Final Report of the Morris Inquiry: The Case for Change

THE CASE FOR CHANGE
Treating all those involved the same way regardless of circumstances –
“You are just a number”
7.123 Another criticism we have heard is that, if more than one officer is involved
in an incident which gives rise to an investigation, all the officers are treated in the
same way, rather than an initial assessment being carried out as to likely culpability.
We have heard these described as regulation 9 confetti drops and have evidence of
a number of cases where this has occurred:
“An example of this would be an allegation of an abuse of power by a person subject of a
search warrant. The normal allegation would be that an officer had obtained the warrant by
giving false or misleading information to a magistrate. It would be clear from the papers who
the officer laying the information to the court was and therefore who should be the subject of
the complaint. The practice of DPS would be to give all the officers involved in the search a
163 (regulation 9 notice) and interview them under caution. This has the effect of treating all
the officers as accused persons and none of them as witnesses.This denies the investigating
officer the chance to get a clear picture as to what happened and prolongs the whole matter.
This also causes stress to officers who have not done anything and had an adverse effect on
their careers.” (Submission from IND 36.)
“ … as soon as a complaint like this is made, yes, it has got to be investigated, and it has got to
be investigated properly, but, you know, to treat us all the same and tar us all with the same
brush when they were out – the people that were investigating it were out to get one person.
… that is what they were out to do, but they took five of us with them, because at the time,
one of the officers was facing charge of assault, we were all facing charges of neglect of duty.”
(Evidence of Ms BB.)
7.124 We can see no reason to treat all the officers involved in an incident the
same regardless of circumstances. We have been told that this practice no longer
occurs and to a certain extent practices of this kind should be dealt with by our
earlier recommendations about investigatory procedures. However, for the
avoidance of doubt:
We recommend that, when more than one officer is involved in a case, regular
and frequent assessments are made of the facts with a view to determining
who, if anyone, is actually culpable and which officers are peripheral to the
central facts.
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