report - States Assembly

More documents

Recommendations

Info

different understandings of the reporting requirements in respect of candidates for honorary police office with criminalrecords. The Attorney General expected the Connétable to inform him of all matters affecting the suitability of a person toserve in the honorary police. Within the honorary police itself the understanding was to leave all difficulties for the AttorneyGeneral to resolve. Steps were taken during the period to clarify the matter and these are detailed in the next chapter. Therewas also misunderstanding on the part of Connétable Le Brocq of his statutory responsibility for reporting complaints againstserving members of the Honorary Police to the Attorney General. This matter was examined carefully by the Royal Court inthe case ‘In the matter of the Constable of St. Helier’ (2001 JLR N13)and is not discussed in this report.7.11 The Honorary Police system has an inbuilt fundamental dilemma. It is a voluntary organisation with considerablepowers, including, in some cases, power to restrict the liberty of the individual. It is organised into ranks and thus, on the faceof it has a formal command structure which all the officers interviewed by this Committee recognised. However, thevolunteer nature of the organisation leads it to operate in an unstructured and informal manner. Undoubtedly the motivationof individual honorary police officers is genuine. However the evidence received by this Committee strongly indicates that inpractice only lip-service is paid to some important elements of discipline. A critical element is management control. Theevidence presented to this Committee showed that successive Chefs de Police tended to regard themselves as first amongequals, commanding effectively by consent and somewhat removed from day-to-day policing. Neither Centeniers norVingteniers regarded themselves as having formal responsibility for the management of junior officers beyond settling theduty rosters. They enjoyed a working relationship with officers on duty weeks but apparently not further than that. As aconsequence, if there was concern about the behaviour of an officer, generally speaking, there was no formal procedure fordealing with the situation.7.12 Handover arrangements between successive Connétables and indeed, between serving and incoming Centeniers,were informal and inadequate. Newcomers were expected largely to learn from experience. In particular, it is unsatisfactorythat incoming Centeniers were not informed of the background of officers with whom they would be working.7.13 From the very beginning of his period as Connétable, Mr. Le Brocq, acting on the advice of his predecessor,delegated most honorary police matters to the Chef de Police. He also had an open door policy, permitting any officer toapproach him with any problem they might have. Since there was no formal procedure, other than that for reporting criminaloffences or major disciplinary matters, that meant that he could either be inundated with trivial matters or never hear aboutdeveloping problems until it was too late. In the case of Mr. Holland the latter appears to be the case. This practice also led tosome confusion about the rôle of the Connétable and the Chef de Police and, to a degree, it undermined the authority of theChef de Police.7.14 From evidence given to this Committee, there was very poor information flow within the St. Helier HonoraryPolice. Apart from the mandatory monthly police meeting, which was not attended by all officers, there was very little formalinformation flow up and down the line. This problem was accentuated for much of the relevant period, by the organizationalstructure of the St. Helier force. Officers were organized into four Teams, with settled membership, headed by a seniorVingtenier. The Teams did a tour of duty of one week and thus reported to the Duty Centenier for that week. As there wereten Centeniers and only four Teams, Team members reported to a different Centenier on every duty. Thus, if problems weredeveloping within a Team, these would not be noticed at senior level within the force. It also seems, from the evidencepresented to this Committee, that Duty Centeniers in St. Helier spent most of their duty time conducting Parish Hall inquiriesand preparing cases for Police Court hearings and were not involved in day-to-day policing or the management of the dutyTeam. Within Team B it seems also that gossip was rife and this inevitably caused misinformation and bad feeling leading toloss of morale.7.15 Because of the lack of effective organisational structure there was no system to monitor regularly and review anofficer’s behaviour. Furthermore, there were only limited personnel files kept on honorary police officers in St. Helier, andthis remains the case. There were no regular assessments of performance and no proper records kept of complaints madeagainst an individual officer. Consequently it was very difficult for people in authority to gain a complete view of theperformance of any one officer. In the case of Mr. Holland there were a number of pointers that could have warned theauthorities that he might be unsuitable to be an honorary police officer. During his honorary police service Mr. Holland wasinvolved in several incidents that should have raised questions regarding his suitability. None of them was sufficient on itsown to make him unsuitable but together they showed a pattern of behaviour, which should have been observed by the Parishauthorities. In addition, until recently, such files as were kept were regarded as belonging to the Parish administration ratherthan the Honorary Police. This meant that they were not easily accessible to senior officers in the force who might need toread them.7.16 Mr. Holland had proved himself to be a very hard working and competent officer. He carried out many extra dutiesthat other officers were not prepared to do and this resulted in him being greatly valued by some of the senior officers. TheSt. Helier Honorary Police were continually understaffed during the period covered by this report. In addition, they were
equired to carry out extra duties on behalf of the wider Island community. Mr. Holland’s enthusiasm to volunteer for extraduties gave him extra value. This resulted in some of the senior officers failing to look past his eagerness to see thedeficiencies lurking beneath, and to regard complaints about him by fellow officers to be trivial and vexatious.7.17 Throughout the inquiry this Committee has not encountered one officer in the St. Helier Honorary Police, with thepossible exception of Vingtenier Haynes, who was prepared to accept any responsibility for the events under investigation.This again reinforces the point that there was no effective management structure in the force.Developments between 1992 and 2002CHAPTER 88.1 This Committee recognises that since 1992 many welcome changes have taken place with regard to mattersconsidered in this report and acknowledges that others are under way. The changes have improved the process of entry intothe honorary police service. In St. Helier, induction and training procedures have improved. The Home Affairs Committeehas considered a number of other issues, which that Committee mentioned in its Report to the States “Committee of Inquiry:Procedures for Recruitment of Honorary Police Officers (P.67/2001) - Report” (P.67/2001 Rpt). Chief among these are theconsideration of disqualification criteria for service in the Honorary Police or the States of Jersey Police and the process ofelection to the Honorary Police, for both of which a consultation group has been established. Further progress on thesematters has been delayed until the completion of this report.8.2. As has already been recorded in Chapter 5 of this report, in June 1995, the then Attorney General issued newdirections to the Comité des Connétables to the effect that he must be informed of all previous convictions of new candidatesfor the Honorary Police before they were sworn in. That directive also required the Connétable to advise the AttorneyGeneral if there were no convictions recorded against a particular individual. In 1997 a further direction was issued to allConnétables, requiring the same information in respect of officers who were being re-elected. Had these procedures been ineffect in 1992, it is quite possible that Mr. Holland would not have been sworn in as an officer.8.3 In 2001, the States adopted a Law which has now been enacted as the Public Elections (Jersey) Law 2002. ThisLaw includes a range of provisions regarding the conduct of elections, including specific provisions in Article 22 regardingthe election of Centeniers (but not Vingteniers or Constable ’s Officers). These are directed primarily to ensure that, if acandidate for election as Centenier has been convicted of an offence of a kind listed in Regulations made by the States, thatinformation will be reported to the nomination meeting. It will be the duty of the Connétable to seek out this information andsee that it is reported to the nomination meeting, as well as to the Attorney General. In practice, he could have only two daysto obtain that information. This part of the Law appears to this Committee to be impractical given the time required to obtaincriminal records, particularly from other jurisdictions. Article 22 of the Law is not yet in force and consequently Regulationshave not been made. It should be noted that offences of a kind not listed in the Regulations would not be reported to thenomination meeting.8.4 Following the report of the Independent Review Body on Police Services in Jersey, published in July 1996, theStates set up a Working Party to consider whether and to what extent the following issues raised in the report wereappropriate to the Island. The Working Party presented its report to the States (R.C.41/97) on 9th December 1997 and on19th May 1998, the States, adopting a proposition of the Defence Committee, as it then was, approved most of therecommendations in that report. The States approved the establishment by law of a Police Authority with responsibility forsecuring the maintenance of effective and efficient policing throughout the Island and setting local objectives andperformance targets for the States of Jersey Police Force and the Honorary Police.8.5 The States also agreed that -(a)the office of Chef de Police for each Parish be established by law to have charge of the Honorary Policewithin the Parish and perform such other duties as may be prescribed by law; and that the Connétables shouldcease to fulfil operational policing rôle but retain overall responsibility for the effective and efficient policingof their Parish;(b)that posts of Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Honorary Police and the responsibilities of the respectiveposts be established by law;(c)that the Centeniers’ Association and the Association of Vingteniers and Constable’s Officers berecommended to merge into a single association.To date, these changes have not been implemented. Apart from (a) above, the changes would not affect directly the issues
Page 2 and 3: COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY INTO HONORARY
Page 4 and 5: IntroductionContextOn 8th September
Page 6 and 7: CHAPTER 1BackgroundHonorary Police1
Page 8: 4.1. The events4.1.1 In 1986, Mr. R
Page 11 and 12: 4.2.3 The minutes of the Honorary P
Page 13 and 14: 5.1.19 Under the Honorary Police (J
Page 15 and 16: was expected to know the ropes beca
Page 17 and 18: complaint about an alleged offence
Page 19: allegations of sexual misconduct ag
Page 23 and 24: to the introduction of a list of sp
Page 25 and 26: Witnesses attending upon the Commit
Page 27: APPENDIX DBibliographyBooks and Pap

report - States Assembly

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?