BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 4

TRANSCRIPT OF “FILE ON 4” – “BENT COPS?”

CURRENT AFFAIRS GROUP

TRANSMISSION: Tuesday 12th

January 2016 2000 – 2040

REPEAT: Sunday 17th

January 2016 1700 - 1740

REPORTER: Allan Urry

PRODUCER: Sally Chesworth

EDITOR: David Ross

PROGRAMME NUMBER: PMR602/16VQ5738

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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT

COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING

AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL

SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

“FILE ON 4”

Transmission: Tuesday 12th

January 2016

Repeat: Sunday 17th

January 2016

Producer: Sally Chesworth

Reporter: Allan Urry

Editor: David Ross

MUSIC

BAILEY: I’m Paul Bailey. I’m a serving Detective Constable

with Greater Manchester Police and I investigate murders, serious and organised crime,

money laundering – the most serious criminality that occurs.

URRY: A serving detective accuses his own police force of

criminal behaviour.

BAILEY: I’ve come to speak to you today because no

investigation has taken place and I’ve literally been stonewalled. The public needs to know

what’s going on.

URRY: He says he’s gathered evidence alleging corruption and

victimisation by a unit within the force against other police officers. He’s not alone. Other

officers say they’ve been unfairly targeted, ending up sacked or in jail.

BUTTRESS: You rock the boat, you annoy sufficient people in

positions of power, this is the consequence. I have ended up out of a job and this is where it’s

landed me.

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URRY: Police have a duty to root out corruption within their

ranks, but have Greater Manchester gone too far? In an interview with File on 4, the Chief

Constable says he’s trying to find out, but standards must be upheld.

HOPKINS: Would your listeners want an officer who has influence

in this organisation, who is deliberately dishonest, to be serving as a police officer? I don’t

think they would.

SIGNATURE TUNE

ACTUALITY WITH FLOORBOARDS

URRY: So this is the carpet coming up?

RAZAQ: Yeah, that is the carpet coming up.

URRY: Pretty standard floorboards here.

RAZAQ: Yeah, standard floorboards.

URRY: Are those the piping, yes?

RAZAQ: That’s the piping that was repaired, and if you see now

…

URRY: And I can see the repaired joint there.

RAZAQ: That was a ….

URRY: Mohammed Razaq had a burst pipe in his house. It

caused quite a bit of damage.

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RAZAQ: So the water had leaked from here and got into the

dining room, come out of the dining room chandelier and then gone into the kitchen - the

kitchen is below here - and had gone through the spotlights. Every single spotlight ….

URRY: That leak at his home in Bolton started a process that

would land him in jail. Mr Razaq was a serving police inspector of more than thirty years

standing.

RAZAQ: My time in service has been a really positive time. I

had a totally unblemished record within the police service. I’ve got a number of citations of

merits, so I had no problems whatsoever.

URRY: As an Asian officer and neighbourhood inspector,

Mr Razaq’s role was community engagement, sometimes helping to ease tensions in diverse

areas of Bolton. He was also fronting recruitment campaigns for Greater Manchester Police.

But, as he neared the end of his time in service, he got into a row with his employer. At the

time, his division had one inspector too many, so he was asked to perform a different role and

join a response unit. He regarded this as a demotion and argued there were less experienced,

younger candidates who would be more suitable for the move. But that was rejected. This

rumbled on. Eventually, Mr Razaq believed he was being singled out because of his race -

and said so. After that, things got difficult.

RAZAQ: The point that I thought things were getting really

serious was when I was accused of taking two days annual leave eighteen months previously

without having submitted an annual leave form. They were accusing me of the theft of two

days’ pay.

URRY: A criminal offence?

RAZAQ: Yes, allegedly a criminal offence, that that was

dishonesty and that that was theft. And that was where I knew that they were obviously after

me for something. I had taken the annual leave, but I had submitted a rest days in lieu form,

which are days that are owed to you when you have worked on your rest days to help the

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RAZAQ cont: organisation out and they’ve accumulated on your rest

days in lieu database. They had not checked the rest days in lieu database, had only checked

the annual leave database.

URRY: Mohammed Razaq made a formal complaint about the

way the matter was handled. It was resolved. But he’d been shaken by the accusations, and

because he was eligible for retirement, decided he would leave. On the day he made that

announcement, he got a surprise visit.

RAZAQ: The doors burst open and four officers came in and one

of them told me to stand up and stand against the wall, quite disrespectfully arrested me on

suspicion of perverting the cause of justice and misconduct in public office.

URRY: In relation to what though?

RAZAQ: At that time, they’d only mentioned that they’d

arrested me for misconduct in a public office and perverting the cause of justice and gave no

reason.

URRY: Later it emerged it was about a suspect accused of tax

crimes by HMRC, but on bail to the Bolton division. Mr Razaq says the man had been

asking police officers for advice about bail conditions, because he believed his were being

abused by tax investigators. Those he approached included Inspector Razaq, a custody

officer and a Chief Inspector. Mr. Razaq’s account is that he told the man to get legal advice

if he felt his rights were being affected, and argue it in court. The suspect apparently did so,

and his conditions were lifted by the court. But Inspector Razaq found himself on bail

accused of corruption offences. Greater Manchester said he was being investigated in a

wider enquiry. Detectives from the internal Counter Corruption Unit were leading it. They’re

part of the force’s Professional Standards Branch. The Branch deals with, amongst other

matters, internal discipline, and the CCU carries out covert operations investigating criminal

allegations, as part of its work. During this investigation, his home in Bolton was raided.

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RAZAQ: Well, it was really early in the morning, half past six in

fact. My wife was in the lounge, and as you can see, we have a big bay window onto the

main road, and she could see a number of people were outside of the house. She thought they

were police officers. She was panicking, she was out of breath, very, very worried.

URRY: Tell me what you’re doing. You’re coming down the

stairs then, are you?

RAZAQ: Yeah, I then run down the stairs with my pyjamas on.

When I open the door, it’s police officers that I recognise. Now all the neighbours can see

what’s going on, so they then show me a warrant and say that they’ve come to search the

house again. They come in, they enter, they’re stood in this lobby and one of the officers

then tells me that I am again being arrested.

URRY: Why so many police officers turning up?

RAZAQ: Well, I couldn’t understand myself. Documents,

computers, everything had gone.

URRY: Mr Razaq argues police were out to get him. And he

wasn’t the only one who thought so. In accordance with usual practice, he’d been assigned a

police welfare officer, a Chief Inspector called John Buttress. Mr Buttress certainly had

concerns about the way the inquiry into the Inspector was being handled.

BUTTRESS: I didn’t think the organisation was treating him fairly.

He was a police officer with something like 34 years’ service. As far as I’m aware, he’d been

arrested for something which there had been no previous indication of behaviour like that in

his previous 30 odd years in the force. It seemed he was being treated in a very strange way

by the Professional Standards Branch. Things like the heavy-handed nature of his arrest.

There were other things - things had been seized from his house which didn’t appear to be

related to the investigation that was being conducted and, you know, those are strict rules that

the police have to follow, you can’t just go into someone’s house and take things away. It

appeared to me in his case that they’d been on a fishing expedition, trying to find evidence of

other offences.

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URRY: So is that what happened? The allegations of

corruption against Mohammed Razaq, for which he’d originally been arrested, were dropped.

But he was then charged with crimes which were a world away from suspicions he’d been

assisting suspects. Now it was mortgage and insurance fraud. Some related to claims he’d

made because of the water damage at his properties. And for this, he stood trial.

ACTUALITY OUTSIDE COURT

URRY: That took place here at Minshull Street Crown Court in

Manchester. There were five counts of fraud, three of money laundering, and one of failing

to disclose information. All related to financial affairs around properties he owned. After six

weeks of evidence and deliberation, he was found guilty on all of them. The prosecution

successfully argued he had attempted to secure more favourable terms on property insurance,

fraudulently obtained a £12,000 loan against one of his houses, and took out a personal

mortgage for a house he bought to let. He was sentenced to eighteen months in jail by the

judge, who described him as thoroughly dishonest, brazenly and repeatedly breaking the law.

It was a devastating result for a career police officer.

RAZAQ: I’d never expected that I would be in prison. My mind

was blank, I was stunned. And the experience is not a very nice experience; it’s not meant to

be, but it was shocking for me, more so, and torturous because I knew I was innocent. And

the thing on my mind at that time was that when I get out, I’ll continue to fight this and this is

why I’ve continued to fight it to this day.

URRY: He lost an appeal, but now File on 4 has uncovered

fresh information involving a witness at his trial.

ACTUALITY IN CAR

URRY: I’ve just pulled up outside a low rise block of flats in

Salford and I’ve come here to meet a couple who claim that one of their relatives actually lied

in court about Mr Razaq in order to protect himself. Now if that is the case, it raises serious

questions about the safety of the conviction.

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ACTUALITY OF CAR DOOR CLOSING

LORD: The first I heard of it was when my uncle phoned me, I

was in work, to say that he had had a visit off two police officers to ask him had he done an

invoice and any work for Mohammed Razaq.

URRY: Brian Lord is in the building trade. He often worked

for his uncle, John Lever. Mr Lever was the Razaq family’s ‘go-to’ builder. Following a leak

at one of his properties, Mr Razaq typed out an estimate for repairs. The issue in court was,

had he made up those figures to commit insurance fraud or was it, as he asserted, an accurate

estimate based on figures supplied by the family builders and written up with their agreement

to make a more professional looking job of it?

LORD: Mo asked my uncle if me and my uncle would be able

to draft up an estimate so that he could approach other builders to get prices so that he could

then approach the insurance.

URRY: Why couldn’t you and your uncle write the invoices?

LORD: Well, it was just better for it to be printed and we had

no access to a computer or anything, you know.

URRY: So was it Mohammed Razaq’s estimate or was it yours

that he typed?

LORD: Yeah, it was ours that he typed up, yeah. My uncle had

already wrote it down, I’ve got his book here, I’ve managed to find his book and he wrote an

estimate down, but like I say, it looks better if it is printed out for him to approach other

builders and obviously for the insurance company.

URRY: But that's not the account Mr. Lever gave to the court.

In fact, he appeared as a prosecution witness, washing his hands of any involvement. His

nephew, Brian Lord, says that’s because he felt pressurised by the police investigation and

was worried he’d be reported about his tax affairs.

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URRY cont: By the time he got to court, what did he say?

LORD: He never supplied an estimate and that he never asked

Mo to type up any invoice or estimate for him and that he hadn’t done basically any work for

him at all, which he had done.

URRY: And why did he say that?

LORD: Because he had never paid taxes. He did not want to

get investigated by Inland Revenue and he would rather die than spend a single day in jail.

URRY: He was an elderly man by this stage, wasn’t he, and

quite poorly?

LORD: Oh yes. Yeah, he was in a wheelchair and everything,

yeah. He had hearing aids, he couldn’t hear much at all. Emphysema.

URRY: How much was this on his mind then, the fact that

he’d, by your account, lied in court?

LORD: Oh, a hell of a lot, a hell of a lot. It was really on his

mind, to be honest with you. He was more like a father to me.

URRY: Brian Lord was too upset to continue, because his

uncle, John Lever, died fourteen months ago. But it’s not just his testimony that we wanted

to hear. His wife says that she wrote down a confession that Mr Lever made as he lay dying.

He was bedridden, too poorly to do it himself. And I’ve got that letter here. He says: ‘I am

John Joseph Lever …’ and the reason that he’s writing it, he says, is that, ‘I wish to right a

terrible wrong,’ and then it goes on over the page. ‘The reason I am writing this letter is

because my actions and lies sent an innocent, decent and upstanding member of the

community to prison for something he never done. I felt ashamed and embarrassed by my

actions, but at the time I was too scared to come forward.’ And then at the bottom here it’s

printed his name and below it something that looks like a signature.

We have no way of knowing if this is what was said, or if the written confession is genuine.

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URRY cont: And, even if it is, perhaps it’s not a credible story from

a man who’d spent his life dodging taxes. But his family have stuck to their account, and

have made a formal complaint to police about what they allege is the undue pressure he was

put under. If there are legitimate questions about the evidence given by this witness,

Mohammed Razaq argues that’s part of what casts his case in a new light. He’s been trying

to clear his name since leaving prison, and now he’s made an application to the Criminal

Cases Review Commission. He’s also met with his MP, the Labour member for Leigh and

Shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham. Mr Burnham’s told File on 4 he supports the

application for review.

BURNHAM: The feeling I have had is that it doesn’t add up, you

know, there’s something doesn’t make sense. This is somebody that had served Greater

Manchester Police for a long period of time without, it seemed to me, any blemish on his

record. Things then seemed to change dramatically at the end of his career. Mo feels that he

was unfairly victimised and it’s my job as his MP to support him and get to the bottom of this

and I don’t think we’re yet at the bottom of it. The suggestion is that some of the evidence in

his case was not safe, so that is why I will support Mo Razaq in taking his case to the

Criminal Cases Review Commission, because I have concerns about his case. The

Greater Manchester Police will, I’m sure, say well look, there’s been a trial here, but the

question is whether or not the evidence that was presented to that court is reliable and that’s

the issue that I think needs to be looked at independently.

URRY: Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable, Ian

Hopkins, agrees that if new evidence has come to light, it should be examined, but he points

to the strength of the conviction in the first place.

HOPKINS: If there is new evidence then the appropriate authority

to see that is the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

URRY: I mean, the family have complained to the police, the

family who say their family member changed his story because they felt under pressure from

the investigation.

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HOPKINS: Well, if that is what they are saying, then the Criminal

Case Review Commission can look at it. As I said, he was convicted in the Crown Court and

as far as I am concerned that is the end of the matter for me at this stage.

URRY: When you look at his case in the round though, one of

the accusations against him was that he had stolen two days leave from his employer and that

was said to be criminal. It feels as though you were out to get him.

HOPKINS: Erm, I think that whenever you have an investigation

into an officer there is a number of elements of information, intelligence that might come

forward that are seen as potentially relevant by the investigating officer. Clearly as you go

through an investigation the relevant evidence is what is put forward to the Crown

Prosecution Service. That did not form part of that relevant evidence.

URRY: His MP, Andy Burnham, has concerns about the case.

Does that trouble you?

HOPKINS: Well, I have met with Andy Burnham, we had a very

good conversation. I have explained to Andy Burnham everything that I am doing and I have

said to Andy that if Mo Razaq has those issues, he should go to the Criminal Case Review

Commission, which you tell me he is now doing.

ACTUALITY OF CHICKENS CLUCKING

URRY: There is an interesting and, you might think, significant

twist to the case of Mohammed Razaq. All along he had the support of a significant figure

within Greater Manchester Police.

BUTTRESS: This is where the chicken food lives – and they know

it.

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URRY: A man so highly thought of that his face appeared on

police recruitment posters across the country. A man being trained up to achieve chief officer

grade. In short, a rising star in the ranks. And he lives at a farmhouse in a remote part of

Wales.

BUTTRESS: I was promoted as a result of being on the fast track

system. The sky is the limit on that scheme. It’s designed to catapult people through to the

very senior ranks of the police service and it has done very successfully. I’d then been

seconded to the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism down at the Home Office, so there

I’d worked with a lot of specialists in counter-terrorism. Then I came back to GMP.

URRY: This is John Buttress. You may remember him as the

Chief Inspector who was Mr Razaq’s welfare officer. Mr Buttress had made separate

complaints about bullying by a senior officer, which was another matter entirely, but he’d

also lodged a formal protest about the way the Razaq case was handled. He was actually

prepared to appear in court as a defence witness, effectively going up against his own police

force. But that didn’t happen. A month before the trial, Chief Inspector Buttress was

confronted by officers from the Counter Corruption Unit.

BUTTRESS: At headquarters, I was summoned into a room with my

then line manager and then four or five officers walked into the room and read out a prepared

statement saying I was under arrest. I couldn’t believe it.

URRY: On that day, other officers took part in co-ordinated

action centred on his farmhouse property. The force helicopter flew overhead. It’s the sort of

resourcing usually reserved for a serious organised crime figure. So what did Greater

Manchester Police say their talented Chief Inspector had done wrong?

BUTTRESS: I was accused of diddling my mileage, so they

investigated the previous six months or so of my mileage claims. It turned out I had under-

claimed, so I forced through the payment of that under claim just as a matter of principle.

They got a warrant from a Crown Court judge alleging I was money laundering. It said that

on the warrant, I read it. The allegation was false, utterly false. I was accused of council tax

evasion, I mean that was ludicrous. It turned out I’d overpaid £1,779.41, which the council

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BUTTRESS cont: refunded to me. I was accused of involvement in the

construction industry without registering a business interest. As a police officer you have to

declare any business interests. Again, the allegation was groundless.

ACTUALITY OF ORGAN MUSIC

BUTTRESS: They even looked at me for the possible failure to

register a business interest because I was a church organist in the village. Eventually that

wasn’t pursued because I pointed out repeatedly that I wasn’t getting paid, it was a voluntary

thing. I mean, it was just utterly ridiculous, but it illustrates the lengths they went to.

URRY: None of this came to anything and no charges were

brought. Greater Manchester Police deny any connection between the arrest of John Buttress

and his willingness to give evidence in defence of Mohammed Razaq. Chief Constable

Ian Hopkins says he first came under suspicion over an allegation of insider share-dealing

relating to a contract for police radios.

HOPKINS: Mr Buttress had an individual raise concerns about

some of the potential relationship with an external provider. This is something that was taken

very seriously and Professional Standards started to look at that. Now as it was, those

concerns weren’t justified.

URRY: He was accused of all sorts of petty crimes though, in

the middle of all this, wasn’t he? Fiddling his expenses - turned out not to be true. Not

paying his council tax - not true. Not declaring he is a church organist?

HOPKINS: I mean, I think, you know, there were a number of

trivial things in there that really were of no interest. The mileage was clearly of an interest,

because one of the key issues was where Mr Buttress was actually residing. Nothing came of

it because there was nothing of any issue.

URRY: However, just like Mr Razaq, Counter Corruption

Officers did find something they thought worthy of pursuing further. John Buttress was

charged with fraud, centring on the financial arrangements for his property.

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ACTUALITY AT FARM

BUTTRESS: Lovely views out.

URRY: Yes, over the rolling hillside. It’s beautiful.

BUTTRESS: Yes. And it’s great because you can sit there with a

glass of wine in the summer …

URRY: Although he says this was his home, Mr Buttress

sometimes stayed at a flat in Manchester. He was accused of failing to disclose to his

mortgage company that this farmhouse in Wales was not his main residence. To clarify the

matter, detectives interviewed staff at his bank on the 25th

March 2014. It was recorded. A

transcript was made. A court statement obtained by File on 4 says the transcript was five

pages long. A statement written up from it by investigating officers and served to the court

was four pages long. A page was missing. Funnily enough, it was a very important page.

BUTTRESS: That page said, ‘Ooh, if Mr Buttress lives in his house

only at weekends we don’t care - that’s still his main residence,’ and that was what that

charge was - the main residence. I only clocked it because I listened to a tape recording of

two police officers taking that statement and I heard the lady saying things that I didn’t

remember reading, so I went back to the statement and I listened to the tape again. When you

start looking at the detail, the sentences at the bottom and top of the pages conveniently stop

just before that page. The page numbering had been gone over with a great big felt tip, so

you couldn’t see the numbers clearly. If I hadn’t listened to that transcript, I could have been

convicted in a Crown Court of something I hadn’t done and been sent to prison.

URRY: Could it have been a mistake? Someone just lost the

page?

BUTTRESS: Absolutely not. The charge against me was utterly

false and they did nothing, they didn’t speak up, they didn’t tell the judge and they didn’t tell

the prosecution barristers.

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URRY: The charge was dropped, but how come the page was

missing? That’s something which Kent Police are investigating, having been called in by

Greater Manchester following complaints by John Buttress. But it’s a question I took up with

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins.

HOPKINS: The page was missing in a bundle that the CPS passed

to the court. Nobody is suggesting that anybody was trying to hide that or the evidence

wasn’t there, because the evidence was there. It is just how that page came to be missing

within the photocopying and the provision of the file to the court. And of course Kent are

looking at that.

URRY: It was just a key page that proved his innocence,

wasn’t it? That is what makes it suspicious.

HOPKINS: I don’t know whether it proved his innocence or not.

URRY: Well on that particular charge, because the charge was

dropped.

HOPKINS: The charge was dropped on that particular one but it is

one page out of many many, which is part of the reason why I’ve asked Kent to look at it.

URRY: The other pages in that bundle which the court was

asked to consider related to another allegation against John Buttress about mortgage

arrangements - this time concerning outbuildings on his property which he lets out.

ACTUALITY AT BARN

BUTTRESS: This is the barn, which sleeps four quite cosily.

They put another charge to me that I was in breach of a mortgage sub-condition, because

parts of my farm were let out to holidaymakers, as they had been for many, many years.

Their argument was that because bits of the property were let out, I should have a buy-to-let

mortgage.

- 15 -

URRY: Isn’t the police’s position though that they, particularly

from senior officers, as you were still at that stage, they expect the highest standards of

integrity and they will expect nothing less?

BUTTRESS: Absolutely and that is entirely right. But you have to

look at the facts of this case. What have I actually done wrong? Yes, technically I’m in

breach of a sort of mortgage sub clause A3.12 or whatever it is that says, ‘If you want to

sublet parts of your property, you have to ask first’. Well hands up to that – no, I was in

breach of a mortgage sub clause on a page that I’d never read.

URRY: That oversight landed him in court. Out of all the

accusations he’d faced, this was the only one a jury was asked to decide upon.

ACTUALITY OUTSIDE COURT

URRY: This time last year, John Buttress was on trial at

Liverpool Crown Court. The jury was told he’d applied for a re-mortgage after he and his

wife had divorced. The prosecution asserted that at no point did he mention his plan to use

the property as a holiday let, as required by the lender. In doing so, he was avoiding any

interest or other payments due because he was letting it out. And this was said to be the

fraud. Except it wasn’t. After hearing two weeks of evidence, the jury were sent out to

consider their verdict. It took them just twenty minutes to find the Chief Inspector not guilty.

BUTTRESS: When you stand outside a courtroom for those few

minutes waiting for that verdict and then you walk back in, it was an experience that I don’t

think anybody should have to go through, let alone a serving police officer.

URRY: It must have been pretty stressful for you.

BUTTRESS: Of course it was, and not just for me, but, you know,

my parents, my whole family, friends and very many supportive people at the police. When I

went back to Greater Manchester Police and I sat in the foyer, I can remember going back, a

number of people came up to me and shook me warmly by the hand and said, you know,

‘We’re really pleased to see you back,’ and it was very, very moving.

- 16 -

URRY: His employers weren’t so pleased to see him. Four

months ago, he was sacked following a disciplinary hearing. Police said he’d fallen below

their accepted standards in relation to honesty and integrity in his financial affairs. Now

Mr Buttress is launching an employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal. He says he

wants his job back and he’s already lodged with his former employer allegations of

corruption and criminal wrongdoing by some of those involved in the investigations into him.

BUTTRESS: I put in eleven formal criminal complaint statements.

They range from misconduct in public office through to hiding evidence, perjury in one case,

submitting a false statement in another case – they’re wide ranging. Effectively, a number of

officers have behaved in a corrupt and criminal manner in order to get me put in front of a

Crown Court.

URRY: How many officers?

BUTTRESS: There’s a total of six that I’ve reported.

URRY: And are all the complaints about the Counter

Corruption Unit?

BUTTRESS: No, they’re not. They’re about the hierarchy as well.

One of the criminal complaint statements is about a very, very senior officer.

URRY: How senior?

BUTTRESS: At Assistant Chief Constable level; another is against a

Chief Superintendent.

URRY: These allegations are also being looked into

independently by Kent Police. But, given their seriousness, John Buttress argues there should

be a full criminal investigation. According to Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, the inquiry needs

to run its course.

- 17 -

HOPKINS: Mr Buttress has been written to several times by Kent,

and he has been told in writing by the Deputy Chief Constable of Kent that nobody is under

criminal investigation.

URRY: I think that is his complaint, isn’t it? I am making

criminal allegations, they should be investigated in a criminal way.

HOPKINS: They are being investigated thoroughly. What Kent

are saying from their assessment of that at this stage is they do not believe that they meet the

threshold for criminal conduct, so a number of officers have been served notice of

investigation, either for gross misconduct or misconduct. Nobody has been served a notice

saying that the allegations reach the criminal threshold. Now that is not to say that as they

follow the evidence there may be criminal allegations put to officers.

URRY: You can’t rule that out?

HOPKINS: I cannot rule that out, nor should we.

URRY: Both John Buttress and Mohammed Razaq argue they

were targeted because they’d made formal complaints and that because of that, they were

turned upon. But maybe they are nothing more than disgruntled former employees out to get

their own back. Why on earth would the Professional Standards Branch go to such lengths if

these men had done nothing wrong? Up to now the programme has been airing concerns

from those who are no longer in police service. But File on 4 has also interviewed a serving

detective who’s prepared to go on the record because he believes that allegations he’s brought

are not being properly investigated. And they are the same kinds of allegations we’ve already

been hearing. Corrupt practices by some within the Professional Standards Branch of Greater

Manchester Police.

BAILEY: I’m probably the most investigated officer still in

service in GMP.

- 18 -

URRY: Detective Constable Paul Bailey works for the force’s

Major Incident Team, which investigates the most serious of crimes, such as murder. He’s

locked horns with his employers on many occasions during his 26 years’ service. He’s

currently Chair of the Black and Asian Police Association. Last year Paul Bailey won a

tribunal case against Greater Manchester Police. He had been one of a number of officers on

secondment to a regional police unit investigating serious and organised crime. His role was

re-designated. He lost his expenses and his car.

BAILEY: It was nothing more than another act of victimisation,

another act of discrimination. It actually meant that I found myself in a less favourable

situation or position than my colleagues that I was working with day to day.

URRY: Mr Bailey made a formal complaint about the way he’d

been treated and decided to take his case to tribunal, alleging racial discrimination. After the

evidence had been heard, but before the verdict, he was told to report to his office.

BAILEY: We were waiting for the judgment and I was called

into work and I was served with gross misconduct papers for allegations of leaking

information to the press. So gross misconduct as opposed to misconduct means that the force

has the ability to sack me.

URRY: Had you been leaking things to the press?

BAILEY: No, I hadn’t.

URRY: And what was the result of that investigation?

BAILEY: I was never interviewed and it was dropped because

there was no evidence that I’d done anything wrong.

URRY: Greater Manchester say the timing of that was out of

their control because, following complaints from two members of the public, they’d called in

an outside force to investigate. Paul Bailey won that tribunal case and Greater Manchester

lost an appeal. They’ve appealed again. Meanwhile, he remains in service, working with the

- 19 -

URRY cont: Major Incident Team. But he says he’s still concerned

about the way his police force investigates its own officers. He’s pulled together evidence of

cases that allege wrongdoing.

BAILEY: I had seen a number of practices in GMP - and

particularly the Professional Standards Branch - that I believed that were corrupt. So what I

had done is I’d compiled a dossier. This dossier included reports written by a number of

people - members of the Police Federation who worked as representatives for people under

misconduct investigation, reports written by legal professionals, barristers and solicitors that

all raised concerns about investigations conducted by the Professional Standards Branch.

Evidence of wrongdoing and criminal offences. Now I’m not going to say that all of the

Professional Standards Branch is corrupt, because I’m sure that’s just not the case, but I have

seen a number of allegations made about a number of different officers, which is concerning.

And I think that the conduct of the department as a whole is concerning and needs to be

addressed.

URRY: DC Bailey won’t share the details of his dossier with

us, because he says it contains confidential information that would be in breach of police

standards. Separately, however, we’ve established that one of the cases is that of Scott

Winters, an inspector based at Stockport who took GMP to tribunal alleging racial

discrimination. He settled the case last year. Mr Winters is a decorated officer with 29

years’ service. He claims he was targeted after reprimanding a junior officer. He was then

accused of assault and says he became the victim of a disproportionate and discriminatory

investigation. We’ve seen legal documents about that case and they raise further troubling

questions for Professional Standards.

ACTUALITY WITH LETTER

URRY: I’ve got a copy of a letter from Inspector Winters’

solicitor to an Assistant Chief Constable at Greater Manchester, and this follows the eventual

release of unused material the police were holding onto. The solicitor says that material

shows differences between earlier versions of statements and those which were finally

submitted as part of a bundle of evidence. He complains there are handwritten notes on the

originals, suggesting some parts needed removing, amending or adding to. This, he argues, is

- 20 -

URRY cont: prejudicial to Inspector Winters’ case. There’s a

reference to a missing page within a statement, a page containing key information – and

that’s something we’ve heard about in other cases - and a reference to prejudicial and

inadmissible evidence submitted by GMP. The letter concludes that, among other matters,

there should be a full investigation into the methods used by the PSB to obtain statements.

Inspector Scott Winters is still in post. He was cleared of any misconduct. Later, the Chief

Constable wrote a personal letter of apology to him. We’ve got a copy of that too. And this is

what he said:

READER IN STUDIO: I accept that the standard of investigation was not

acceptable. Mistakes were made and inappropriate decisions were taken, some of which

appear not to have be proportionate in relation to the matters being investigated.

URRY: The Chief Constable wouldn’t be interviewed about

this, saying they’d had no confirmation from Inspector Winters that he’d given consent for

his details to appear in the programme. But the Winters case will strike a chord with Shadow

Home Secretary and MP for Leigh, Andy Burnham.

BURNHAM: Other people have come to me, including constituents,

who’ve said there’s a similar pattern of events here. Now that’s one side of the story so I

can’t say that that proves something against Greater Manchester Police. What is being said to

me is that charges are brought very zealously against individuals for reasons that I’m not

certain about, and then there’s of course the legal costs that accrue to those kind of

investigations. So the question I’ve got to ask is, is it in the public interest that those cases

have been brought? And I’m aware there are cases where those charges ultimately have been

dropped, so it is my job then to ask some questions about whether or not the Greater

Manchester Police is going about these concerns in the right way. Of course there is the need

for a Professional Standards Department because of course there is a need to hold police

officers to account and make sure that they are fulfilling their public duties, so we do need to

have an open, transparent, accountable police force. But the question is, has that gone too far

in certain ways with regard to the way professional standards are operating.

- 21 -

URRY: And that’s the question which needs answering now.

Because at the heart of this is the integrity of the police. If officers don’t trust some of their

own colleagues, why should we? Chief Constable Ian Hopkins hopes the independent

reviews and investigations which are currently underway will get to the bottom of whatever

needs to be found out. Central to that is a review he’s commissioned from the Metropolitan

Police into his Professional Standards Branch.

HOPKINS: What I would say is that the Professional Standards

Department deal with around about 350 to 400 investigations a year. We have around about

half a dozen cases, maybe as many as nine or ten where over a period of three, four years

concerns have been raised. That is a very, very small number. They have also been

inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary on at least three occasions and

HMIC have said that the Professional Standards Department is well managed, has effective

processes and governance and effective investigation of complaints and allegations.

URRY: In overall terms then, what is your view now of your

Professional Standards Department? Are they treading the right line?

HOPKINS: I think, you know, there’s a number of issues in there.

I am taking very seriously the concerns that have been raised, which is why I’ve articulated

what I’ve asked to be done. I will wait to see what that brings forward, whether it’s the Kent

investigation or whether it’s the Metropolitan Police peer review and then I will make an

assessment as to the health of Professional Standards.

SIGNATURE TUNE