IPCC is 'fatally flawed' says judge

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June 2008
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) came under further fire when a High Court judge called its thinking ‘fatally flawed’. Mr Justice Saunders made the criticism when considering R (Dennis) v Independent Police Complaints Commission CO/9140/2007, 6 May 2008, a case highlighted in ‘A watchdog without bite’, April 2008 Legal Action 7. The IPCC, which was set up in April 2004 to replace a discredited Police Complaints Authority, was dealt a severe blow when more than 100 members of the Police Action Lawyers’ Group (PALG) withdrew their backing for the commission and two of the group’s representative members, Tony Murphy and Raju Bhatt of Bhatt Murphy solicitors, resigned from its advisory board this year.
The feature article in April’s Legal Action showed that the PALG’s concerns were widely endorsed by lawyers, campaigners and families. The article highlighted the case of Nicola Dennis, a 27-year-old single mother, who in November 2005 was held on the pavement, face down, with her hands taped with plastic strips behind herback for 40 minutes. She had been innocently caught up in the search for the killers of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, who was shot dead as she responded to an alarm at a travel agent’s shop in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The incident took place a few months after the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. ‘I thought I was going to die,’ Nicola Dennis told Legal Action. A woman police officer visited Nicola Dennis later at home where she told her that she happened to be ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.
Nicola Dennis complained about the police’s conduct and the Metropolitan Police carried out a supervised investigation, which reported back, in April 2007, with the sole finding that a stop and search form had not been completed. The following month, Nicola Dennis appealed to the IPCC. Its response, in July 2007, was ‘confusing and confused’, according to her solicitor Marian Ellingworth of the criminal defence firm, Tuckers. The solicitor described it as a ‘terrifying and wholly unnecessary ordeal’ and said that there was ‘no justification for suspecting Nicola or using such a high level of force and no explanation as to why she was treated so differently from [her friend, who was with Nicola at the time of the police raid]’. The IPCC conceded that the officer’s actions were ‘overzealous’ and said that he deserved ‘words of advice’.
Mr Justice Saunders found that the IPCC caseworker had ‘been led into error because she has misunderstood important findings of fact’ and that her reasoning was ‘confusing’. He also criticised a ‘lack of clarity in reasoning’ which made the decision difficult to understand and stressed that Nicola Dennis was ‘entitled to have a proper review’. ‘It is important that the functions of the [IPCC] are carried out properly to maintain public confidence in the system and the police force and to ensure that if there are lessons to be learnt that that happens.’ Marian Ellingworth said that she was delighted for her client, who had been through ‘a horrible ordeal’. ‘I am also very pleased that the generally poor quality of the IPCC’s decision-making has been exposed through this judgment. I can only hope that this will lead to some improvement,’ she added.