Quis custōdiet ipsōs custōdēs? Well, certainly not the IPCC… btw who watches the IPCC…?
So Nick Hardwick from the IPCC believes that people do ‘bad things and stupid things’ but he doesn’t believe that cops conspire with each other!
And as you can imagine there was a lot of outrage from the audience. One man shouted that the IPCC was not ‘fit for purpose’ and that Hardwick should go. I attended the Community Police Consultative Group for Lambeth (CPCG) as Nick Hardwick was going to be there.
Hardwick spent an awful amount of time explaining the technical aspects of the IPCC. He compared the former PCA with the IPCC saying the IPCC is much better. They receive 30,000 complaints a year, an 80% increase in the 4 years the IPCC has been going. One hundred deaths a year in custody though Hardwick kept maintaining that the number is dropping. That may be so, but it is still one death too many!
And what I didn’t realise is the level of powers the IPCC has got, similar to the cops. They can seize evidence, interview people under caution, surveillance powers and so on. Yet if they have these levels and wide reaching powers (and this was asked by the someone in the audience) why did it take 5 days for the IPCC to get access to Stockwell Tube after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes? Hardwick argued that he took the police to court and though it took 5 days it was a victory as the IPCC won. But what happened to the CCTV in that time? Again, Hardwick maintains he doesn’t believe anything untoward was done….
How can I sum up Hardwick’s speech..? He kept going on about ‘rigorous’, ‘independent’ and ‘robust’ investigations. Following the evidence and seeing where that evidence takes you. Yet there were families of people who have died in police custody, such as Sean Rigg, Brian Douglas and mention as well of Ricky Bishop. The families of Sean Rigg and Brian Douglas don’t believe that justice was done. As the sister of Brian Douglas said “authority kills your loved one, they become the property of the state, and we are left with the IPCC”.. The cops involved in Sean Rigg’s death were not interviewed by the IPCC for 6-7 mths and still key cops involved in his death still haven’t been interviewed. Hardwick answered that it takes time to ‘gather evidence’….
I am not legal person but surely someone involved in a death would be interviewed speedily as evidence goes stale and memories erode. Also, it gives time for cops to ‘collude’ with each other to get their stories straight though Hardwick was quick to maintain that collusion between firearm officers was discontinued but as a solicitor pointed out what about other police officers?
If Hardwick finds it impossible to believe that cops collude and be party to cover-ups then how the hell does he explain miscarriages of justice?
Hardwick came across as someone who can’t argue and someone who is well out of his depth. He never once mentioned racism or state racism. Or show any understanding to Black members of the audience who have experienced racism at the hands of the cops, the disproportionate number of Black people who die in the custody of the state. As one man said what people saw regarding the violent policing of the G20 protests is what Black people have been experiencing for years. And now with the anti-terror legislation disproportionate number of Black and Asian people have been stopped under these new ’sus’ laws by the cops. How does Hardwick perceive that?
Yet Hardwick kept saying that he was trying to understand and see things from others perspectives but from what I saw of him I think he is devoid of any level of understanding. He really needs to drop the rose tinted glasses of the police, because how on earth can you ever be independent, rigorous and robust in getting to the truth?
The IPCC’s remit only includes investigating complaints about individual cops not police tactics such as kettling. But how do you separate the two? It’s Her Majesty Inspectorate of Constabulary who are investigating that and I would urge anyone who witnessed the various tactics used by cops on the G20 protests to get in contact with them.
Another thing about the IPCC is that under law none of the Commissioners can have a police background yet investigators can. Where is the objectivity? Sean Rigg’s family said that the senior investigator from the IPCC was a former cop, he was sacked from the case. The family stated catalogue of errors and flaws committed by the IPCC. Hardwick kept saying that he didn’t know ‘much’ about the case. Well, as head of the IPCC he really should familiarise himself completely with these specific cases of deaths in custody. That’s no excuse!
Yet he said constantly that he wasn’t trying to ‘belittle’ deaths in custody but he was especially when time after time when confronted by the Rigg family about the appalling experiences they have received at the hands of the IPCC he said ‘I don’t know much about the case’.. How belittling can you get!
Just finally, Harwick kept repeating a kind of mantra about the IPCC that it’s better than the old PCA. He kept referring to the IPCC website and how they publish all the reports unlike the PCA. There was this smug self-congratulatory tone from him. He compared Hillsborough to G20 protests (open to public scrutiny re the G20 protests unlike the cover-ups with Hillsborough)… Blair Peach to Jean Charles de Menezes (the report into the shooting was published on the website and open for all to see..unlike the death of Blair Peach where the results of the investigation were never made public). And that it is ‘up to us’ to make up our own minds about the IPCC’s investigations and ‘to weigh-up the evidence’…
I wonder if Hardwick expected the audience to say, ‘Woohoo…you publish your investigations’…But they say little if anything concrete and they smack of cover-ups and premium whitewash (well, they have a £32m budget).
As one man said he felt the IPCC was nothing more than ‘damage control’ for the cops. Frankly, he’s right. After listening to the man who chairs the IPCC, all I heard was defensiveness about the cops and someone flailing around desperate to find excuses but trying so hard to maintain their own illusions in their independence.
Does anyone truly believe that there will be a rigorous, independent and robust investigation into the G20 protests. I don’t and that’s echoed by countless others but hell….the investigations will be published on the IPCC website. Who cares about the content, hey mister Hardwick..??
Another interesting discussion was around Section 136 of the Mental Health Act and the bizarre belief that a police cell is a ‘place of safety’. There have been examples of people who have died in police custody precisely due to this Section. Hardwick said that this is being looked at and hopefully it won’t be a police cell people are sent to but a hospital. To be honest, there are problems with that too but it has taken the powers that be years to finally come around to the basic idea that police cells are not places of safety.
Campaigners around deaths in custody have been saying this for years and so have the mental health user movement and only now various panels of experts are listening possibly because they have no other choice as the evidence is so bleeding obvious!
Oh, and Deborah Glass was at the meeting (fellow IPCC person) but she said nothing….
Lets be serious about this, the police violence caught the IPCC on the hop. It was citizen journalism that blew things wide open, it was the videos on youtube, pix taken on mobile phones and cameras that created this mass awareness of police brutality. It showed the casual brutal unprovoked attack on a man that led to his death. If it wasn’t for the documented images Nick Hardwick (the man of many contradictions…and I am being polite!) wouldn’t be having this prolonged migraine, it woulda just been consigned to a ‘tragic death’ of a man who had a ‘heart attack’ while ‘valiant cops ’ went to his rescue while pelted by protesters.
But we know the truth….
The excuse he gave as well about why he turned up with a police officer to ask for the footage on the Guardian website and to take it down was laughable as well….
Posted by harpymarx 
