‘Police Corruption in the UK- ‘can it be countered?'

By Ian Ross

A critical evaluation of the counter fraud and corruption strategy of a public sector organisation and a discussion to advocate reforms to it that would enhance its effectiveness.

This article will provide an evaluation of a public sector counter fraud and corruption strategy and highlight its strengths and weaknesses, dealing in priority with its weaknesses and with focus on the need to reform it. As a base of understanding we will first summarise the meaning of what constitutes the

‘public sector’ and then detail the defining constituents of its counter corruption strategy, which will be followed by an account of my understanding of the reforms necessary of the counter strategy of my chosen organisation.

In contrast to the private sector, the public sector essentially is funded by the taxpayer. The public sector is made up as an institution of organisations offering public services in differing areas of public amenity support and outputs. A wide range of services make up the public sector; from the National Health Service (NHS), social security and benefits, education and transport, to the police, local government and defence, et al. Public services have emerged from what were previously voluntary tasks by charities and religious organisations. With the growth and expansion and immense legal consolidation, the public sector came to be recognised as the pillars of the state. The key aims are to provide social and welfare support to citizens and consequently large amounts of statutory regulatory and procedurally driven legislation has been passed to both administrate and enforce certain elements of it. An enormous differing and cyclic phenomenon, the public sector attempts to address these issues in terms of how the different services are funded, managed and to whom they are accountable. A definition of the public sector was provided by Jones (2004 p.23) as ‘continually provided goods and services paid for by taxation or other revenues raised by law’.

My chosen public sector organisation is the police force (United Kingdom). One would at least hope that as with all counter fraud and corruption strategies in the public sector, the strategy to counter police corruption would be robust and capable of complete enforcement, as opposed to being a mere theoretical or ‘paper’ policy product. Underlying causes of dissatisfaction as identified by Harrison and Cuneen (2000) is also supported by many academics and writers on this issue, asserted by the quote by Lambert about the inadequacies of the civilian supervisory model:

‘No system, however elaborate, which concentrates on supervision and ex post facto review of police investigations will satisfy the demand that justice will only be seen to be done when the investigation of complaints against the police is taken out of the hands of the police themselves.

Harrison and Cuneen (2000, Liberty p.6.-1.7)

Shaping the discussion to deal with the evaluation of the police corruption strategy, it would first be useful to summarise an account of the meaning of corruption. Defining corruption is relatively simple because a definition for corruption was created in 1889 by reference to the common law offence of bribery and the statutory office committed contrary to Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act 1889, passed to deal with corruption in office which later enabled the Prevention of Corruption Act[s] of 1906 and 1916 which created two new ‘alternate’ offences to deal with bribery committed by Agents or bribes given to Agents. The police force is seen the principle law enforcement organisation with a duty of care and as such ought to be the doyen of trust and integrity.

But the problem of police corruption cannot be explained within just a constricted legal framework and such narrow terms of reference. This is because there are numerous academic definitions of police corruption and equally diverse explanations of what actually constitutes corruption. Some authors centre their explanations of corruption as purely criminal conduct (as defined within the criminal law) whilst others open the debate to much wider topics and methods of corruption, including favouritism and nepotism, abuse of power, racism, bribery, case manipulation (abuse of legal process) malpractice and the use of police informants. Newburn (1999) probed more deeply into the matter of defining police corruption in that police corruption is conduct that is mutually exclusive of actual criminal conduct. For example, stealing would not be corruption but wrongful ethical behaviour, the professional ‘grey areas’ would be. Interestingly therefore Newburn and like-minded authors effectively set a challenge to policy makers in setting out a counter corruption strategy by virtue of the fact that they seek to capture all wrongful behaviour. Conduct or behaviour which could not be easily which was passed off as ‘sharp practice’ or which gives ‘cause for concern’ is swept into the meaning of police corruption – and rightly so. Legislation is not enough and the range of attitudes; even the connivance or tacit tolerance of police corruption from within their own ranks and senior officers, is a facet of the police corruption itself and rankles the public and the public good.

Counter corruption strategy governing and supporting the police force is difficult to identify with any immediacy. This is because the huge range and array of corrupt practices now espoused and referenced by Newburn (those not ‘legislated’ for) along with wider definitions and explanations provided by

Roebuck and Barker (1974) with an open definition and Quinton and Miller (2003) who structured their definition and which made wider connections; to leaking information, obtaining money or sexual favours from the public and then returning to the remit of the criminal law, direct conspiracy with criminals to commit crimes.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is now the principal authority which deals with police corruption. The IPCC has succeeded several establishments, some defined by statute. Predecessors of the IPCC were deemed to be a failure became of low success rates in detecting corruption, added to the manifest problem of police culture which stems a deep distrust and lack of faith in the police investigating themselves. This in turn led to a conclusion of the investigations themselves being questionable and not trusted but becoming also being a defining characteristic of police corruption.

The IPCC was created by the Home Office to investigate and monitor complaints against police. This gives an immediate message of the counter corruption strategy being reactive instead of proactive. Also, notwithstanding its central placing concerning police wrongdoing it is still difficult to see beyond the overall role of the IPCC being a mere facilitator when it comes to forming counter corruption strategy. It is acknowledged that the IPCC have successfully investigated notable cases of corruption and secured eventual criminal prosecutions involving police officers and support staff but one must search extensively and deeply to find a strategy which sets out to marginalise corruption in the police force.

One notable success however for the IPCC was to engage with the Children’s Legal Centre. This led to an updated and hugely improved procedure to deal with complaints from children which even contained a section in the report to identify areas for future improvement (Hamilton and Sherwood: 2006).

 However since the inception of the IPCC as an independent organisation, there is no tangible evidence provided by them that any part of their policy sets the belief that continued and systematic engagement and working strategies will ‘naturally’ help them to create good governance frameworks that imbue both an anti-corruption culture, and help to review and implement policies which will marginalise fraudulent and corrupt behaviour and networked activities. The current strategy of the IPCC provides an impactive image to the public of ‘professional standards’ which are et al, police officers are honest, act with integrity and do not compromise or abuse their position, treat information with respect and access or disclose it only in the proper course of police duties, report and challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues which has fallen below the standards of professional behaviour expected. The last example is probably the most challenging. This is the grey area and in part alludes to ‘whistle blowing’.

The notoriety in the public sector of whistleblowers being hounded, interlinked with the collaboration culture in the public services adds credence to the evidence that the police are more concerned about getting power for themselves than supporting victims of crime. Moreover, the Home Office report on police overtime published in February 2010 shows ‘concern’ about the dubious ways police overtime is effectively contrived and millions of pounds extracted from the public purse in many forces. One particular force where such malpractice was endemic was helpfully anonimised by the Home Office. Thus the IPCC and their counterparts in the National Policing Improvements Agency (NPIA) are badly in need of strengthening because they have done little to dispel the reputation of the senior command and officers of forces having a ‘couldn’t care less attitude’ towards police corruption per se and more importantly, to the victims of it – the taxpayer. Limited understanding of what police corruption can fully consist of, or selective acknowledgement of, or inconsistent dealing with corruption is a culture still indulged by many Chief Constables. This is ably abetted by the cluster of ACPO policy which has closed many doors to justice for victims.

The inevitable effect on a strategy intended to deter corruption is clear to see. If such notions and patterns of behaviour exist yet the force itself remains aloof from the problems. The police commonly state that they are practitioners and ‘leave the law to the lawyers’ holds equal meaning to the entity that the IPCC are viewed as not just having pole responsibility for dealing with police corruption, but also abandoned to its politics, its methods and peculiar influences in why it occurs and the idiom which varies so much that many officers and staff have difficulty understanding that what they are doing is corrupt.

As one finite example the issue of dubious police overtime, the paying of police informants to ‘turn’ criminals into witnesses or even write them out of a case altogether, on these examples only, we must understand that just as a fraudster, when this is happening, the mind which schemes in corruption is in a nigh-on permanent state of denial.

To another example, but in stark contrast to illustrate this point, is the case of the Metropolitan Police commander Ali Dizaei, a corrupt police officer with a long history of corruption of varied serious criminal conduct in the force, including drug dealing and leaking police information to criminals for payment. Sent to prison eventually, yet astonishingly he has not (at the time of writing) been dismissed by the force which time and again, overlooked serious evidence against him because it feared that Dizaei would instinctively and immediately accuse the force of being racist. Dizaei knew he could push the boundaries and how to use the forces’ fear of appearing racist to make it difficult to investigate him. Dizaei rose through the ranks despite severe reservations about his character and conduct, was constantly making loud proclamations about the ‘cancer of racism’ within the force, and with that activity, always poised to sue for discrimination. Investigations into his criminality were halted on the orders of the highest authorities within the force. Dizaei was at one point untouchable, and de-facto could do no wrong.

The Dizaei case is the epitome, the quintessence of institutional police corruption, but a perverse and twisted example because of a feeble police counter corruption attitudes and made worse by a total abandonment of responsibility by the Metropolitan police force as a public sector organisation, and murky political influences. Dizaei believed that he could get away with anything because he was not white, and this case is also, for the purposes of this evaluation, a clear indicator of the near total failure and even refusal by the police and related authorities to pursue any form of counter corruption strategy. Too scared politically event to follow their own processes.

Police corruption in the UK is now so entrenched and widespread within the service that it is now equal in incidence with most third-world countries (Seed and Palmar, 1998) and the strategies to counter it. Key points of the weaknesses of the current IPCC strategy is that the IPCC whilst it investigates well after the fact, is a lustrous purveyor of mission statements, guidance to the public and assurances. In fact the IPCC in its statutory guidance to the police service and police authorities on the handling of complaints presents a dominant point of zero tolerance of discrimination, ‘ensuring a diverse approach’ and clear processes for the public to make complaints. This in fact shows a typically political dominance of police policy, highlighted especially by the Dizaei case. But what is evident also, is that the authorities who lead the counter corruption strategy are fragmented in this regard. There is no overall strategy to include all identifiable corrupt activity and further intricacies and problems can be inferred from the IPCC operational advice note (2009): ‘the police have an obligation to preserve evidence so that it is available for the IPCC to enable it to conduct an effective investigation. At the same time a force should not act in a manner that might compromise the independence of the investigation. ‘ Likewise, the regulations governing the conduct of IPCC investigations, one of which being; ‘Before the arrival of IPCC investigators on the scene [of a crime] police officers shall ensure that the scene is secured in a manner that is consistent with the need to preserve all evidence relevant to the investigation of the complaint.’

(Harrison and Cuneen: 2000).

With that are proven cases of the police officer in London in 2009 who was allegedly responsible for the death of Ian Cousins during the summer disturbances in connection with the UK and global recession.

The police tactics of ‘kettling’ was the central controversy of that incident, but after the incident the

Metropolitan Police claimed that there was no CCTV footage available of the incident when Mr Cousins collapsed and died in the street when assaulted by police officers. One police officer at the centre of that case, PC Simon Harwood was cleared of manslaughter on a majority verdict. This officer had been previously investigated a number of times for alleged violence and misconduct. In a string of incidents Harwood was accused of having punched, throttled, kneed or threatened other suspects while in uniform. One complaint was upheld, yet Harwood was allowed back into the Metropolitan Police - against the advice of the IPCC.

The outrage and inevitable accusation of destroying or suppressing evidence followed (the covering up and closing ranks was the corruption and the IPCC relied on the police who seemingly sabotaged the investigation from the outset). The shooting of Jean Charles De Mendez, not so much the shooting but the police tampering with photographic evidence of the suspect to make him look more like Mendez in a deliberate attempt to mislead a coroners’ court. These incidents along with the preceding points of evaluation, stresses a collective point that the current strategy is deeply flawed and the actual process puts too much trust in the police, ironically instigating an investigation against their own. There is little doubt that the police force needs additional people to address corruption and this reminds us how heuristics in the police force, if not set in firm ethical and foundations will inevitably stray back to police cultural norms of collusion and self-protection.

Successive government have tried and failed, to impose standards of management and accountability such as are taken for granted in the private sector and large parts of the public sector. The last attempt at wholesale change which could have improved the image of the force in corruption cases was prompted by Sir Patrick Sheehy's report in 1994. This was welcomed by many outsiders, but met with complete hostility from the Police Federation and nearly all senior officers. Likewise police authorities are ineffectual monitors of their local forces, so there is little chance of ferreting out corruption as the constant inner cyclic political forces at play are never still long enough to settle the problems of police corruption and ‘strategy’ successes are sporadic hits on corrupt officers whilst day-to-day corruption is widespread and constant.

In my evaluation also, there is a chronic weakness in middle management. It can be dismaying that the response of police officers to almost any problem is to invent a new form for solving it. They work in a fantastically bureaucratised system, in some ways forced upon them by centrally imposed targets, so one could even argue that certain elements of police corruption are a natural product of the organisation and the pressures it creates.

Societal shifts will also form the crux of recommendations of reforms of the counter corruption strategy, meaning advances in technology, creating new opportunities of corruption and sophisticated criminal activity meets firmly with the police force day-to-day; that is in the world that is characterised by employment insecurity and the primacy of economic goals, drivers of corruption are as diverse as the acts themselves.

A standard and consistent (compulsory) external training programme should be provided to all involved in the police complaints processes. The training should raise the standard of understanding the civil against criminal outcome dilemma in dealing with corruption cases, namely if the conduct warrants a criminal case or the case is disposed of by other resolutions and case outcomes. This area is the one most often confused at present and misunderstood to do nothing at all. An overriding ‘police corruption Act’ would be necessary with a dominant regularly function (as per the current Bribery Bill 2010) to impose conformance of strategy in reporting corruption and an offence of negligently allowing or permitting corruption to take place. But more importantly, behind that, to remove the excuses and loop holes exploited by senior police officers as do politicians, about the rules not being clear and that it is someone else’s problem (such as the IPCC who do not get the precise co-operation they ought to have). But of key importance, a statutory requirement to overcome the nonsense identified by the IPCC themselves concerning the obligation to preserve evidence for the IPCC. Such police conduct suppressing evidence and incapacitating IPCC or other investigations as in the De Mendes and Cousins cases, should constitute criminal offences in their own right. This is because at present the police cannot be trusted to support the IPCC and merely use the IPCC as a fake flag of independence in having complaints handled – especially complaints about corruption.

Finally, overblown political dominance should be a specific target of deliberation. Political agendas should not be allowed to rule over justice.

REFERENCES

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IPCC operational advice note (July 2009) extract from the new IPCC Manual of Guidance issued on the 13th July 2009

Hamilton, C., and Sherwood, S., (2006). Complaints from children: the new police complaints procedure.

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Harrison, J and Cuneen, M.,(2000). An Independent Police Complaints Commission. The National Council for Civil Liberties.

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