Quality | 2009.11.14
TSG complaints: suffused by lack of will | Fiona Murphy
The police complaints procedure needs to be investigated as much as the Met\'s riot squad
In September a mother was called to a south London police station following the arrest of her teenage son on a charge of stealing a bike. The boy had never been in trouble before, and had borrowed the bike from a friend with the friend\'s permission; his mother assumed that she was attending to explain the mistake. She arrived in the custody suite to find that her son had a bruised and swollen face and was holding an evidential bag containing the broken fragments of his teeth.
He alleged that a sergeant in the Territorial Support Group (TSG), the Metropolitan police\'s specialist riot squad, had struck him with such force that he had been knocked to the ground. The mother had two requests: that the sergeant be arrested; and photographs be taken of her son\'s injuries. She left the police station without either being addressed. Two months later the officer, who her son had identified, has not even been interviewed.
This is a typical story of how the police respond to complaints of violence, and tells us all we need to know about how a culture of impunity has developed in the TSG. Figures obtained by the Guardian reveal that, despite receiving more than 5,000 complaints in the past four years, only nine were "substantiated" following investigation.
But recorded complaints are the tip of the iceberg. According to the most recent statistics from the British Crime Survey, only 10% of people who are "really annoyed" with the police go on to record a formal complaint. If the Met were genuinely concerned with ensuring the accountability of its officers, it would treat each complaint with great respect in appreciation of the fact that most incidents will not be brought to its attention. But as these figures demonstrate, complainants are treated contemptuously by a system that affords them no real prospect of achieving the vindication they seek.
Earlier this year the Met paid £60,000 in damages to 34-year-old Babar Ahmad , and made unprecedented admissions that he had been punched, kicked, stamped on and strangled by officers during his arrest at his home in Tooting, south London. It has been particularly shocking to learn from this case that even when several members of the public complain against the same rogue group of TSG officers, no decisive action is taken. Of over 70 separate complaints recorded against the group of officers involved in the assault on Ahmad only one was substantiated, and no further investigation was undertaken.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and the Met appear to be engaged in a wilful failure to acknowledge the cogency and seriousness of complaint patterns against individual officers and, perhaps more significantly, groups of officers working in concert. Ten months after the Met commissioner\'s admissions in relation to Babar Ahmad\'s civil litigation, no officer has faced disciplinary or criminal sanction – despite several refusing to give evidence.
The ineffectiveness of police disciplinary procedures was analysed at several points during the 1990s, and the political response was the establishment of the IPCC. And yet, despite a surge in the number of complaints recorded, the percentage of substantiated complaints has remained static.
The reasons are clear: the commission continues to rely upon poor-quality local police investigations and adopts a decidedly "arm\'s length" approach to its supervisory and management responsibilities. In consequence, it has failed to identify the inadequacies in those investigations at a sufficiently early stage to have any prospect of remedying the evidential deficiencies. This formal system is permeated by a lack of will, and the outcomes stand in marked contrast to the redress achieved by individual victims on their own account in the civil courts.
Compensation claims are a flawed and inadequate response and have proven wholly ineffective in the face of oppressive and discriminatory abuse of powers by the TSG. Officers continue to enjoy an effective immunity from criminal and disciplinary sanction.
What appears to be lost in the response of the Met commissioner and the IPCC to public complaints is an acknowledgment that unchecked abuse of police powers undermines the effectiveness of policing itself. Victims and their representatives can achieve only a limited impact, and the responsibility must be assumed by those whose responsibility it ultimately is.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]e-tsg-compaints-procedure-ipcc
