As result of struggling and emotional pains from which I got to suffer during the last 1.5 years, I often was finding myself having the feeling of helplessness and injustice: opposing maliciously acting members of a powerful public office, such as police,  who appeared (and appear) to have ringed everything, is a terrifying experience. It is all the more so when one observes the system of safeguards – the Professional Standards Department and the IOPC failing to act as such.

I remember myself desperately trying, in the beginning of my story of facing police’s misconduct, to find some organization who would specialize in such kind of situations where a person is a victim of crime committed by the police officers who use their powers to damage / destroy him or her. There was none: at the highest, one can find online some websites of those who themselves have gone through the same struggles, losing years and years of their lives into fighting for something that was supposed to belong them from the day 1 – their civil rights. Those websites are monuments of sufferings of those people, but give little explanation what to do and even lessen the belief into ability to reach justice.

It appears that the issue of police corruption is so underestimated in the UK society that no one’s mind ever was seriously crossed by the idea to have a non-commercial organization which would allow to support those who have fallen victims of the horrific injustices in the modern society – the law enforcement officers acting out of malicious, ulterior motives when possessing the power of the state, the motives which are often as unfair as it can be with individuals outside of the police force.

Albeit it seems that the issue of racial discrimination by the police officers is widely understood in the UK and overseeing bodies, the phenomenon of rampant malice, and of personal vendettas against the members of the public, is not: it, probably, happens quite rare, but if ever one is unlucky enough to get into it, it will drastically impact his or her life not only by taking away years and years of helpless fighting in the circumstances of everyone’s ignorance, but also splitting that life into two halves – “before” and “after”, leaving a large scar of enormous psychological pains and suffering, scorched by malicious application of the power of the state by someone sitting in the public office and using it out of deliberate desire to damage the victim of misconduct out of personal malice.

But does rarity of the event justify ignorance to it? Murder is also a rare event in modern society, however it is widely recognized and appreciated as a serious risk, simply because the depth of the impact of the risk if it happens, outweighs the factor of rarity.

It is impossible to understand what pains the police officers, maliciously exercising their powers, cause to their victims, until it is felt ‘on own skin’. Psychology of those who go through that, become in most cases heavily impacted. Deep psychological traumas are being left for the rest of their lives and make them, to some extent the ‘ghosts’ of their previous lives and personalities. It can be said in many cases that such people, to some extent, lose part their minds, after being subject of applying enormous power of the state in presence of clear understanding of malice and deliberate injustice. There are many types of terrible crimes against individuals, but not many of them are associated with continuous harassment and terrorizing by the people who possess enormous power and are applying it with the direct intention to cause continued damages.

In the US a person affected by misconduct of police may get multi-million compensation which would motivate the police force to think twice or thrice next time before allowing misconduct to happen. It is much different in the UK: the UK police forces know very well that all they risk in the worst – and very rare – case of facing a person who has enough patience and emotional power to bring them to justice through the years, is a ‘compensation’ of, say, 40,000 pounds generously paid to a person whose life was broken forever into two halves and who lost 3, 4 or 5 years into horror of opposing the force. It certainly does not create any additional (to the obvious statutory obligations) financial motivation for the police forces to have any special regard to how much pain the phenomenon of personal vendettas of malicious police officers cause to the victims of those vendettas and deliberate attacks. As result, and mirroring lack of recognition of the issue on the side of the public itself (as explained above), the police forces appear to disclaim existence of that phenomenon – even when provided with prima facie evidence – and the level of pains it continuously causes to those unlucky members of the public who fall victims of it.

Recognizing this frustrating state of things and possessing the similar deep trauma with those who went through the circles of horrors of opposing maliciously acting police officers for years, I have gradually reached the idea of launching a non-commercial organization focused on cases of opposing malicious conduct of the police. I have concluded that existence of such organization would allow many affected by police corruption people to reduce the horrors through which they are going, save the resources of the state – which otherwise are invisibly burnt by maliciously acting police officers covering up their backs and building corrupt networks instead of doing the job – and change for police officers the perception of the risks arising from their potential misconduct. The latter factor, in its turn, would trigger the chain reaction: understanding the risks from misconduct a police officer would commit less misconduct and cause lesser pain.

Those who are left alone – having a family or friends, colleagues is not of big help when one opposes the power of the state applied maliciously – against corruption of the officers which is being done by one or another reason, are feeling much pain because they are missing competent advice as also the simple feeling that they are supported, that they, in fact, are not alone when opposing those officers, many of whom are covered either by the policy of unwritten nepotism or by direct connections in their command lines. “You are not alone” and “We will help you” are the messages which a person stonewalled by the system of often failing safeguards – so high is the prejudice towards police forces – is lacking. It is the inescapable feeling of injustice and feeling of helplessness that cause deep traumas to the victims of police misconduct. Those can be addressed and one does not need to have a deep pocket and hire expensive lawyers to get access to basic and competent informational support which would allow to build a realistic strategy of efficient opposing and mitigating the malice. And that must be a specialist help because such situation appears to be not recognized by the general public and continuously being put under the carpet by the police forces fighting for their reputation in a fatally wrong way.

AAAPPP

As the organization would focus on opposing abuse of police powers and privileges, I have decided to name it “Association Against Abuse of Police Powers and Privileges” – “AAAPPP” with the website https://aaappp.org.uk . Albeit the idea of launching such an organization focusing on police misconduct was born as result of my own psychological suffering from corruption of a UK police force, I need to underscore that it is being created not for persecuting those officers who caused it to me. Doing so would mean committing and institutionalizing the same wrong for which I criticize those corrupt officers – abusing the power of their office in the personal interest. I want this organizational being built on the principle of impartiality and independence, on the same level which a reasonable observer would expect from the police forces themselves. In particular, one of the fundamental rules in running such an organization together with the other principals – who, I hope, are yet to be found and joined – is seen by me to be the prohibition of any personal involvement (positive or negative) with the police force in past or in current time for a member of AAAPPP who is handling a case against such a force when helping a member of public. Each staff / member / principle of AAAPPP handling cases against the police officers would have personalized list of the police forces with which he or she had involvement with and cases in relation to which would be prohibited to be handled as result of that for such person. Even living in the jurisdiction of such a police force currently or in past is to be considered as such involvement, even if, in fact, there would be no interaction with the force. That is the main principle, but there will be several others which I list below. The bottom line is that AAAPPP will be ran in accordance with publicly pronounced principles and will be open for public criticism against itself as a whole and against its members personally, just like it expects from the police forces. 

Function of independent control

Whilst it is understandably difficult for the general public to understand what about it is and how it is felt to be attacked by malice of the police officers, the two main audiences of AAAPPP are deemed by me to be the UK police forces themselves and, of course, those who are subject of malicious attacks with power of the state at hands of the attackers and anyone who covers them up. It has come the time to make these fights less unfair and add institutional approach to the weaker side. On the other hand, it will, in the end of the day, benefit the police forces through rising of awareness of the risks and, as result, lesser misconduct.

I do believe that those officers involved in noble corruption – kind of operational dishonesty made for the ‘operational purposes’, often a trigger of further banal corruption – are involved in it because of the belief that if they would not commit it, they will have lower results than their colleagues. This create a vicious circle: those who were not involved in noble corruption, become involved not because they want but because they have no choice, due to the need of competing and due to – possibly – flourishing culture of tolerance towards it. But when all officers are addressed and put on notice of the risks – of being one day addressed by AAAPPP which would bring the case of misconduct to the highest point of responsibility, through all cover ups of PSD and all failures of the IOPC, this simultaneously creates motivation for all officers to change their patterns of behaviour. Of course, inevitably there will be many of those who will continue. Some of them sooner or later will form the case studies for AAAPPP, when, being referred by a victim of misconduct, they will see AAAPPP pursuing their case to the logical end.

I do recognize that the role of independent control, in fact, was (and, officially – is) supposed to be performed by the IOPC but – either because I have seen it on my own example of hardcore, impenetrable, granite-like incompetence, or because it was further aggravated by the comments of Sir Richard Henriques – I am not overly impressed, as the UK High Court judges say, by the current performance of this organization. I, of course, do not aim AAAPPP to replace the IOPC, neither can I. Moreover, I strongly believe that one day IOPC will reach inevitably reach much more adequate levels of efficiency. What is plain for many people now is that currently it has a long way to go to that point.

I believe that there is a big gap between what the public expects from PSDs and the IOPC and what the affected members of the public who are being in the need of addressing misconduct, get in reality. That gap can be abstractly described as follows:

There are many people out there, in that gap of justice marked as “failure”, who suffer big injustices made to them by malicious applying power of the state. I am aiming AAAPPP to help at least some of them, reducing the level of injustice for those unlucky people in the situation of rampant unfairness and helplessness.

At the same time, addressing the conduct of police, AAAPPP will not be an organization of punishment, bullying or trolling the police forces. Just like aiming to maintain higher standards of conduct of the police, it will do so for those who are subject of injustice, applying certain disciplining to its members or recipients of help and even accepting counter-complaints. Focusing on solving the conflicts and finding escapes from vicious cycles rather than looking for opportunities to troll one or another force will be the preferred choice of AAAPPP in many situations. Only where it appears to be plain that malice is being deliberately and rampantly pursued by the decision makers who think that they can be winners always simply because they possess the power of the state, regardless how much injustice is needed for that, will AAAPPP consider alternative course of action.

Approach to publicity

The publicity principle of AAAPPP will be that, whilst fully supporting the concept of openness and aligning its own work to it, it will never tend to discern one force from another when highlighting an issue or case it has been working with: the fact that certain case happened in one police force but not in another, does not mean that this force is worse. It is my belief that unnecessary personalization of the forces leads for them to tend to perceive allegations against their officers like allegations against the reputation of the force itself. Such unwanted scenario may lead to a “snowball” effect where the criticality and the scale of the case grow exponentially with time, causing the opposite effect. When a member of public commits a crime and gets prosecuted, his personal details are published, causing him or her additional harm and additional motivation to obey the laws. This works perfectly when the person has no power of the state. However – and it appears to be plain – when an affected body has the power of the state, the risk of damage to its reputation – however misconceived is view of it in case of misconduct of merely a member of the force – may turn into a horror scenario for the unwanted victim or witness of that corruption (like, for example, it happened with me): the force may direct all its power and resources to get away with that, applying simple rule “no witness = no crime = no publicity”.

Single point of contact

As long as the principle of careful approach of AAAPPP to working with information and other its principles are appreciated and understood, it should not be perceived as a big annoyance for the police forces that AAAPPP will aim to act as a single point of contact for those who feel that they are subjects of malicious application of the police powers and privileges, which is not being properly dealt with by PSDs of the forces themselves and, at the same time, faces (appearing now to be recognized widely) worrying incompetence of the IOPC. I hope that at some point of time, the police forces would be able to call AAAPPP a partner rather than an organization opposing their interests for the benefit of the victims of injustice.

Financial part and technicalities

I am launching AAAPPP alone as it is important for me the founding stones of it are placed in accordance with the principles I see as most viable and beneficial for the final purpose of the organization. At the same time I hope that soon after launching, I will be able to involve into it people faithfully interested in bringing justice for those helplessly finding themselves caught by the trap between sometimes reckless negligence of PSDs and (sometimes?) outrageous incompetence of the IOPC.

My ultimate goal and hope are that AAAPPP will work as a charity, funding its activity on donations, but before it reaches that stage, I will be funding its activity as long as it is needed.

As result, I will be applying the financial discipline in it, inherent for my businesses: I may be spending on it hundreds of thousands of pounds during near years, but these monies will be spent in a way which I see as efficient one. I will not earn anything from the organization but those people working in it – due to being subject to certain requirements of efficiency and professionalism – will do, as it is the case with any charity organization in the UK. As result, I will wisely manage the finances of organization as long as it is financed by me and I am the president of it. Those believed by me corrupt police officers have destroyed my UK-regulated Fintech business by lying to the court and to the FCA, say as a post factum excuse that “it was bad anyway, as the staff were in Asia and inefficient”. I will let them to observe the anti-corruption organization created because of their corruption and set up on the same structure with my destroyed by them Fintech business, allowing them to judge how ‘inefficient’ will it be.

The key staff of AAAPPP will be always in the UK, but majority of caseworkers will be based in Asia. Thomson Reuters has its offices in collateral cities of India. Victims of corruption and malice deserve efficiency not lesser than shareholders of multinational corporations.

The information will be processed in full compliance with GDPR. Storing communications in encrypted format on Swiss-based servers will allow to exclude the risk of a ‘confusedly applied’ Production Order compromising data of the victims of abuse of power through UK providers.

Subject application of the above principles, AAAPPP will consider media as its main ally in the fight for justice.