Jim,
I value your advice and comments, although I rarely agree with much of what you say. My problem is that you seem (to me) to invariably support everything that front line police officers say or do, and to view all ACPO rank officers as idiots, or crooks. I have to say that, in this case, based on what I've seen, I can't disagree with you - but I try to avoid bias and to judge everyone on what they say or do, not on what other people say about them (lifted from C.S. Forrester)
Also, I find it difficult to reconcile your views on the PSD and IPCC with my own experience, and that of other people. I find them extremely prejudiced
in favour of the police.
Moving onto the PSD part. As someone else has mentioned PSD's are only happy when they can find some way of hanging a Police Officer. Usually evidence of wrong doing to them isn't important, they do it because they enjoy it. The IPCC are certainly not biased in favour of Police, quite the opposite being the case. Witness that idiot Glass of theirs running round having multiple jollies with the Harwood case, only to become bitter and twisted when the obvious happened at Court.
The PSD report in this case totally fails to address the most serious allegations of misconduct, glosses over the rest, addressing only those parts for which the police have ready answers, and it is very clear that all questions to police officers, and their responses, were in writing, giving them time and oportunity, if they wished, to compare notes, get advice etc. And nobody who is not a serving police officer has even been approached to verify what the police officers have said.
Irrespective of that though, you are assuming too many things from your own side when making claims of misconduct. The statement for example, if taken by a police officer was his interpretation of what was said. The fact your son didn't agree with it isn't evidence of misconduct necessarily, it could also be seen as the system working. Your son checked it and declined to sign it as a true reflection. Even assuming the worst, and it was, it's one persons word against another. That isn't enough evidence for even the IPCC/PSD to hold a kangaroo court.
No. That statement was not based on what Bill said. Mistakes are one thing, but telling him that his own solicitor had said that he should sign it when in fact he had said the opposite, amounts to misconduct. And refusing to accept his misconduct, and then lying about that, is further misconduct. And it isn't one person's word against another, there is an email trail, with Bill asking his solicitor for advice and saying that the police had told him that his solicitor had advised him to sign it, and the solicitor making it very clear that he should not sign it and that he had told the police that he should not sign it.
Going back to earlier posts about the cartridges. I am absolutely convinced that the police did not find those empties where they say they did. Bill may or may not lie to the police, but he would not lie to me. Then there is the logic element - if he had fired those 3 alleged shots at the back of the van as it sped away, he would have hit it 3 times. It would have been almost impossible for anyone to miss a target as big as a transit van, going away in a straight line, and Bill is certainly not on the list of people who would have missed.
What seems to be compelling to me is that these empty cartridge cases, if they were found, amounted to compelling evidence of attempted murder - and yet absolutely no questions were raised about them when Bill was interviewed by the police. I know that for a fact, because I have a copy of the interview recording.
Now, I'm not going to guess at motives, but Bill has been receiving support from his shooting organisation, and according to a very experienced person there, there is absolutely nothing unusual about these empties being found. This gentleman explained that in each of the 3 cases of mass murder with firearms (Michael Ryan, Thomas Hamilton & Derrick Bird) there were very serious concerns about their fitness to possess firearms, and that in each case, a PC or Sgt had wanted to revoke or refuse their certificates but had been over ruled by a senior officer, leading to the deaths of innocent people. According to this gentleman, the practice now is for some suspicions to suddenly appear and for senior officers to be very reluctant to ignore this "evidence", even if the "evidence" has no substance.
Yes, I'm biased. But then I've known Bill all his life and I have put a lot of effort and resources into trying to find out exactly what has happened here. And all the evidence, plus information from sources within the police, leads to misconduct.
