DRAFT Template complaint letter to Met Police re Operation Grange

For use or adaptation by anyone who feels minded to file a complaint about Operation Grange:
______________

Template complaint letter to the Metropolitan Police

From [Name, Address]

Date:

To: Head of Professional Standards
Department of Professional Standards Complaints Support Team
22nd Floor
Empress State Building
Lillie Road
LONDON
SW6 1TR


Dear Sir/Madam

Complaint: Professional Misconduct - DCI Andy Redwood, Head of Operation Grange – and others

I write to ask you to investigate DCI Andy Redwood’s conduct in relation to the review he heads into the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and in relation to his participation in the Crimewatch programme shown on 14 October on BBC1. I refer below in an appendix to Home Office guidance and other relevant statements regarding police conduct. .

The evidence is that, right from the beginning of the review in May 2011, DCI Andy Redwood – and those to whom he reports in the Metropolitan Police – have deliberately ignored forensic and circumstantial evidence that suggests that Madeleine died in her parents’ holiday apartment and that they arranged to hide her body so that an autopsy could not be performed on her.

A summary of this evidence was sent on 7 October this year to Operation Grange in a letter by a former Police Superintendent which has also been widely circulated on the internet. A link is here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] DCI Redwood also has a copy of it.

I am also aware that many others who believe that the McCanns were actively involved in Madeleine’s disappearance have also written to DCI Andy Redwood from time to time giving persuasive evidence of the parents’ involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.

Police procedures require police officers to follow the evidence. Any investigation by Professional Standards into how Operation Grange has been run would soon reveal, I am certain, that senior officers have deliberately ignored any evidence that the McCanns are involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. If so, that is an extremely serious matter, and requires investigation at the highest level.

In relation to the Crimewatch programme, both the many trailers for this programme and on-the-record statements by DCI Andy Redwood before and during the programme have asserted that the elaborate account of events given by the McCanns and their friends is ‘wrong’. DCI Redwood is therefore suggesting that over the past six years, the public in the UK, Portugal and the rest of the world has been misled by the McCanns and their friends. The proper way to deal with that is to re-investigate them and the reasons why their statements are ‘wrong’.

During the programme transmitted on 14 October, a purported reconstruction of events was shown. This was inaccurate and misleading in the following respects:

[TO BE COMPLETED]

During the programme, computerised e-fit pictures were shown of a number of ‘persons of interest’, described as people ‘who could be of vital importance’ to the Scotland Yard enquiry. Yet DCI Redwood also conceded that he was ‘not sure if they were the key to unlocking this mystery’.

A US former prosecutor and now child advocate, Wendy Murphy, openly told millions watching Fox News on 10 October that in her professional opinion, Scotland Yard were involved in promoting ‘a fake suspect’. The McCanns through their various private investigations have over the past six years promoted at least 21 different persons as ‘suspects’ or ‘persons of interest’, two of them women. DCI Redwood has given the public no indication yet as to whether the public should now still be looking for any of those 21 people, or not.

Only a thorough investigation by Professional Standards or the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) can reveal whether or not DCI Andy Redwood and his team have been following the evidence in this case, or disregarding it.

Serious complaints should not be investigated by the Professional Standards Department of the force against whom the complaint is made. This applies particularly in this case, where the decision to hold a review was made by the Prime Minister (at the request of Rebekah Brooks, former Chief Executive of News International), who ordered the Home Secretary to order then then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, to implement a review.

I suggest that the current Commissioner and his senior colleagues have failed to monitor and supervise this investigation, as a result of which it has for two-and-a-half years deliberately ignored clear evidence of the McCanns’ involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.

I therefore suggest that you immediately refer my complaint to the IPCC.

Yours faithfully,




APPENDIX

Home Office Guidance: Police Officer Misconduct, Unsatisfactory Performance and Attendance Management Procedures

1.1 Public confidence in the police is crucial…Public confidence in the police depends on police officers demonstrating the highest level of personal and professional standards of behaviour.
1.3 A breach of…high standards may damage confidence in the police service and could lead to action for misconduct, which in serious cases could involve dismissal.
1.4 The public have the right to expect the police service to protect them by upholding the law and providing a professional police service.
1.5 Those entrusted to supervise and manage others are role models for delivering a professional, impartial and effective policing service. They have a particular responsibility to maintain standards of professional behaviour .
1.8 Where these Standards of Professional Behaviour are being applied in any decision or misconduct meeting/hearing, they shall be applied in a reasonable, transparent, objective, proportionate and fair manner. Due regard shall be paid to the nature and circumstances of a police officer’s conduct, including whether his or her actions or omissions were reasonable at the time of the conduct under scrutiny.
1.12 Police officers are honest, act with integrity and do not compromise or abuse their position.
1.13 Police officers act with integrity and are open and truthful in their dealings with the public and their colleagues, so that confidence in the police service is secured and maintained.
1.14 Police officers do not knowingly make any false, misleading or inaccurate oral or written statements or entries in any record or document kept or made in connection with any police activity.
1.48 Police officers ensure that accurate records are kept of the exercise of their duties and powers as required by relevant legislation, force policies and procedures.

Without fear or favour: A review of Police Relationships (Home Office, HMIC, December 2011): Self-Check Integrity Questions for Forces and Authorities

6.3 Does the Force have adequate systems in place to capture, record and assess intelligence relating to integrity and corruption?
7.3 What mechanisms exist to ensure that the police authority and force jointly challenge integrity issues within the force?
7.8 What audit and inspection processes exist in relation to integrity, and what level of independence exists within this regime?
7.9 How do you ensure that integrity runs through your organisation? Is this reflected in recruitment, training and selection processes?

The Office of Constable: The bedrock of modern day policing (May 2008. Published by the Police Federation of England and Wales, Federation House, Highbury Drive, Leatherhead, Surrey, KT22 7UY)

Quote from leading case on the duties of police officers:

“I hold it to be the duty of the Commissioner of Police, as it is of every chief constable, to enforce the law of the land. He must take steps so to post his men that crimes may be detected; and that honest citizens may go about their affairs in peace. He must decide whether or not suspected persons are to be prosecuted; and, if need be, bring the prosecution or see that it is brought; but in all these things he is not the servant of anyone, save of the law itself. No Minister of the Crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that; or that he must, or must not, prosecute this man or that one. Nor can any police authority tell him so. The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and to the law alone.”
(R v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner at p. 769)

Ken Jones, Past President, Association of Chief Police Officers

“…those charged with enforcing law and order are office holders who are ultimately accountable to the law, not to any employer, politician or anyone else with a vested interest, for their actions…”