Report of the Inquiry into the circumstances of the Death of Bernard ...

ecollection of the incident and must have been mistaken about the observation book.
He confirmed to the inquiry that he specifically recalled that the officers had told SO
Nuttall that they wanted to search a particular prisoner because his demeanour and the
entries in his record indicated that he might have something to hide.
9.23 According to the Coroner’s notes of oral evidence to the inquest in July 2001, Mr
Downs said he had read Mr Lodge’s wing history sheets but could not say whether they
showed he had been on F2052SH or was alleged to have assaulted an officer. He said
he did not check the observation log.
9.24 In his statement to the inquiry, Mr Downs said that he was not aware that Mr
Lodge was facing a criminal charge of assaulting a Risley prison officer and he had not
noticed the entry in the history sheets about this that was subsequently brought to his
attention.
9.25 In oral evidence to the inquiry, Mr Downs said that when he had been making the
entry about what happened coming back from visits, which “seemed completely out of
the blue”, he had wondered if anything similar had happened before so he “had a quick
précis through a page or two back to … see if there was any sort of pattern of any sort of
behaviour that would establish why he’d been like he had and I saw the entries
reference swinging lines and being in the cell he wasn’t supposed to be, and then put
that together with the fact that he’d been very standoffish after a visit and, you could call
it assumption, but you have to work on hunches and your sixth senses, if you like, when
you’re working with that kind of level of information.”
9.26 Mr Downs went on to say that it might not have crossed his mind to search
Sonny Lodge’s cell that evening but for the fact that Officer Bowcock happened to
approach him about where they were going to search just when he was writing in Sonny
Lodge’s file.
Officer Bowcock’s evidence
9.27 Mr Bowcock said at the adjudication and again at a disciplinary interview in 1999
that Mr Lodge was identified as a legitimate target from the observation book.
9.28 In his statement to the police in September 1998, Mr Bowcock said that it was
comments in the wing observation book that brought Mr Lodge to his attention. When it
was pointed out that there were no adverse comments in the observation book, Mr
Bowcock acknowledged that he had been in conversation with Mr Downs at the time,
68