ESSEX Police Federation is calling on the Home Office to be held responsible if Independent Office for Police Conduct failings continue.<\/p>\n
The Police Federation of England and Wales recently highlighted a case of two Metropolitan Police Officers who had to wait seven years before they were finally exonerated. It places enormous strain on the officers, their families and the families of the other people involved.<\/p>\n
Essex Federation Chairman Steve Taylor said the Home Office must be made aware of the issues and that the responsibility for the IOPC lies at their door.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some legacy issues from the IOPC and the IPCC of old and we have to take the new Director General (Michael Lockwood) at his word when he says he\u2019s working hard to resolve some of those legacy issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately if they are not being resolved, if we\u2019re not seeing movement on them, then we must highlight these concerns and these travesties to the powers that be, because it is the Home Office who instructs and gives authority to the IOPC and therefore we need to be making them aware.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m led to believe that Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, is aware and has made representations, so whilst we hope we\u2019re moving in the right direction, that doesn\u2019t help that officer that\u2019s been under investigation for seven or more years.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are ongoing cases in Essex he said which have taken three years plus to resolve.<\/p>\n
Steve added: \u201cWe\u2019ve got a number in Essex that are taking too long and of course it doesn\u2019t help, and words are cheap when you\u2019re in that position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to also watch, going forward, that the IOPC with new investigations are not slipping into old habits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Non-sensical and time-wasting meetings between officers and investigators would be a good place to start improvements, Steve believes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appreciate the IOPC has the power to require officers to present themselves at an interview – they can be compelled to attend and not to attend would be a disciplinary offence, so we know they have that power and frequently they trot out the threat of that compellability and require us to visit Holborn or visit Canary Wharf to sit in an interview in which an officer would be foolish to say anything, to simply note the questions and then supply a written response afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, when we communicate that that\u2019s the likely outcome of such an interview and the IOPC still have a wish to have officers come down and go through that, that\u2019s just wasting everyone\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe obvious solution is, \u2018we know you\u2019ve got the ability to compel someone, but if you let us know the questions you want asked we can furnish you a reply written\u2019, and we don\u2019t have to traipse all the way down there to sit in stony silence and have the same result only three months later.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Federation we have a knowledge of the bodies that are investigating you and how they have worked in the past, we\u2019re well versed in the process and the procedure and we will offer you the best advice we can to help you through that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESSEX Police Federation is calling on the Home Office to be held responsible if Independent Office for Police Conduct failings continue. The Police Federation of England and Wales recently highlighted\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4936,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions\/4936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}