POLICE WANT SECRECY ON MISCONDUCT

Giving some thought to today`s post it occurred to me that quite a high proportion of my posts have been devoted to criticism of police.  A few years ago that criticism was generally directed against the policies of constabularies or the unusual procedures undertaken by them.  But more recent postings have been more concerned with the antics of senior police officers and the ineptitude or worse that has passed for activities more befitting those cops from Keystone were they not much more serious. The most recent such comments were posted here on August 19th.

The Chief Officers` Council; formally ACPO, in its collective wisdom has tried to persuade its overseers that cases of alleged misconduct against its members be kept secret. What arrogance!  From Watergate to Whitehall it has been demonstrated that the cover up when revealed (as it usually is eventually) has greater ramifications that the misdeed itself.  Those whom we pay and entrust to lead the enforcement of the law should  be the most open of all to scrutiny when that trust appears, rightly or wrongly, to have been misplaced.