Conference

EUROPEAN POLICE SCIENCE AND RESEARCH BULLETIN
SPECIAL CONFERENCE EDITION
however, the GSOC are actually advocating
amending legislation to enable it, refers the
offence cases back to the Garda for investigation
(GSOC, 2012, para.3.6). Interestingly, the Garda
is stoutly resisting that proposal.
Similarly, in England and Wales the IPCC directly
investigates less than 1 % of complaints (HAC,
2010). The remainder is referred back to the
police for investigation, with options for the IPCC
to supervise or manage the investigation and of
the complainant to complain to the IPCC about
the manner of the police investigation. That,
however, cannot be described as an independent
complaints system in any meaningful sense. The
HAC was deeply critical of this operation. It was
strongly of the view that:
‘Most cases should be investigated independently
by the Commission, instead of referred back to
the original force on a complaints roundabout.
“Supervised investigations” do not offer rigorous
oversight of a police investigation, nor do they
necessarily give the public a convincing assurance
that the investigation will be conducted
objectively. This kind of “oversight-lite” is no
better than a placebo.’ (HAC 2013, para.23)
Significantly, a relatively high number of
complaints against the police investigation are
upheld by the Commission (HAC, 2013, para.60.
RELIANCE ON POLICE RESOURCES
Even where complaints are investigated directly
by the independent Commissions, it does not
follow that the investigations are independent
of the police. The reality on the grounds is that
the independent investigators are often heavily
dependent on police or police related expertise
in the conduct of their investigations (Savage,
2013a; HAC, 2013). This is especially true in
cases involving fatalities or serious injury to the
person; the very cases in which the European
Court of Human Rights has emphasised the
importance of the investigation being conduct
independently of the police (Hammerburg,
2009). The problem starts at the point where
the incident is alleged to have occurred. The
fact is that the Commissions do not have the
personnel or the resources spread across the
country to ensure that they get to the scene as
quickly as police investigators. Almost invariably,
therefore, they must rely on the police colleagues
of the officers being investigated to secure the
scene and preserve evidence. If the investigation
requires the application of specialised skills such
as traffic accident reconstruction, ballistics and
even fingerprint analysis, the Commissions will
almost invariably have to rely on the police to
provide them as they will not normally have them
in house. Similarly, for forensic and DNA analyses
they normally have to rely on agencies that
work closely with the police force in question.
Even at a more basic level, as will be seen
later in the context of regulatory capture, the
independent investigators are usually dependant
on the cooperation of the police for the supply
of documentary, video, electronic, and/or oral
evidence central to the investigation.
It would almost be perverse to describe
investigations conducted in such circumstances
as independent of the police. This is tacitly
acknowledged by the report of the HAC inquiry
which explicitly linked the IPCC’s capacity to
take control of a potential crime scene with the
quality of its investigations:
‘When the IPCC does investigate it often comes
too late and takes too long. The trail is left to
go cold. IPCC should be able to take immediate
control of a potential crime scene during the
crucial “golden hours” and early days of an
investigation into deaths and serious injury
involving police officers.’ (HAC, 2013, para.24)
It went on to assert that the IPCC’s involvement in
death and serious injury cases was far too remote
as it lacked access to independent specialists
who could analyse a possible crime scene. This,
in turn, meant that important cases were under
investigated (HAC, 2013, para.33). Similarly,
GSOC has explicitly and publicly linked its
capacity to deliver its investigative function with
access to the Garda PULSE and computerised
information bases. (GSOC, 2013a, para.10.4) The
PULSE system incorporates a central information
database to which operational gardai input data
on crime incidents etc. in the course of their
duties. Garda have direct electronic access to it,
and it is a vital resource in any investigation into
a complaint or criminal matter. The Commission,
however, has no independent access. It must
depend on Garda cooperation to extract
information from PULSE on a case by case basis.
In a special report to the Minister in 2013, it
tersely recommended, inter alia, that it should be
given independent access immediately (GSOC,
2013a, rec.21)
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