnick: The point I am trying
to make, Mr Crawley, and trying to find out from you is in your
day-to-day work as a Commissioner in taking a view which you were
obviously entitled to hold whether you were in any way obstructed
or told to toe the line or anything like that. It is a yes or
no, really.
Mr Crawley: I am not claiming
that I was in some way interfered with, no.
Q40 Mr Winnick: That is a very interesting
answer. It obviously comes from, without wishing to be patronising,
a person of integrity. You are not trying to create a situation
which did not exist. On the substance of your views, Mr Crawley,
do you feel that the weakness of the IPCC has, in a way, to use
a phrase, "gone native"? Is it too near the police,
is it not sufficiently independent? Would that sum up your general
view?
Mr Crawley: In some ways, yes.
This is a complex issue and I am not going to sit here today and
make a simplistic argument that the IPCC is simply there to defend
the police or something. It is a complex issue. There are certainly
cultural issues, as I said earlier, around the real corporate
priorities and concerns of the organisation which I think focus
rightly or wrongly on that very small number of high profile,
independent investigations. That dominates its agenda. There are
other areas where I have been specifically critical. For example,
I think the IPCC spends the great bulk of its time networking
in the policing sector rather than more widely. I do not think
it has effective networking at all. In the Ombudsman world, there
is a Commissioner who is meant to liaise with the Ombudsman body,
but that was never something of any substance at the Commission.
There is a range of ways in which the organisation fails to be
fair to complainants, and I have described it as an institutional
bias. In my evidence to you I have set out some specific arguments
as to how I think that adversely affects the appeal system, for
example. In all those ways I think the end result is that for
complainants, particularly complainants, as I say, in a situation
where you are getting complaints concerning local policing—and
in my view that is primarily where the sort of confidence in the
police really rubs, because that is what gets networked around
neighbourhoods in that area—the IPCC is not accessible.
I do not think it is responsive. I do not think there is a culture
of understanding the complainant perspective. That is why I have
said that I think there is an institutional bias against it. I
have given a great deal of thought to this, both when I was at
the IPCC and, indeed, since. My decision to leave and not seek
a second term was personally a very painful one. There are institutional
reforms that are required. I have suggested, for example, that
the Chair position should be a part-time non-executive position.
It gets too involved in the executive issues of the organisation
and, in my view, the Chair ends up arguing those executive positions
at the Commission rather than empowering the Commission as a non-executive
oversight body. I have argued—which I do think is important—that
the Commission appointment should be for a single term, so that
there is no question of people looking over their shoulders as
to whether they are going to get a reappointment to what is a
very highly paid position, but I have also argued that there is
a case for moving the IPCC outwith the Home Office sphere. I think
it is far too much in this family of policing organisations. I
think it should be an office reporting to Parliament. I have suggested,
as I have said today, that there is a case for splitting off the
special investigation, the criminal investigation side, from the
complaints oversight.
Chairman: We are coming to explore some
of those ideas with Janet Dean.
Q41 Mrs Dean: Thank you, Chairman.
You have suggested that the IPCC has not "produced any significant
change that anyone could point to in the fairness and the rigour
of the police complaints system". How should the IPCC be
operating? Can it be reformed to meet what you think it should
do to operate properly?
Mr Crawley: Given the kinds of
pressures on it that I have described, whether the current institutional
set-up can be reformed I think is an open question. In terms of
what needs to be done, I think there needs to be much more robust
intervention at police force level to ensure that complaints are
thoroughly investigated, and I have said in my recommendations
that there should be progressive reduction in the number of appeals
to the IPCC so that it is not handling such a huge volume of appeals.
The way to achieve that is for police officers to do better investigations
and for more complaints to be upheld by police officers. The current
levels are risible, as I have already touched upon. The appeal
system, with the pressure of volume off it, can then become a
better quality system that will meet complainant concerns more
effectively, including the concerns of the lawyers who often represent
them, in terms of how it works. In terms of how to reform the
way the police handle complaints, I think the IPCC needs to revisit
the question of its inspection powers. Early on in the history
of the organisation it was agreed that effectively this power
would be subcontracted to HMIC, Her Majesty's Inspectorate. I
do not think that works really because they do not have a very
close interest in the complaint system, as such. They do pick
up aspects of it from their inspection programme, but I think
that needs to be revisited. At page ten, I have touched on how
the current system of referrals to the IPCC works. This seems
to me a fairly pointless paper chase. Some 2,000 plus pieces of
paper are filled in by the police and sent to the IPCC, and at
the end of the day only one in ten of those are engaged in by
the IPCC. It is really not clear, as a reactive system, what is
achieved by that. I have suggested bearing down on those cases
where the IPCC goes too far with an investigation that it could
hand back to the police, so it does less of those independent
investigations, or rather terminates them much faster where it
can. Second, it does more complaint investigations of conventional
complaints against the police rather than Article 2 type investigations.
Third, in subparagraph four on page ten I have suggested ways
in which it needs to risk assess each force. How well is this
force doing in handling complaints? It then needs to consult much
more with the public about their views, both locally and nationally.
The way in which HMIC has recently undertaken its public engagement—it
is going through a major exercise of changing from being a backroom
organisation to being one that is public facing and very much
saying, "What is it the public want the police to do and
deliver?"—there are lessons for the IPCC to learn from
the way in which HMIC has gone about ascertaining what the views
of the public are, I think. It needs a much more structured regular
system of knowing what the local concerns of people are about
their local force. That then informs, if you like, an intelligence-based
approach where they call in complaints, and say, "We need
to take a closer look at this force, but over here we are pretty
satisfied that that force is doing a good job."
Q42 Mrs Dean: Would the changes that
you suggest help to speed up the process so that investigations
do not take as long as they currently do?
Mr Crawley: Clearly in some cases
that is the case. There are a significant number of investigations
that the IPCC currently starts and it does not need to continue
them in the level of detail that it does at the moment, but there
are other cases where the original police investigation is too
skimpy, so I do not think this is a simple question again. Even
with skimpy investigations I have seen amazing examples over the
years of how the police have managed to string out a relatively
simple police investigation over many months. There is certainly
a case for putting much more pressure on the police for performance
there but, at the same time, sometimes doing a much more thorough
investigation; for example, interviewing the officers to find
out just what their account of the incident was, how much they
know about the law, rather than simply relying on a statement
put in. Again, quite a complex question.
Q43 Mr Streeter: You are making the
case for more police forces to deal better with complaints at
local level. Do you not think that will require a change in culture
of a fairly mammoth proportion? I have never known an organisation
like the police, which I greatly admire, for closing ranks when
a complaint has been made. In 17 years of doing this job, I do
not think I can recall one single time when they have said, "Sorry,
we got that wrong". Is that your experience? Will it not
require a massive culture change?
Mr Crawley: There are occasions
when they say that. Coming back to my point that the Commissioners
at the IPCC should be engaging much more regularly and fully with
their forces, I think there is too much left to the too junior
people in the IPCC. I also think there is a need for some incentives
in the system. Let us look at some of the private complaints systems.
If you are a financial organisation and you do not resolve your
complaint and it goes to the Financial Services Ombudsman, you
pay a fee. The appeal system here is a `no cost' option for the
police. First, the chances are that it will not be upheld by the
IPCC in any substantive way, and secondly it does not cost them
anything financially. I think part of this will be to incentivise
the police financially to get (a) the number of complaints down,
(b) more credible investigations and (c) less appeals going to
the IPCC.
Q44 Chairman: The point that Mr Streeter
makes is that sometimes you have to say sorry.
Mr Crawley: Yes.
Q45 Chairman: I am not talking about
the Rigg case. People can say sorry about that as well, but it
is a much, much bigger case. A much more thorough investigation
is required in a case where somebody dies than in the average
case that Mr Streeter and I and other Members of this Committee
have to deal with where we write a letter and we would really
like a reply. Constituents who come back and then end up making
an application to the IPCC only do so because there is no reply.
Do you think part of the role is to educate the police, and chief
constables in particular, to tell them that if they were to provide
better leadership they just would not get the complaints in the
first place?
Mr Crawley: Yes, I think that
is one element. A second element, as you will see in the paper,
is that of the individual police officer. Where there is local
resolution of a complaint, the current system does not require
the individual officer to get involved or to apologise if they
have done something inappropriate. I think that is wrong. The
police are a public service, like others. There is no reason why
individual officers should have that opt-out clause.
Q46 Mrs Cryer: Mr Crawley, the structure
of the Commission is such that none of the Commissioners is allowed
ever to have had any contact with the police. Retired police officers
cannot be recruited on to the Commission. One can understand why
that should be the case. I think I am right in saying that once
the Commission starts an inquiry the spadework carried out in
unearthing what happened in a particular circumstance is not done
by Commissioners but is left to others to do. Am I right in saying
that spadework of finding out what happened in a certain situation
is carried out by either police officers from another force or
police officers who are retired or people who do have connections
to that particular police officer? Therefore, although we start
off from a high position in not allowing Commissioners to have
any connection, it looks to me as if, once their investigation
starts, frequently people are conducting those investigations
who may have sympathy with the police.
Mr Crawley: There are certainly
ex police officers—there used to be seconded police officers
but I think there are very few if any of those now—there
are certainly retired police officers and, as I say in my paper,
people from other agencies who are overseen by the IPCC, like
the HMRC. They are mostly in the senior positions. I do not think
it would be appropriate to say that that should never be the case—it
would be unrealistic in terms of the skill set that you would
be excluding; I also do not think it is necessary. What it does
emphasise, in my view, is the need for the stronger, more independent
role of commissioners, I think that is what they should be playing.
I think they should be more engaged than the approach that you
describe, which is pretty accurate, and that was one of the discussions
that I did not really carry my colleagues with when I was at the
Commission. I think the commissioner overseeing a case should
be hands-on. I do not mean going out and doing the interviews,
but keeping a very close brief on it, that is what the families
and complainants expect. That was certainly the style I adopted.
Where I think it is more problematic is how far the investigative
aspect comes to dominate the recruitment criteria. If you take
the example of the recent appointment that the IPCC has made as
a Director of Investigations—I have no information whatsoever
on the gentleman; I have never met him and I am not making a personal
comment here at all—I simply observe that the former head
of the Professional Standards Department of the Metropolitan Police,
a department which in my view has presided over a very poor complaints
service generally in terms of the statistics, is now heading up
the investigation function of the IPCC. I am sure he is doing
that as an expert, probably a very, very good expert in criminal
investigations but it does not seem to me that he is likely to
be proved to be—he may prove to be but I rather doubt that—somebody
who is going to change the culture of the complainant perspective
that I have said is what is needed.
Q47 Mrs Cryer: When you were a commissioner
did you ever feel as if your independence was compromised or under
pressure?
Mr Crawley: It was certainly under
pressure; that was one of the points about the job, that it comes
under pressure because if you do the job properly from time to
time you will seriously upset very senior police officers and
they have ways of making their displeasure known, so obviously
you are under considerable pressure.
Q48 Chairman: I am sorry, Mr Crawley,
in what ways do they make your life difficult?
Mr Crawley: Nothing improper at
all; I just mean that they are robust in getting their perspective
across, hence the need for senior people in the Commission to
be more protective of some of the junior staff who are not going
to be able to persuade the police to change their perspective.
Q49 Mr Clappison: Just following
on from that, would the senior police officers you are referring
to have direct contact with the people carrying out the investigation
of former police officers?
Mr Crawley: No, I am not referring
to them trying to nobble an investigator at all.
Q50 Mr Clappison: I found it slightly
worrying because it begged the question that the Chairman put
to you actually.
Mr Crawley: No. Let me be clear,
there are two other things I think I would want to say on this
score. One is that I think commissioners should be rotated but
they are not; some of them move forces but too many of them now,
six-odd years into the system, are still overseeing the same force
as when they went there and I think that is inappropriate. Inevitably
if you have been overseeing a force and its complaints system
for six-plus years you become part of the story really if it is
not performing very well. I think they should be rotated—and
I have suggested perhaps every two years. The other aspect where
I think there are not formal rules is ex police officers working
in a region where their ex force is. I do not think that is permissible;
I do not think they should have any dealings with their ex force,
which they do. Those are two suggestions I would make to make
the system more transparently independent.
Q51 Mr Clappison: So who is dealing
with their ex forces exactly?
Mr Crawley: Senior investigators,
for example, or deputy investigators who have joined the IPCC
from a police force are not mandated to be operating in a different
region and to have nothing to do with their ex police force.
Q52 Mr Clappison: If you take the
example, say, of my area—and I am not saying this is the
case, I have no idea—Hertfordshire, which is a relatively
small police force or smallish establishment, that could have
somebody who is the senior investigator of the police who could
have been with the Hertfordshire Police?
Mr Crawley: Yes. In one sense
this has become less significant as time has gone on, but I raised
within the IPCC when I was there my concerns. For example, in
the East Midlands, a whole group of officers from one of the local
forces had been appointed to the regional investigative and management
team and I thought that was quite inappropriate. It created—again,
coming back to this culture issue which is intangible but it is
really, really important in organisations to get a hold of it—a
culture which one or two newcomers to the office said, "This
place is like a police station."
Q53 Mr Clappison: No doubt they perform
their jobs properly.
Mr Crawley: Yes, it is not about
the individuals.
Q54 Mr Clappison: As far as the appearance
is concerned, do you think that it gave the necessary appearance
of independence when that occurred?
Mr Crawley: No, I do not think
so. I do not think that the public has a detailed understanding
of all these intricacies of the role of an investigator or a commissioner.
I think they would be bound to have some concerns.
Q55 Martin Salter: Mr Crawley, according
to an IPCC commissioned survey—perhaps it would say this,
would it not; I do not know—88% of people think that the
IPCC would treat their case fairly and consider it independent
of the police. This begs a series of questions. Is this a triumph
of spin over reality; is it the fact that the word "independent"
appears in the title or in reality should we perhaps put that
to one side and perhaps ask people like you with direct experience
of this issue, is the current system for all its flaws a damn
sight better than the previous system where cops investigated
cops?
Mr Crawley: I do not think you
can say that it is an unalloyed improvement. What happened under
the old system in terms of what are now IPCC independent investigations
is that generally they would have been handled by what is called
an external force, a police force investigation from a team drawn
from a different force. I do not think that did inspire public
confidence—I think that is right—and I do not have
any general argument with the value of what the IPCC has achieved
in independent investigations. What I am suggesting to you is
that the confidence in the complaints system is a much bigger
question than that, and I think in 99.9 times out of 100 it is
still the police investigating the police and, as I said in my
paper, finding themselves doing a rather good job too often.
Q56 Martin Salter: It is a particular
bugbear of mine—lawyers, barristers, take your pick—it
is the greatest closed shop in the country and breaking that open
is difficult. Are you saying that the model that we have is basically
improvable if we were to adopt measures like a greater rotation
of commissioners and more clarity in the separation of roles and
a less cosy relationship at regional level? You are not arguing
for a root and branch ripping up of the IPCC, are you?
Mr Crawley: I am arguing that
there are a number of major reforms of the IPCC which I think
would improve it. The institutional ones are part of that but
I think of equal importance is what I have said in the paper about
refocusing it on getting changed performance by the police and
how they investigate complaints and how they resolve them. I am
also saying that I now have more doubts about whether the current
framework where you put together both these high profile and often
complex criminal standard investigations of a very small number
of high profile incidents—police fatal shootings, deaths
in custody and such like—whether putting that together in
the same organisation as one that is meant to be overseeing the
more humdrum business of police complaints, I am not convinced
now that that model works and I would say that at the very least
the jury is out and that it should be reviewed following the kind
of incremental reforms I have talked about. If it is not working
then my view it is not beyond the wit of policy makers and implementers
to look at other models. I have suggested that New South Wales
is one possible one where you move the complaints system under
an ombudsman. Personally I am not going to go into broader things
but I think there is an interesting case, for example, for setting
up regional ombudsmen whose job is to oversee a range of public
service complaints, not just police; but that is a slightly broader
issue. You move the complaints system into an ombudsman service
and you move the more complex criminal investigations into a commission
or special arm of HMIC or whatever it might be which would handle
that.
Q57 Martin Salter: One last brief
question, Chairman. A very obvious issue occurs to me. Looking
at the briefings we have, these are reasonably fat salaries that
are being paid to the members of the IPCC—they are all on
considerably more than MPs and the Chair is on a substantial salary.
I do not begrudge that but does there not become a situation that
if these are full-time posts that it becomes difficult to rock
the boat if 100% of your salary, your income, your mortgage is
dependent on your role in this body? Is there perhaps not an argument
for more people being engaged or members of the IPCC or the commissioners
but on a part-time basis so that they are not so financially dependent
on retaining what is a rather juicy appointment?
Mr Crawley: I think you have touched
on a very good issue. I said earlier that I agonised over what
I should do and, to be quite candid, not least of that was whether
I should give up a full-time pensioned position at an age when
I knew I was not going to get another one.
Q58 Martin Salter: It cost you a
few bob to give it up.
Mr Crawley: It has indeed. I think
that is one way of addressing it. Another aspect, as I say, would
be to say that the people you appoint are there for one term and
therefore they are not looking over their shoulder to think, "If
I do not get reappointment I am suddenly out on the street",
with very little notice inevitably. I think probably a combination
of those two, but I think you touch on a very important point.
Q59 David Davies: Going back to some
of your earlier criticisms, would you say that most police officers,
average serving police constables, have a favourable view about
their local standards department and view them as a sort of an
ally?
Mr Crawley: As a sort of ally?
Q60 David Davies: As a sort of ally
of theirs, yes.
Mr Crawley: I doubt whether they
have that view.
Q61 David Davies: I spoke to the
head of one standards department who told me that he thought that
1% of his officers were either corrupt or inefficient and should
not be in the job, and he saw it as part of his role to go after
them proactively. I have spoken to numerous police constables
who shudder at the mere mention of standards departments, so I
am not sure that I entirely recognise your suggestion that local
standards departments are always on the side of the police; it
is not how the police see it.
Mr Crawley: There are two aspects
of a local standards department: one is the internal conduct side
and the other one is the public complaints side. If you look at
the statistics you will see that the proportion of police officers
who end up either losing their jobs or being given a serious disciplinary
warning following a disciplinary panel resulting from a public
complaint is a lot, lot less than those arising from their own
internal investigations, which I guess is a way of saying that
the police have the view that it is they rather than the public
who know which officers they do not want to have in their ranks.
Q62 David Davies: Is there not a
more straightforward reason for that, which is that when the police
are investigating proactively they are able to garner the evidence
that they need, whereas all too often in these situations that
you were dealing with it was one person's word against another.
As we know in any court of law, if you or I get attacked in the
street by someone tomorrow, it is our word against theirs and
it is going to be difficult to bring a case because unfortunately
one person's word against another is a very difficult case to
prove.
Mr Crawley: There is certainly
an element of that but a good, proactive department, as you suggest,
will be able to accumulate the evidence over a considerable period
before they move. I am not decrying that at all. I think where
I would part company with the way that the police organise their
professional standards operation is on two things. One is that
that side tends to actually take a greater status and position
in terms of what they are looking for in skills, and the people
who work in and oversee the standards departments tend to be rotated
in there and out on to other policing duties, it is just part
of a policing career. I think the size and complexity of the public
service role of police these days suggests that there ought to
be a more professional complaint resolution and complaint investigation
skill set that they should be seeking, for which you do not need
to be a police officer; you do not need to hold the commission
to do that.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr Crawley. We are
most grateful to you for coming here and thank you for your paper.
If there is anything else that you want to add to what you have
written or said today please let us have it by Friday as this
is going to be a very short inquiry. Thank you very much.
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