Before I go ahead with the main topic I feel it useful to put some credits to QC Chris Daw, who is a person that has taught me the peculiarities of the labyrinth-like police complaints system of the UK from my initial basic knowledge about it to the level on which I feel myself confident when making very fundamental claims to the High Court I speak about.

To understand some topic in a limited time, it is always important that there is a good teacher, who can go through peculiarities of the matter back and forward and explain its mechanics. Such a person, in my case, for the complaints system of the UK policing (and wider extent of the principles of regulated or quasi-related non-financial professions), was QC Chris Daw. I find it material to make such a mention, so as to ensure that the reader understands that what I am speaking in my current post is not an internet bubbling on amateur level but analysis with hundreds of hours of interaction with a very sophisticated in terms of knowledge of the complaints system expert, accompanied with my own reading case law.

On the other hand, thanks to the Merseyside Police’s determination to furiously defend their right to be corrupt, as also the access of those officers defending this right, to the public funds, the opposing party in the initiated by me High Court proceedings against the Merseyside Police is represented by two barristers – James Berry and John De Bono, leading experts in policing law, which is, of course, a big honour for me as a claimant.

Why do I think the issues I raise before the High Court are of wide importance

The issues listed below are universal ones and are crucial for cases having similar mechanics but of any lower scale. While I am confident that my case is quite unique one and not many businessmen in their lives have faced and will face such an appalling malice directing police powers against them in the UK, the points I make by my claims are applicable to even minor cases or cases or anything between minor cases and the case of amplitude which I have (affecting the whole police force’s vertical).

Think of a road accident, in which the police officer commits an obvious and outrageous misconduct against you but nevertheless is then permitted to pursue an ‘investigation’ against you in that very same road accident. Would you want to be investigated by a person, who is inescapably charged by malice?

Think of a Professional Standards Department which demonstrates apparently wilful blindness to the complaints in a more serious case, which is important for you, doing so time and again – would you want your complaint to be handled by those, who have already demonstrated it full well that the only function they want to perform is to sink your complaint by imitating that it is being considered, causing you the need to be ready to get involved into judicial reviews and extended for a year proceedings?

Think of seeing a group of officers making racist comments one evening, when you hold a camera of your phone directed at them, and them turning at your house the next day with a search and – unsurprisingly – taking away your phone and – of course – having very, very serious concerns over “your conduct”, as a preventive measure against any evidence you might bring about their own conduct, so as to prejudice the picture of any third party observer.

Would you want your friends, family members to deal with the malice charged with the power of the state, which transforms into a malicious and extended in time saga having significant effect on life? Would you want to disrupt your career and other commitments, waste years for fighting for something that is supposed to be available in an arm’s length – impartial approach and justice when the state’s powers are exercised?

No one wants and the mechanics of the issues I raise are applicable to any situation as is the concept of malice, corruption and wilful blindness by those charged with many positive duties – police.

The first fundamental issue – Claim for recusal of the corrupt police officers

My first and most fundamental claim against the Merseyside Police is that I demand recusal of the whole force from the so called ‘investigating’ me in a situation where my investigating them has revealed so much corruption and malice, which may land some of them in jail and cost careers for the others.

Those familiar with case law will know that the only type of claims which were made so far in the judicial system by someone challenging an investigation were connected with demands to stop it, which differs from my claim in that material aspect that I demand for the investigation to be transferred to a police force, whose officers did not commit against me criminal offences. I put the arch of my claim below the demand of stopping the investigation by the simple reason that, as basic logic and case law will show – such a claim would be chanceless (even if one has done nothing, no one ever will believe until the investigation is over). It is a holy right of law enforcement bodies to investigate whoever they want. But, similarly, it is a holy right of those investigated to deal with impartial investigators, whose decisions (to, for example, maintain the investigation, to make or not make certain enquiries and court applications) are not biased by a malice and self-defence whereas the power of the state is applied merely (and inescapably) as a personal weapon of those trusted by the public to hold it.

It is so simple, so natural and basic that no person in a sane mind would argue that an investigation must be impartial. That is, of course, not the case for the Merseyside Police, for whom their so called ‘investigation’ has become a personal weapon and armour from the first days of them being caught by me more than two years ago in outrageous misleading the court. As a result, the Merseyside Police have instructed the best legal representatives to use what all corruptioners do – spend public funds for defending their right to be corrupt and attacking / damaging those who raise the issue.

The second fundamental issue – Claim over responsibility of decision makers

On 18^th July 2019 I challenged the decision maker of Professional Standards Department of the Merseyside Police with an unbeatable evidence of serious corruption: presenting him with two neighbour ex parte applications of the corrupt team of officers to two different courts, directly contradicting to each other (see examples from #1 to #4 at this post).

In response to that, the decision maker on my complaints turned a blind eye on that evidence, simply taking no action despite my explicit request and invitation. An interesting question arises: when a public servants turns a blind eye on prima facie evidence of serious corruption (including commission of criminal offences by another public servant), let alone when it is explicitly brought to him or her and he or she is charged with a positive duty to react, is he or she liable for gross misconduct?

My answer is affirmative, moreover, I believe this to also have certain commonalities with a criminal offence of corrupt exercise of police powers under section 26 of Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

The answer of the Merseyside Police, who have refused the subsequent complaint against that decision maker, is negative: there is no even a minuscule misconduct, let alone gross misconduct. As per the Merseyside Police, public servants, even those charged with a positive duty to react on serious corruption, can turn a blind eye on it, regardless of how strong obvious evidence is supplied to demonstrate it.

One needs to make here a special note for those who might put into doubt that the evidence was prima facie: in their response to the complaint the Merseyside Police have simply withdrawn from commenting the evidence, from which an obvious inference can be done that they understand it was a prima facie evidence of misleading the court. Instead of what an acting in good faith police force would do – to furiously oppose that there was no prima facie evidence of serious corruption and, hence, no reason to react, the Merseyside Police engaged themselves in hiding behind formalistic and laughable excuses, one of which was that recusing one officer (whose corruption was demonstrated most explicitly) would be “unrealistically” addressing the issue (implying that if there is a corruption, the whole squad engaged in preparing the court application was corrupt, which beggars the question why then did they not recuse the whole squad) and the second was that the high-ranked PSD-officer has no competence to recuse police officers when a complaint is made. Which is a very curious proposition yet to be tested by the High Court.

What the Merseyside Police want to say to all potential complainants is that if you find a prima facie evidence of the seriously corrupt conduct of a police officer, there is some secret person to whom it should be reported, and that person is not located at Professional Standards Department of the police force. I have a suspicion that, out of abundance of caution, such a person simply does not exist in the Merseyside Police. With which position I wish them a very good luck in the High Court.

The third fundamental issue – Claim over determination of the mode of investigation of a complaint against police officer

Translating this into human language, mode of investigation is about who investigates the complaint and who then makes the decision on it. Each recorded complaint should have its IO (investigating officer) and AA (Appropriate Authority, or, in other words, the officer who makes decision as a result of investigation report prepared by the IO).

The semantics behind determining the mode of investigation are simple: from which police force the IO and the AA are to be appointed. In more serious cases the IOPC, which oversees the complaints system, might warrant appointing an IO from another force and / or itself acts as an AA. Those cases are applicable either for more serious claims or where it is apparent that something inside the concerned PSD is directed at frustrating the complaint, due to demonstrable level of tolerance to the corruption (see the previous heading as an example) or risks of biases.

The right of a member of public for his or her complaint being investigated with impartiality and proper due diligence is as holy as his or her right to himself or herself being investigated with impartiality (see the first fundamental claim above).

This basic and obvious for any reasonable person proposition, however, is not obvious for the IOPC and, as a result, this concept simply does not work in practice, causing the mode of investigation to be a ghost function with no real application: 99% of all complaints are investigated locally, even when there are overwhelming indications those are deliberately frustrated. It is a dream job for the IOPC’s assessors: just click the same button every time and you will be correct in 99 out of 100 cases.

The IOPC acts as a body determining the mode of investigation for cases where conduct potentially amounts to serious corruption (of which dishonesty of an officer is a classical and major example). As the IOPC has repeatedly and continuously determined all my complaints – however dramatic allegations (with officers of senior ranks, the whole units being mixed up) and evidence were brought in those – being suitable for local investigation by the Merseyside Police itself, I have made a judicial review claim over the position of the IOPC on that matter.

In short, the matter of claim is that there will be cases, in which determining a complaint being suitable for local investigation, would be wholly unreasonable and, thus, susceptible to a judicial review. My case where I have addressed by the complaints the whole decision-making vertical of the Merseyside Police and even its own PSD, is believed by me to be such.

Conclusion

The importance of the issues I raise (and the very fact of possibility to address them in the High Court) may be not obvious for those who never suffered from police’s dishonesty and malice. However anyone, whose life was ever damaged by the malice armed with the state’s powers, will know that this is a dramatic experience, whose depth may vary from a major accident of the year to a major accident of the whole life, like it was in my case, where two and a half years of my life are taken by this horrifying saga of opposing real and well-determined crooks who are acting in the good name of the UK Police.

Those who have an experience of suffering by themselves from a pressure of the mighty wheel of the state’s powers directed with malice, know that sometimes it can hurt very much and cause major life disruption.

Not every case goes as high as mine in terms the level of damages, the level of malice and the level of the officers involved in the blatant cover-up’s ring, the level of stakes (the integrity of a whole police force’s vertical), and there are thousands of cases of smaller amplitude, but, in a similar way, so can be the access and ability of those suffering from injustice to invoke safeguards. If even I, having spent millions on legal representation, was almost lost in labyrinths and almost continuously, absolutely lamentably failing safeguards of the police complaints system, am now merely standing at the doorstep of the High Court awaiting my claims to finally be determined, there will be thousands, tens of thousands of people within decades suffering from police misconduct, who will have no access, time, resources, knowledge and will for similar exercises and investments. The result of my efforts will be that the police complaints system becomes clearer, the routes of addressing malice and biases in police will be finally drawn clearly so that many, many people who are miles away from ability and readiness to engage in same furious fights for their rights, would benefit from more transparent and more established rules.

Even I myself feel like the infrastructure of safeguards I invoke is built on the broken bones and sufferings of many people before me, thanks to whose struggles new rules and layers of safeguards were implemented, which did not exist five or ten years ago.

On the other hand, existence of even clearer rules of addressing malice would inform those potential violators of their risks (and inability to use the state’s powers as a personal armor and weapon, which may be considered by some of them as a safeguard “just in case things go wrong”) and would cause many of them to simply never commit misconduct that would exist otherwise.

This – the impenetrable belief into own impunity and limitless powers, the “right to be biased as much as they want”, by the Merseyside Police – is what, I believe, has caused my case to either be born or to go so far as it did. I hope – and am somehow confident – that my High Court claims will have not only the effect of easing the disruption of corrupt policing but also preventive effect of that corrupt policing to happen, causing much pains to people’s lives.

See also:

• 7 differences and 7 similarities with “Nick the Fantasist” case
• Detective Sergeant / Inspector Sean Bylinski-Gelder
• 7 public questions on serious corruption to the management of Merseyside Police
• Serious corruption in Merseyside Police: exposed and explained
• Evidence of serious corruption in Merseyside Police: 2018-2020
• Open letter to the public of the UK on serious corruption