Police forces have become complacent and are guilty of "taking their foot off the accelerator" in the battle against corrupt officers, the head of Britain's police watchdog has warned.
Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, said that the case of Ali Dizaei should serve as a "wake-up call" to those charged with rooting out corruption.
In an interview with The Independent, Mr Hardwick also fired a warning shot across the bows of the Conservative Party, which is committed to installing directly elected commissioners to run police forces across Britain. DAVID SANDISON
Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, believes every police force in the country employs corrupt officers
He said that doing so would increase the likelihood of corruption because popular media-friendly officers, such as Dizaei, would be harder to remove from office. And he said cuts in police budgets, in the middle of a recession, would also contribute to an increase in malpractice. In the wide-ranging interview, Mr Hardwick also called upon the Government to give the IPCC more powers.
"We are becoming complacent about corruption and I think the Dizaei case should be a wake-up call," he said. "To say it has gone away would be a very bad mistake. There are no forces that are free of corruption and you should be most worried about the forces that tell you they are free of corruption."
His comments come just days after the IPCC secured a conviction against Ali Dizaei, the most senior police officer to be imprisoned in Britain for 33 years. Dizaei had arrested a man in a personal dispute about money, despite knowing he had committed no offence. The officer, a Metropolitan Police commander, then fabricated a claim of assault against the man. He was jailed for four years and Mr Hardwick described him as a "criminal in uniform".
But despite success in that case, Mr Hardwick said more needs to be done. He said: "When corruption starts to emerge it will get attention and we will try to drive the problem down for a bit, then we take our foot off the accelerator and it re-emerges.
"This [Dizaei] is a wake-up call, let's not wait, let's not go through this cycle again. We need a consistent and determined effort from the top, from the police leaders. There has to be a consistent message that this [corruption] is not acceptable."
Mr Hardwick added: "There are some people who say this is a very uncomfortable message," he said. "They do not want to look too hard [for corruption] and they do not want to hear this. But Dizaei teaches us that if we do not deal with it now then in the end it will just get worse. No one is talking about a witch-hunt, we just need to be really consistent about this."
As well as the Dizaei case, the IPCC has had three recent convictions of Metropolitan Police officers who misused their corporate American Express cards. Six others have been charged and the investigation is ongoing. But Mr Hardwick says that these cases are typical of many others which have not yet come to light. "By its nature you do not know how much corruption is there. But it is always there. We just do not know how much is beneath the water."
Mr Hardwick says that modern technology has helped corruption thrive. He cites examples of officers using the police computer system to pass information to criminal associates. Yesterday Mark Bohannan, a Metropolitan Police constable of 25 years, was convicted of exactly that.
Mr Hardwick also warned that police budget cuts could contribute to corrupt officers escaping detection. He added: "The pressure is to put officers on the front line. The question will be 'Why put money into people operating at headquarters who do not provide reassurance and all they do is worry people?' The answer will be to take them out of there. If you talk to heads of Professional Standards Departments they tell you they are really worried about what happens to budgets."
Mark Hughes -Saturday, 13 February 2010
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