UK Channel 4 TV, broadcast 16th September 1999.
BENDING THE RULES
How to be a successful copper
In the 1950s, the general population of Britain believed that the police consisted
of individuals who played by the rules, men whose word could be trusted and counted
on. But by the 1970s, the nation knew that the police were nothing of the sort.
Corruption,
it would turn out, was everywhere. Essentially it boiled down to two types: being
bent for the job and being bent for yourself.
Many policemen felt that, to be a successful
copper, you had to be prepared to bend the rules, perhaps by falsifying evidence
or by lying under oath. This was known as being 'bent for the job' – doing anything
just to catch villains.
During the 1960s, the force as a whole believed that, if a
copper went to court without a confession from the defendant, the case would be thrown
out. This led to a confession-at-any-cost attitude, one which, as the years wore
on, would result in nothing short of physical torture.
Police stations could be intimidating
places. Suspects were brought in and held for days, cut off from family and friends,
even from legal help. During this time, they could fall victim to physical attack
from police officers – though not in ways that would leave visible marks. At the
end of this ordeal, a confession would often be dictated by a policeman for the suspect
to sign.
Something rotten
In 1963, two Sheffield detectives were convicted of assaulting
a suspect with a rhino whip. Yet, at the time, they could unashamedly justify their
use of violence and expect support from their colleagues and others. There were no
pressure groups to question the police, and the legal system would often turn a blind
eye.
The seeds of change were sown in 1972 when three teenage boys, one with a mental
age of eight, were convicted of the murder of a transvestite prostitute in Catford,
south London. Revelations of their treatment at the hands of the police – isolation,
bullying, coercion – before they had all signed confessions caused an outcry, and
the home secretary ordered an investigation that eventually led to a pardon in 1975
and a royal commission.
However, it would still be almost a decade before any Act
of Parliament outlawed the worst practices of interrogation. A succession of miscarriages
of justice - the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, the Carl Bridgewater Four and
others - were then revealed, from which the police have never fully recovered.
Seriously
out of control
At the same time as police interrogation techniques were coming under
the spotlight, armed robberies were increasing alarmingly. During the 1970s and 1980s,
the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was tackling this trend in equally alarming
ways.
The methods that some officers employed went beyond slipping the odd shotgun
cartridge case under a mattress or planting a balaclava in a suspect’s car. Once
they had people in their custody, they went much further than the average citizen
would imagine could happen in a British police station.
For instance, in 1982, when
Jack Pender was arrested and locked in a cell, another inmate, Derek Tredaway, told
him about the police practice of ‘bagging’: a suspect would be handcuffed to a chair
and a plastic bag placed over his head; he would suffocate until he agreed to sign
a concocted confession. [Image] Two years later, in 1984, the new Police and Criminal
Evidence Act (PACE) put a stop to unfair interviews - now they would all have to
be audiotaped. Tredaway, after spending nine years in prison, won his appeal against
his conviction because of the way that his confession had been obtained. He was awarded
£50,000 damages but died shortly after.
In 1989, Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear was
sent to investigate members of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad. His concern
at what he found was so profound that he took the unprecedented step of disbanding
the squad altogether.
Bent for yourself
But there is one kind of corruption that can
never be legislated against: the act of bending the rules to obtain money for yourself.
Thirty
years ago, crooks might bribe CID officers to have their charges reduced, evidence
mislaid or even the charges dropped. The sharing out of stolen goods between officers
at a police station was another favourite. And if you didn’t like it, you could very
quickly find yourself out of favour with your police colleagues.
Some of the most
blatant corruption surfaced in London’s Soho in the 1970s. Investigations revealed
that pornographers were giving some officers backhanders with a present-day value
of £20,000 a month.
The man to tackle this corruption was Robert Mark. His crusade
against it didn’t net a huge number of convictions, but it did coincide with the
early retirement or resignation of nearly 500 officers.
Mark set up a squad known
as A10 to which anybody, including coppers themselves, could blow the whistle on
bent policemen. But faced by a culture in which no one snitches on his mate, A10
was in a hopeless position. Now it has become CIB3 – 'the untouchables' – and doesn’t
wait for whistleblowers, but instead proactively seeks out corruption.
But is the
use of entrapment to lure policemen into corruption any better than the old days
of bending the rules? What is certain is that it is no easier now than it was 30
years ago to secure a conviction against a bent copper. The culture a new recruit
signs up to is one of ambiguities, and detectives know how to cover their tracks.
Despite the best intentions of the top ranks, the bent copper will always be with
us.
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