Essex Chair 'IOPC has breathtaking room for improvement'

28 March 2018

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has ‘breathtaking’ room for improvement according to Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor.

The IOPC, formerly the IPCC, admits in its latest Annual Report that its speed of growth has had an impact on the ‘number and skill’ of frontline investigation staff.

However, Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor said the problems with the organisation go much deeper.

“I am critical of them and rightly so I think,” he said.

“The commodity they trade in is confidence in the police and when an investigation takes three and-a-half years to complete at their hands, it’s not them that gets criticised but policing in general.

“The room for improvement at the place is breathtaking – it’s driven by figures and is so far removed from policing, from what we represent and from how Essex Police look inwardly to try and improve ourselves.”

The 2016/17 IOPC report also reveals investigations were completed on average in 239 working days, up from 226 days in 2015/16, although overall figures show an average improvement of three months compared to 2014/15.

Steve added that the length of time taken to run investigations has had a negative impact on Essex Federation members.

“We’ve had cases here which were multi-faceted but not overly complex. In one case it took three and-a-half years for the investigation to be completed by the IOPC and the result was exactly what we, the officers involved, and their defence team offered within the first six months of the allegations being made.

“The officers had to wait for another three years for their sanction which is just disproportionate to the offence committed.”

Steve wants police officers to be used to investigate cases.

“They have turned their back on experienced, trusted investigators in the name of independence, and it doesn’t benefit them.

“How are my members expected to feel when investigated for relatively serious matters, having spent 28 years as a detective, for example, and the person sitting opposite them has spent three months as a store detective and this is their first real job in the IOPC?

“Shame on them for being for not being able to stand up and say the very best people at investigating the police are the police.”

“This is the third year of the ambitious expansion programme, during which we have doubled our staff numbers,” IOPC Chair Dame Owers explains in the report.

“However, there are challenges in such a swift expansion and we are examining and refining our internal processes.”

“We are completing investigations more quickly than two years ago, and we know that we can improve still further,” she added.