News Shorts and Other Busyness

Police Masons Criticise Complaints Authority

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 9.

Police attitudes made an unusual change last December, one which despite the magnitude of its implications, received scant media coverage.

The matter concerns the Police Complaints Authority, the in-house investigation unit for police malpractice and corruption. Long has it been said that the PCA’s ability to investigate police corruption is diminished by the fact that the investigators themselves are police officers.

However, despite a history of smothered allegations and poor accountability, the Home Office and the Police themselves have always upheld the PCA to be beyond any bias towards their own kind, and perfectly suitable as impartial investigators.

Such official attitudes changed dramatically last December, when the PCA chairman, Sir Leonard Peach told a House of Commons home affairs committee that police officers should publicly declare their membership of masonic lodges. Sir Leonard told the committee that there was much public concern over the implications of Freemasonary, saying: “It would clearly be an advantage if those investigating complaints declared their membership.”

As a result the Police Federation, one of the force’s largest representative bodies, suddenly claimed the PCA did not have the confidence of the rank and file. Meanwhile, the Police Superintendent’s Association told the Home Affairs Committee that: “Over the past two years our confidence in the impartiality of the PCA has been shaken. Many of our members no longer see the PCA as being truly independent.”