Important note: This is an archive of the website that was formerly at www.morrisinquiry.gov.uk. It is being hosted on the MPA website for archival purposes only and may contain out-of-date information.

This resource is from the Transcripts section. This section contains a transcript of the private session with DD, on 19 April 2004.

Sections available here:

• Transcript of private session: Mr DD
  • Questions by Sir Anthony Burden
  • Questions by Miss Weekes

This transcript is also available with original line and page numbering.

Transcript of private session: Mr DD

The name of this witness has been changed, and his submission redacted, to avoid the identification of the individuals and any third parties.

Monday, 19 April 2004
2.00 pm

Sir William Morris: Mr D, welcome, and good afternoon, please make yourself comfortable, have some water if you so wish.

If you are ready, then I will make a start. What is your preference, Mr D or D?

Mr D: D is fine.

Sir William Morris: Well, D, thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry this afternoon, and for giving us some evidence. We are very grateful to you for letting us have your written submission, which we have found extremely helpful.

We do appreciate that for some of our witnesses, this process can seem to be somewhat daunting, so I thought it might just be helpful if I set out, very briefly, how we propose to conduct the hearing this afternoon.

But first, let me introduce myself and the other members of the panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. As you can see, there are two other members of the panel. On my right is Sir Anthony Burden, also recently retired, as Chief Constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a very long and distinguished career in the police service; and on my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC. Anesta is an eminent barrister, she sits as a recorder and as a part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

D, as you know, we have been asked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent inquiry into professional standards and workplace matters within the Metropolitan Police Service. Quite deliberately, we have taken our focus as the MPS as an organisation, and not the individuals who make up the organisation. Nevertheless, we need to hear from individuals in order to understand how they are affected by the policies, the practices and the procedures which govern the Metropolitan Police Service.

Although we are a public inquiry, we have decided to conduct this hearing and some others, where we hear from individuals, in private; the reasoning is that we are very keen to hear from individuals like your good self, who have had problems with the way that the MPS operates, but we also understand that some people might feel somewhat reluctant to answer questions if they feel that the MPS is lurking as the fly on the proverbial wall, listening in, so I hope you will find the arrangements that we have made helpful, and that you feel confident to speak to us freely this afternoon.

But let me say that, although we are meeting in private today, as I have said, we are, in essence, a public inquiry, and that means it may be necessary for us to seek further clarification from others about what you have said or about your written submission, and anything that you tell us today falls into that category.

If we do decide to seek further clarification, we will do so without any identification of yourself, and also, let me assure you that, if we do decide to seek further clarification, we will do it in a way which does not cause you any inconvenience, or if it does, the least possible inconvenience, and we will not do so without your permission.

The inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial, it is not adversarial. We are here to enquire and to secure information and facts. We are keen to enquire into those issues which are raised by our terms of reference, so that we can make the appropriate recommendation for good practice, and to make things better within the Met, and that takes us away from criticising the individuals; we are here to improve rather than to destroy.

We have no wish, D, to go back over the details of what has happened to you, because we have read your submission very carefully, and we have some clear ideas about the events.

What we want to do is to ask you some questions which will enable us to draw on your experience to facilitate and enhance our work. At the end of these introductory comments, one of my colleagues, in this instance, Sir Anthony, will start with some questions, and when he has completed the questions, if we have any supplementary, Miss Weekes and myself, then obviously we will put those to you.

When we have finished our questions, I will offer you the opportunity to make a brief closing comment.

Let me just draw to your attention that a transcript is being taken, so that we have a proper record of the evidence that each witness provides for us. And we are hoping to publish this transcript, together with your written submission, on our website in the next few days, but we will only do that after we have taken out references to your name and other personal details in order to be sure that it contains no information which identifies you or other individuals.

Before I invite Sir Anthony to start the questions on behalf of all of us, could I just ask you, for the benefit of the transcript notes, to formally introduce yourself to the Inquiry?

Mr D: I am DD. I am a suspended police constable who was attached to [Redacted] Police Station.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed. I will hand you straight over to Sir Anthony for the questions.

Questions by Sir Anthony Burden

Sir Anthony Burden: Mr D, good afternoon.

Mr D: Good afternoon.

Sir Anthony Burden: You confirm that you are still suspended?

Mr D: I am still suspended, yes.

Sir Anthony Burden: And as I understand it, pending a discipline hearing?

Mr D: On [Redacted] at the moment.

Sir Anthony Burden: Right, okay. So because of that, D, I will not ask you to comment on any of the circumstances directly relating to your case.

Mr D: I am grateful for that.

Sir Anthony Burden: I will just briefly outline the chronology, because one of the issues I want to look at is the delay factor involved, and the questions I would like to put to you, and the views we would like to seek from you, are, firstly, around delay; secondly, the use of suspension in your case; the release of information to the media; and welfare and support, that has or has not been provided to you during your period of suspension.

Now the incident from which suspension has arisen occurred in [Redacted], when a suspect with a knife was being chased and collided with an unmarked police vehicle and was injured as a consequence. As a result, he made various allegations about the way he had been treated at the scene, and you were one of [Redacted] officers to receive a form 163, that is a regulation 9 notice.

Since then, you have been suspended from duty as I understand it, and you did appear at the Old Bailey charged with malfeasance in public office, I believe, but that charge was dismissed.

Mr D: Yes.

Sir Anthony Burden: You now await disciplinary proceedings which you very kindly already advised us is due to take place, you hope, some time in [Redacted], if there is no further delay.

Mr D: That is correct.

Sir Anthony Burden: So looking towards that anticipated date, it has been over [Redacted] years since this incident, the DPS has been investigating this matter for over three years.

Mr D: That is correct.

Sir Anthony Burden: And you have been suspended now for over 17 months.

Mr D: Over 19 months now.

Sir Anthony Burden: Right. Can I then firstly ask you: in relation to the time that it has taken to resolve this matter, and the delay which has occurred – you say in your submission that you feel the investigation has been handled by DPS in a slow, inefficient and unfair way. Would you like to enlarge on your views in that area?

Mr D: Yes, I will. As you previously mentioned, I do not really want to discuss the case too much, and it is not entirely the fault of the DPS that the investigation has been going on for [Redacted] years, because it did not come to their knowledge until three plus years ago, so they have not been investigating it for [Redacted] years.

Sir Anthony Burden: But they have been investigating it for over three years?

Mr D: Yes, I think three years and a couple of months, I do not have the exact date. But it is not the most complicated case, in their words; it relates to video evidence, and that one colleague, who was looking after the prisoner/injured person at the time, made threats to him, and it is alleged that other officers, who are on camera, heard those threats. That is the basis of the allegation against me.

In the words of the DPS: the evidence rests on the video. They do not even – to the Old Bailey, they did not even call the victim. He was not required, because it is video evidence.

So I think in all, they had four witnesses, four prosecution witnesses: the man who made the video, the officer investigating the investigation; Detective Sergeant [Redacted]; and a detective constable who did the transcribing of the video; and Chief Inspector [Redacted] from [Redacted], who identified us from the video.

Sir Anthony Burden: I take it you have done nothing to contribute to the delay?

Mr D: No.

Sir Anthony Burden: You have tried to speed things along?

Mr D: Some of the delay has not been the DPS' fault; we were suspended in October, and various court appearances for pleas and directions, et cetera – we were given a date at the Old Bailey for a two-week trial of, I think, [Redacted] April. We got to court on that date, and there was not a court available, and then it was subsequently put back to July, so that would not necessarily be their fault.

But if they were prepared to go to the Old Bailey in July, and it is not the most complicated case in my mind, and to their mind, why was there a delay between July and December in deciding what to do with us?

Sir Anthony Burden: As you say, the prosecution case was prepared for Crown Court, so everything should be in place for –

Mr D: Nothing has changed.

Sir Anthony Burden: Have you been kept up-to-date during your period of suspension with the various developments as they have occurred?

Mr D: To some extent. I mean, that is not the DPS' job to do that.

Sir Anthony Burden: You do not think it is?

Mr D: Well, you are made to feel on the outside by the DPS – I mean, my impression of the DPS is they are out to get us. The Metropolitan Police is a different matter, the Chief Superintendent and everyone at our home division, which is [Redacted], has been very good to us.

Sir Anthony Burden: So your impression is that the DPS, although it is part of the Metropolitan Police, is actually outside in the way that they operate?

Mr D: I believe there is a different agenda. I believe they have a different agenda. I mean, charter standards are for everyone, are they not? Everyone has got charter standards, and they have got their own charter standards. That is my belief now.

Sir Anthony Burden: But there are very specific regulations, and in your case, of course, the allegations were initially of a criminal nature, so there are controls within criminal law as to the way investigations should be undertaken. Do you not feel that the DPS comply with those regulations?

Mr D: Oh, they complied with them, yes, but there is an undercurrent; no one will actually say, but there is an undercurrent – I can only speak for this particular investigation, but there is a political agenda. It has been on the television, I mean, one of the tabloids compared it to the [Redacted]saga. Well, I do not know if you have seen it, but ...

Sir Anthony Burden: Okay. If you look at the initial allegation, and the part that it is alleged you and other colleagues played in this, do you feel that the way that the Inquiry has been handled has been proportionate, that you have been – each of you have been dealt with dependent on the circumstances of the case as it relates to you, or that you have all been sort of swept up in the sort of general seriousness –

Mr D: Oh, I do not condone the officer making those threats. I have been in the job – well, I have been on the street 13 years, and I have been in the job nearly [Redacted]years now. I still cannot understand why he did it. I have never heard anything like it. I mean, it is not a common perception amongst – I mean, neighbours, friends, they seem to think that –

Sir Anthony Burden: But if I can just interrupt there, if there is an officer responsible for saying what the complainant alleges was said –

Mr D: There is no doubt he did say it.

Sir Anthony Burden: Then the fact that other officers were present at the time, have you any sort of feelings around the fact that you have been dealt with in exactly the same way, and no one has sort of sat down and decided that there are different levels of seriousness maybe, here.

Mr D: I have no problem with having appeared at the Old Bailey, I have no problem – I mean, I have investigated criminal offences, and I have no problem with having been charged and gone to the Old Bailey.

If I can just go into some extent, we got to the eighth day of the trial, and the main defendant who made the threats, on the advice, I assume, of his barrister, changed his plea, and with that, the Crown Prosecution Service offered no further evidence against us. I mean, the legal advice was to accept it, and we were found – the jury were directed by the judge to find us not guilty.

Now we did not really have a lot of choice in that, I mean, there was [Redacted] other officers involved, and it was very, you know: here is the circumstance, but with hindsight, I wish we had said, "No, let us finish the trial, and get a proper result". Now the DPS are saying, "Well no, they were not found not guilty, it is a technical not guilty, now we are entitled to discipline". So to me, they are having two bites of the cherry.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I move on to the use of suspension in your case? You have already said it is a serious matter concerning the threats that were made by the officer concerned. Do you feel that suspension in your particular case was justified?

Mr D: Initially, I did not want to be suspended, but we were told from the very beginning we could not be out on the street, we could not be in the evidential chain – albeit that after being suspended, I went to court several times to give evidence in cases, at magistrates' courts – which would have meant I would have been behind a desk; to be quite honest, after 25 years' shift work, 12 years of them for [Redacted]and 13 years early, lates and nights in the job, I would rather be off, to be honest.

Sir Anthony Burden: But do you think it is right, in terms of the people of London –

Mr D: Oh, as a taxpayer, it is disgusting.

Sir Anthony Burden: – that decisions are made to suspend officers?

Mr D: It is absolutely disgusting that we are still off. If they want to suspend us, suspend us, but every month – I am only speaking for myself here, but there are [Redacted] of us. Bar one, [Redacted] of us are ten-year plus officers. There is a lack of experienced officers on the streets. The other officer, during the suspension, has done his promotion and will be a sergeant if we go back to work, upon his return.

Oh, neighbours, friends, family, other officers, nobody can understand, but then, it is taxpayers' money. The Metropolitan Police is not spending its own money, is it?

Sir Anthony Burden: But there could, you feel, be alternatives to suspension?

Mr D: Oh, there are alternatives. I could be shuffling paper in a desk, could I not? I could wash cars, if they wanted. But it is not my – you very quickly realise that you are a number. I am PC [Redacted] at [Redacted], I have no influence over what is going on. I cannot make things happen any quicker. I mean, the Chief Superintendent, Mr [Redacted], at [Redacted] – I do not know the finances, but he is in charge of [Redacted] square files miles of London, the policing of it, it must run into millions.

He phones me up on welfare calls and asks me what is going on. Well, what do I know? He does not know. He has tried to get us back to work. It is a big bureaucratic nightmare.

Sir Anthony Burden: And you sort of see it that way, that it is a machine, once the machine gets rolling –

Mr D: I have talked to other colleagues, and there is this word – I know you will know it, "the job". I made a comment, "Oh, the job is after us", and he said, "Who is the job? You are the job". When you think of a police officer, you think of a uniformed police officer on the street. There is not many of them about, there is not many people who want to do that. Most of them sit behind desks.

Sir Anthony Burden: You will not be aware of this, and this is no surprise that you will not, but there is a report that has come out concerning an allegation and an investigation in another force, this is known as The Taylor Report, and what Mr Taylor is recommending is that there be periodic reviews of investigations such as yours to see whether the investigation is proportionate, whether it should still continue, and to weigh the evidence that is actually being gathered, to see whether the whole thing should continue, basically.

I mean, would you welcome that? Would that assist in cases like yours, do you think?

Mr D: I would welcome someone – we will call him a member of the public – having a look at it, because police officers – I mean, I have been there. You have arrested someone, and you are investigating, you want them charged; that is the nature of being a police officer, is it not? You know, I can understand officers at the DPS wanting us charged and getting the best result they can, because I know their perspective, but it is the timeframe, is it not?

Sir Anthony Burden: I mean, you have already said, this inordinate delay, which impacts on the fact that you are suspended for a longer period, the cost in resource terms and the cost in money terms to the people of London and to the Metropolitan Police.

In this process which you describe as a machine, would there be value, do you think, in (a) setting time limits on investigations, so that – in the same way as you would with a criminal case, there would have to be limited on the time it took to investigate the matter that you are involved in; and (b) there ought to be somebody, internal or external to the Met, who is able to bring DPS to task if they are not complying with those time limits? Would that be helpful?

Mr D: There should be a time limit, yes, most definitely. I mean, if I had been at [Redacted] investigating this type of investigation, and I had taken three plus years – well, I would have another complaint, I think, and quite rightly so.

Sir Anthony Burden: But that would only be any good if there was something that actually brought statutory pressure to bear; I mean, it would have to be something that was codified, and impact upon the DPS, so that it meant something.

Mr D: Yes. Well, I am really only interested in my case, to be quite honest.

Sir Anthony Burden: Of course, absolutely, yes.

Mr D: You know, the DPS, it is alluded to – I mean, I have no documentary evidence of it, but there is pressure to get something out of us, and the longer it goes on, the more we have got to be found guilty, I think.

I mean, I do not know if you have seen the charges, but one of them is basically that we were at the scene and I talk about football, I am talking to a colleague about [Redacted]. I mean ...

Sir Anthony Burden: Okay. Can I move on, then, to the release of information to the media, and you comment on this? Do you feel that has been prejudicial to your case?

Mr D: I do not blame the Metropolitan Police for that, because, to some extent, that was out of their hands. I mean, members of the public, the man whose CCTV camera took the video has made £[Redacted]plus out of this videotape.

Sir Anthony Burden: Oh, it is not CCTV, this is –

Mr D: Oh, it is from a private residence, I am sorry if I did not make that clear. He withheld it, because there was a criminal investigation against the male we are calling "victim", who was threatened, and it was all held up for that. So to some extent, that is not down to the Met.

Sir Anthony Burden: So your issue is not around any press releases coming from the Metropolitan Police as far as you are aware.

Mr D: No, I mean, Sir John Stevens did make a recording on the night that the complaint came – the weekend that the incident was shown on the television, which could be deemed prejudicial –

Sir Anthony Burden: That was just an issue of timing, basically?

Mr D: I mean, the media got the tape from a member of the public, so there is no blame there.

Sir Anthony Burden: You have already mentioned welfare; how would you rate the welfare support that you have been given whilst you have been suspended?

Mr D: I do not know the practice of how the welfare works, but from chief superintendent, superintendent and on my own team that I worked with at [Redacted], excellent; absolutely excellent.

Sir Anthony Burden: That is reassuring, thank you. Coming from your experience during this investigation, if there was one thing that you would want us to put into the report to try and make a difference, what would it be?

Mr D: I think the timescale would be the most important.

Sir Anthony Burden: So anything we could do to make recommendations that would ensure that enquiries were completed in a timely way, which would reduce the period of suspension, if suspension was necessary, and get officers before discipline hearings quickly, that is what you would put as your number one priority?

Mr D: Yes, because albeit it has been quite pleasurable having 20 months off; I mean, my squash has improved no end, and my social life. Our lives are on hold; I mean, one of – I refer to the [Redacted]there, because we have looked after each other, and we socialise, et cetera. One of them is coming up to mid-30s, and they are thinking about another child; well, we do not know if we have got a job.

Sir Anthony Burden: I understand.

Mr D: If they do not want us, I would rather they said. I was [Redacted] when I was suspended; I am [Redacted] now. My job prospects are diminishing as we go on. Do what you are going to do and let us get our lives back.

Sir Anthony Burden: All right, D, thank you very much indeed.

Sir William Morris: Thank you, Sir Anthony. D, I will ask Miss Weekes to lead one or two questions to you.

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Can I follow up, because your most important consideration is the timescale, you want it to be dealt with quicker, you want to know what is happening, so you can make plans with your life. Can I, in respect of that, just follow up on a question that you were asked by Sir Anthony? He has suggested time limits, and you agreed with that. In some cases, it may be difficult to put a time limit, because it might be complicated.

Mr D: I can only speak for my – this is not complicated.

Miss Weekes: No, exactly, but I just want to perhaps explore the timescale issue, because it is important that we get your views, all of you that come to talk to us.

Let us suppose that the department of professional standards had to give a periodic account of what they were doing, every month or every two months or whatever, they would come along and say, "Well, this is how far we have got; this is what we can disclose to you, this is what we cannot disclose"; would you welcome periodic communication about your investigation?

Mr D: We have had no – I have had no contact from the DPS at all. My solicitor gets disclosure of evidence, but there is no contact from the DPS.

Miss Weekes: So do I take it that, if you wanted to know what was going on, you could in fact ask your solicitor?

Mr D: That would be my way, or the Federation representative.

Miss Weekes: Are the Federation reasonably happy about the amount of disclosure and communication they get acting on behalf of police officers?

Mr D: I think you would probably have to ask them, but I think my Federation representative is [Redacted], a very experienced representative; I believe he has to chase – this is only what I believe, he has to contact them, and the problem, seems to me, with the DPS is it is a step on the career ladder.

If you are ambitious and you want to go up the ladder, it is good to have been in the DPS or the old complaints department, as I know it, so it is good to have been attached there, so I do not think people – they do not seem to stay there long. I mean, I might be totally wrong about this, but we are on our second investigating officer now, so you have one investigating officer, who was transferred before the trial at the Old Bailey, and then the detective sergeant was transferred as well, but he attended the trial at the Old Bailey, because he had been investigating it throughout, and then after the trial, they had both gone, so we waited for a new investigating officer; well, he has got to pick up the thread of the investigation.

Miss Weekes: Okay, thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: D, that concludes the range of questions that we wanted to put to you, but you will recall, during my introductory comments, I said that before you leave us, we would provide you with the opportunity to make a closing statement, if you so wished. If you do wish to make that statement, then the opportunity is now yours.

Mr D: I think I have said all I needed to say. Just thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: No, all the thanks which is due is from us to your good self, and that is on behalf of all three of us. We want to thank you for your submission, your responses this afternoon, and for the contribution that you are making to our work.

Mr D: Well, thank you very much for inviting me.

On this website:

• Evidence: DD
  Evidence provided by and documents referred to by DD, in his appearance at the Inquiry.