http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/interactive/2011/jul/15/letter-from-the-guardian-to-dick-fedorcio
Senior Met figures have a long history of wining and dining with News International. There’s a spreadsheet at the Grauniad. When the same figures meet Guardian staff it’s at the office. It’s clear from the letter published (link above) in the Groan that the Met tried to put the arm on Nick Davis and stop the truth coming out. Now they won’t answer fair questions from the Guardian using standard PR damage limitation techniques to give them time to get a story together. They should be read the PACE guidance on what they may rely on in the future.
The IPCC should already not be giving the Met hierarchy time to collude. Taped interviews should have been taken instead of half-assed stuff led by the dubious Vaz. Police officers lie and some of this is justified. A reasonable account can be found here:
http://deadlyforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Lies-and-Deception-PQ.pdf
That matters are out of hand can be seen in George Monbiot’s referenced piece here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/12/police-truth-blair-peach-tomlinson
I doubt Gadget subscribers would do the required reading, but the complex lying behaviour cops enter into is fairly standard across organisations now. What’s needed isn’t sackings, but an opportunity to come clean and identify the real bad guys. This clearly doesn’t happen in our public enquiries – even the WMD farce was not admitted. In the absence of coming clean I would sack a random few Admiral Bings to encourage the others.
Police officers tend to get hard-boiled and think no one understands the complexity of their situation. There are many explanations of their behaviour that are complex and do explain much of what I knew to go on as a cop. I found a dozen academic papers on police lying and a hundred more on administrative lying in the space of a couple of hours. Some are pretty good and public argument should shift to their more intelligent focus. The following snippet gets to some of the enigma at the heart of being a cop. There’s more actually, but I’m reserving my paper for publication.
This is standard material on police lying from ‘academic cops’:
‘
Police officers often tell lies; they act in ways that are deceptive, they manipulative people and situations, they coerce citizens, and are dishonest. They are taught, encouraged, and often rewarded for their deceptive practices. Officers often lie to suspects about witnesses and evidence, and they are deceitful when attempting to learn about criminal activity. Most of these actions are sanctioned, legal, and expected. Although they are allowed to be dishonest in certain circumstances, they are also required to be trustworthy, honest, and maintain the highest level of integrity. The purpose of this article is to explore situations when officers can be dishonest, some reasons that help us understand the dishonesty, and circumstances where lies may lead to unintended consequences such as false confessions. The authors conclude with a discussion of how police agencies can manage the lies that officers tell and the consequences for the officers, organizations, and the criminal justice system.' However complex the situation we can't have cops trying to prevent the publication of stuff they don't like and must know is true when they try to can it.
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