When you read the following story it makes our own Operation Tempura pale in comparison. However, there is a connection with Tempura as a number of the police officers sent out by the Metropolitan Police (the Met) to the Cayman Islands for Tempura worked for CIB3 – the Anti-Corruption Squad of the Met. These included John Yates (the Head) and Martin Bridger (Chief Investigating Officer). In fact nearly all the team sent here had connections with CIB3. It almost smacks of “the old pals act” doesn’t it?

When you read the following and the related story it doesn’t give you any confidence in the Met’s officers and one can only wonder why we got saddled with them. It is no wonder that the whole investigation was a debacle and perhaps explains why the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office want Tempura buried.  It is a shame we don’t have a completely independent body that could order an inquiry that we in Cayman don’t have to pay for.

Being cynical, the probable outcome will be as a reporter said to me, “some conveniently retired scapegoat will be found to take the blame but not get punished”.

Read on. It’s better than any conspiracy plotted fictitious thriller.

May warns of wrongful convictions

By Press Association From News UK MSN

Undercover police operations spanning decades may have led to wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice, the Home Secretary has warned, in the wake of ”profoundly shocking” findings of a major review into the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

In a dramatic day of disclosures concerning the original police probe into Stephen’s death, Theresa May announced a judge-led public inquiry is to be launched into the work of covert police and Scotland Yard’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) – the top secret unit that was up and running for nearly 40 years.

Police moles fell under the glare of the review, which was conducted by Mark Ellison QC, after a former SDS officer Peter Francis claimed he had been deployed undercover from September 1993 and tasked to ”smear” the Lawrence family campaign.

In his report, Mr Ellison, who successfully prosecuted Gary Dobson and David Norris for Stephen’s murder in 2012, found that an SDS ”spy” was working within the ”Lawrence family camp” during the judicial inquiry led by Sir William Macpherson into Stephen’s death in the late nineties.

Stephen’s mother Baroness Doreen Lawrence fought back tears in the House of Lords as she said her family had endured ”21 years of struggle” and there was ”still more to come” following the most recent disclosures.

Later in the day, detectives investigating wider allegations made against undercover police and the SDS revealed three officers, including at least one of whom who is understood to still be serving, could face criminal charges over claims they slept with women they spied on.

Addressing the House of Commons, the Home Secretary said SDS officers’ actions – such as failing to reveal their true identities to court or correct evidence they knew was wrong – meant there was ”real potential for miscarriages of justice”.

The Home Secretary has commissioned Mr Ellison, along with the Crown Prosecution Service and Attorney General, to conduct a further review into cases impacted by the SDS and has launched a wider public inquiry into undercover policing and the actions of the squad.

”In particular, Ellison says there is an inevitable potential for SDS officers to have been viewed by those they infiltrated as encouraging, and participating in, criminal behaviour,” she said. ”We must therefore establish if there have been miscarriages of justice.”

Mrs May also announced that she would bring in new legislation to create a specific offence of police corruption, to replace current ”outdated” misconduct in public office.

The QC added that he felt ”bound” to flag concerns about the wider implications of the findings on SDS activities – namely that the way in which the unit operated could have ultimately tainted criminal proceedings.

Mr Ellison said the nature of undercover work placed serving officers inside groups of activists who came into conflict with the police and faced arrest and prosecution.

He said: ”Having a system whereby that activity was shrouded in almost total secrecy and the role of, and intelligence gained by, the undercover officer was not considered in relation to the prosecution’s duty of disclosure in criminal proceedings must, in our assessment, produce the potential for there to have been unfairness in some of those proceedings.”

In Stephen’s murder investigation, t he undercover officer in question – referred to as N81 – was also found to have held a meeting with acting detective inspector Richard Walton, who had been seconded to the MPS Lawrence review team, responsible for making submissions to the Macpherson inquiry.

Mr Ellison branded this meeting ”a completely improper use” of intelligence, adding: ”We find the opening of such a channel of communication at that time to have been ‘wrong-headed and inappropriate’.”

”The mere presence of an undercover Metropolitan Police officer in the wider Lawrence family camp in such circumstances is highly questionable in terms of the appearance it creates of the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) having a spy in the family’s camp,” he said.

In addition, Mr Ellison found there is evidence to suspect one of the detectives on the original Stephen Lawrence murder investigation – detective sergeant John Davidson – acted corruptly.

Both the Independent Police Complaints Commission 2006 report into corruption allegations and the Metropolitan Police’s own review in 2012 were found to be inadequate by the review.

Mr Ellison added that Scotland Yard’s record-keeping on its own investigations into police corruption are a cause of concern, with key evidence the subject of mass shredding in 2003.

A hard drive containing relevant data was discovered in November 2013 after more than a year of searching for it.

Stephen Lawrence, 18, a would-be architect, was stabbed to death by a group of up to six white youths in an unprovoked racist attack as he waited at a bus stop in Eltham, south-east London, with a friend on April 22 1993.

His father Neville Lawrence said the findings were ”21 years overdue”, while Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband expressed their shock at Mr Ellison’s conclusions.

In the House of Lords, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon said: “I believed that there was corruption at the start of Stephen’s case and it’s taken over a year for that, but it’s taken nearly 21 years since Stephen’s been killed, and the fact that we as a family had to go through all this and still there’s more to come out.

“It’s been 21 years of struggle and no family should have to do that.”

However, in an apparent contradiction to Mr Ellison’s findings, chief constable Mick Creedon, who is leading Operation Herne, the criminal investigation into allegations concerning undercover police, said investigators had found no evidence to back Mr Francis’s claims of a smear campaign against the Lawrence family.

A file of evidence relating to three undercover officers had been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration, he said.

Mr Creedon also said a team had found a “tradecraft” document that was circulated in the SDS, advising that any relationships by undercover officers should be “fleeting and disastrous”.

For more on this story go to:

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/may-warns-of-wrongful-convictions

Updated related story:

 

To download the whole of the review go to: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/287030/stephen_lawrence_review_summary.pdf

We have published below the Terms of Reference, Findings and Comments contained in the Review as it relates to Part 3 where it highlights the role of CIB3 – the Anti-Corruption Squad of the Metropolitan Police.

Term of reference

3.         Was the Macpherson Inquiry provided with all relevant material connected to the issue of possible corrupt activity by any officer associated with the initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence? If not, what impact might that have had on the Inquiry?

Finding

●●    We have found no evidence or record indicating that the Inquiry was told anything more about the anti-corruption intelligence held by the MPS than what was revealed in the letter of 12 June 1998.

Findings

●●    We have seen no evidence or record to indicate that any further details of the “new lines of enquiry” that included John Davidson were revealed to the Inquiry beyond the content of the MPS letter of 11 September 1998.

We have found no records to demonstrate that any specific individual or team within the MPS took responsibility for revelation of all relevant information about anti-corruption intelligence to the Public Inquiry. Nor have we found records to demonstrate that the MPS conducted a comprehensive search of all of the material in its possession in the manner requested by the Chairman to the Inquiry, or to indicate the results of such a search

●●    In the absence of any such records, we find it difficult to attach much weight to the recollection of various individuals involved as to what ‘would have been done. This is particularly so in light of our findings as to the anti-corruption intelligence which it appears that the MPS held at the time.

Comment

●●    The MPS has been unable to locate or account for the Operation Othona intelligence that existed by the time of the Inquiry in 1998.That is with the exception of what appears to be some of the original intelligence which was found on a hard drive manufactured in 2001. This hard drive was only discovered in mid-November 2013 (after more than a year of the MPS searching) in a cardboard box in the IT department of MPS Directorate of Professional Standards. We have very recently been informed that in 2003 there was ‘mass-shredding’ of the surviving hard copy reports generated by Operation Othona.

Comment

●●    It is a further cause of real concern to us that searches of the MPS database and file system to identify all relevant material for the MPS Corruption Review of 2012, and for our Review, failed to find these reports. We only located one of the reports during a review of material held at the Independent Police Complaints Commission. We received the others via the Senior Investigating Officer in the recent murder investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll, as a result of his own work.

●●      If the MPS searches for all relevant material cannot reveal such repor ts of central significance to the issue of possible corruption in the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation, there must be serious concerns that fur ther relevant material has not been revealed.

Comment

●●    We remain concerned that there is a real possibility that the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel may hold or acquire material of relevance to our review of the corruption issue.

Findings

●●    In our view, both the intelligence picture suggesting that John Davidson was a corrupt officer and the content of Neil Putnam’s debriefing relating to Mr Davidson should have been revealed to the Chairman of the Inquiry.

●●    Anybody who was focused on the vexed issue of the motives behind John Davidson’s involvement in the deficient Lawrence investigation, and who knew that the source of the “new line of enquiry” concerning Mr Davidson was a self-confessed fellow corrupt officer, should have recognised the potential for Mr Davidson to have confided in that officer as to his true motivation in the Lawrence case. It is a source of some concern to us that nobody in the MPS who was aware of the detail of what Neil Putnam was saying about Mr Davidson appears to have thought to ask him about Mr Davidson’s motives in the Lawrence case.

●●    The absence of contemporaneous records showing exactly what level of information from Neil Putnam’s debriefing regarding John Davidson was passed up the chain of command makes it difficult to identify where any personal criticism is merited. The end result is that nothing more than the letter of 11 September 1998 was revealed to the Inquiry. In our opinion this amounted to a significant failure in the disclosure made by the MPS.

Findings

●●    We believe that there are substantial arguments on either side of the issue of whether John Davidson admitted to Neil Putnam that he was in a corrupt relationship with Clifford Norris at the time that he worked on the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

●●    This is, for us, an unresolved issue.

If the criminal standard of proof is applied to this allegation, as it was applied by the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry to allegations of corruption, we find it unlikely that any future Public Inquiry would be able to reach a firm conclusion that it was sure that the allegation was true, given Neil Putnam’s status as a ‘tainted witness’. We believe that any reasonable tribunal would be cautious of acting in the absence of independent corroboration.

●●    Independent corroboration of Neil Putnam’s allegation does not currently exist, so far as we are aware. However, there do remain some outstanding lines of enquiry identified in the 1999–2000 intelligence reports which could be investigated, which, were they to amount to evidence capable of providing independent support, may change that assessment.

●●    We should also highlight that in the event of evidence emerging to support Neil Putnam’s claims, the question of possible criminal proceedings would then resurface and need to be addressed first (taking account of the immunity provided to witnesses in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry).

Findings

●●    Had the MPS informed the Chairman of the Inquiry about the combination of the detail of Neil Putnam’s debriefing regarding John Davidson to CIB3 in July 1998 and the intelligence picture otherwise suggesting to the MPS that Mr Davidson was corrupt, in our view the Chairman was likely to have wanted to consider the following options:

—●      identifying and disclosing information that might be used in questioning John Davidson by the interested par ties, in particular as to a connection existing between Clifford Norris to “Officer XX” to “Officer B” to John Davidson; and the allegations of corrupt activity involving informants by John Davidson both before and after he worked on the Lawrence case;

—●      finding a mechanism for Neil Putnam to be asked if John Davidson had ever mentioned anything about his role in the Lawrence investigation; and

—●      allowing Neil Putnam to be called to give evidence at the Inquiry.

●●    If, in addition, the Chairman had been aware that Neil Putnam alleged that John Davidson had admitted that he had a corrupt relationship with Clifford Norris at the time of the Lawrence investigation, the Chairman would almost certainly have ordered disclosure and sought a means by which Mr Putnam could give evidence to the Inquiry.

If CIB3 had indicated that it wished to actively pursue a possible prosecution of John Davidson in relation to either matter, or the Chairman felt that such a prosecution should be considered based on the material that he was shown, the Chairman may also have had to consider adjourning the Inquiry in order for that process to take place. The immunity given to all witnesses appearing before the Inquiry would have seriously complicated or prevented such a process taking place after the Inquiry.

Should more have been revealed by the Metropolitan Police Ser vice to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry?

Findings

●●    We recognise the extreme operational sensitivity that CIB3 attached to the anti-corruption intelligence, to the content of Neil Putnam’s debriefing and to the notion of him becoming a possible witness at the Inquiry before his allegations had been fully investigated. However, in our judgment, the combination of Mr Putnam’s potential as a witness, taken together with the opportunity for aspects of the intelligence to inform the Inquiry on the subject of John Davidson’s corrupt nature, necessitated that the Inquiry Chairman was fully informed to enable him to make important decisions as to the significance of the material to the outcome of the Inquiry.

●●    We are naturally reluctant to predict what the outcome would have been in terms of the Inquiry’s findings. However, in our view, it is not impossible to envisage that the Inquiry might have been driven to the conclusion that there must have been more to John Davidson’s failure to develop information and evidence in the Lawrence investigation than simply an inappropriate manner and unfortunate unconscious racism. As the Chairman’s last letter dated 21 September 1998 implied, the Inquiry was clearly very worried about Mr Davidson’s evidence and his motives, indicating that “much may turn” on material going to his credibility.

Term of reference

1.         Is there evidence providing reasonable grounds for suspecting that any officer associated with the initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence acted corruptly?

Findings

●●    Assuming that Neil Putnam is available and willing to give evidence, the answer must be yes as regards John Davidson. Other than Mr Putnam’s potential evidence, the material available which suggests that Mr Davidson may have been corrupt in the Stephen Lawrence investigation remains ‘intelligence’ and not ‘evidence’.

●●    In regard to other officers the answer is no. However, there are still some potential lines of enquiry that may be capable of providing such evidence.

Term of reference

2.         Are there any further lines of investigation connected to the issue of possible corrupt activity by any officer associated with the initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence?

Findings

●●    A number of the lines of enquiry highlighted in the 2000 analysis of the intelligence suggesting that John Davidson may have acted corruptly in the Stephen Lawrence investigation were not fully pursued. This was due to a lack of success following the limited investigation that was under taken and because of other operational priorities.

●●    These lines of enquiry therefore remain open. However, it must be recognised that the prospect of them resulting in evidence of a quality capable of supporting a potential finding of corruption will almost certainly have diminished over the 13 intervening years. This prospect is also reduced by the loss of relevant records.

Our findings on corruption

3.3       Have we been able to uncover all material evidence relating to the issue of corruption and, if not, would a Public Inquiry have a greater chance of doing so?

Findings

●●    We have not been able to uncover all material evidence relating to the issue of corruption.

It is clear that there are significant areas where relevant MPS records should exist but cannot be found.

●●    A graphic example of this problem was demonstrated by the fact that searches of MPS databases and file systems for the purpose of the MPS May 2012 Review, and then for this Review, failed to identify and locate all the 1999–2000 analyses considering the central issue of corruption in the initial Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

●●    There is no record of any search of the anti-corruption intelligence in 1998, or the results of any such search, before a decision was taken not to disclose any intelligence to the Inquiry.

●●    The original anti-corruption intelligence database itself cannot be accounted for.

●●    There are no comprehensive records of what the MPS did disclose to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

●●    A significant tranche of potentially relevant informant records cannot be found, including the informant files that were revealed to the Inquiry.

●●    There are some records confirming the destruction of some relevant files, but no records relating to the destruction or location of other potentially relevant files that cannot be found.

●●    We have considered whether a further Public Inquiry would have the potential to discover more evidence than we have discovered. Whilst a Public Inquiry would have the power

to order the production of documents, require the attendance of witnesses and examine witnesses in a public forum, the potential for it to discover more than we have may well be limited. Fundamentally this is because of the chaotic state of the historical records held by the MPS. There are incomplete records of the moment; files have been destroyed; and the MPS uses a multitude of file-logging systems. In addition, a natural depletion of records will have occurred over time.

●●    In making a decision as to whether a further Public Inquiry is merited, it may assist if any possible outstanding lines of enquiry are explored first, and also if efforts are made to establish whether or not the review carried out by the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel is likely to touch on the role of John Davidson in that investigation, or of others with whom he was suspected of being involved in corruption.

The result was that the 2012 MPS Review was another example of the MPS providing misleading reassurance to the family and to the public. In effect, the review claimed, “It’s all right, we’ve looked at it all again, there is nothing new, and there is no material indicating possible corruption that was not revealed to the Public Inquiry.”

●●    In our assessment, there were clear defects in the level of information that the MPS revealed to the Public Inquiry. The MPS held material of some potential importance to the determination of the true motives behind John Davidson’s deficient investigative work on the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation and had not revealed it.

●●    We would add that although the author of the report deserves some criticism in these respects, we find that the MPS decision to commission such a wide-ranging and significant review over such a tight timescale was unrealistic and ill-judged.

Our findings on corruption

3.5       The Guardian, 16 March 2012 – Ray Adams

Finding

●●    In so far as this article asserted that the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Panel had not been shown the Operation Russell files relating to Ray Adams, it was incorrect.

●●    In this Review, we have found that the position of Mr Adams is substantially as it was at the time of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – namely that there is no evidence providing any reasonable grounds for suspecting that he acted corruptly in the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

●●    We do not agree with the conclusion expressed by the IPCC in 2006 that there had been adequate disclosure to the Public Inquiry.

●●    The IPCC also found Neil Putnam’s allegation that in his debriefing in the summer of 1998 he had mentioned that John Davidson had admitted to having had a corrupt relationship with Clifford Norris to be unsubstantiated. However, as indicated above, we have concluded that this remains a live issue with powerful arguments on both sides.