Request to SIA to have former guard's licence revoked The former guard still has an SIA licence to work as a security guard till Sep 2011. I have made a formal request to the SIA to revoke the licence and thus ensure that she can never work again in the security industry. I've told them that the DWP investigated her for six months and upheld my complaint about her lying to the police about me and persecuting my friend with her false accusations. I have offered to send a copy of my report on her and the letters of apology we received from the DWP. Hopefully, this will be enough to ensure that they will revoke the licence. * * * In 2009, a friend of the guard's who was the security guard at another jobcentre supported her in making her complaint of 'homophobic harassment' against me. The police took statements from both guards, who visit the same gay club in Southampton. The complaint was investigated for four months and eventually binned by the Crown Prosecution Service in October 2009. I've just looked at the SIA website and found out that this other guard has had her licence revoked! I do not know why the SIA revoked it, but it will be for one of these reasons: A licence will be revoked if: The licence holder is not the person to whom the named licence should have been issued. The licence holder does not have the training qualifications that were claimed on application. The licence holder receives a conviction, caution or warning for a relevant offence. The licence holder loses, or did not have when they applied, the right to remain or work in the UK. A licence may also be revoked if: The licence holder breaks the conditions on which their licence was issued. We receive non-conviction information suggesting that there is a case for having the licence withdrawn. The licence holder becomes subject to detention because of mental disorder. http://www.sia.homeoffice.gov.uk/Pages/enforcement-revocation.aspx Well, I am very pleased that both these guards are now gone. They were obnoxious individuals who should never have been security guards in the first place. [Edit: the other guard had her licence revoked on or before 13 October 2010.] ICE Appeal Our ICE Appeal is going slowly but well. After a recent phone conversation, I have been told that our appeal will be heard by the Independent Case Examiner himself. Most cases are dealt with by assistant staff.

Appeal in to IPCC My friend has appealed to the IPCC following the rejection of his complaint by the Acting Chief Inspector at the local station. I scanned the form he completed and emailed it. I’ve sent my own statement in support, a longer version of my posting above (no. 155). Something occurred to me as I was writing my statement. The police are saying that they saw the case as only resting solely on the allegations of verbally threatening behaviour by my friend and try to shift the blame to the CPS for deciding to prosecute. The police saw the CCTV and knew it did not support the security guard’s claims in her police statement that she was physically threatened by my friend in the jobcentre. But in court the prosecution proceeded with a case for both verbally and physically threatening behaviour. This suggests to me that there was a failure of communication between the police and the CPS. The Crown Prosecutor clearly did not realize what a disaster of a case the police had given him: a witness statement full of discrepancies; a chief witness who lied on oath; and CCTV that proved nothing against my friend. I have therefore asked the IPCC to speak to the prosecutor in the case to discover exactly what the police told the CPS before they took the decision to prosecute. I have never been very confident that a complaint about the police would succeed, but I’ve given the appeal my best shot. Now we sit back and see what happens … Appeal to Independent Case Examiner My friend and I have also registered appeals to the DWP’s Independent Case Examiner. I put them in a few weeks ago, and they are waiting to be dealt with. Mine relates to the fact that I was only compensated for the lies the guard told about me to police in January 2008, not the further persecution I endured in the many months afterwards during which I was placed under police investigation for five months. My friend’s appeal relates to the failure to compensate him for the heart attack he suffered before his trial or for the expenses he incurred, such as his travel to Petersfield Jobcentre when on court bail. I will update with any news. We have been waiting for a few weeks for our appeals to be dealt with because of the high volume of complaints about the DWP. Why doesn’t that surprise me?

Yes, the police don't like criticism and try to block it. In Hampshire we have a Chief Constable who appointed himself the force's 'Diversity Champion'. In August 2009, he went in uniform to the Brighton Gay Pride March to show his 'solidarity' with 'LGBT communities', and his press officers publicised it widely. He is not a homosexual and Brighton is not in Hampshire. His force employees over 140 ? and Gay Liaison Officers (LAGLO's) and 10 officers on the Hampshire ?, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Group (HLGBTRG). In one online newspaper, many people criticised his presence on the gay pride march. He complained about it and got the postings removed. So he is a 'Diversity Champion' but not a Freedom of Speech Champion. Mind you, he failed to get this posting removed from 'Pink News': A PC PC!! Note the irony that now the police are happy to march alongside gays while beating the crap out of – and killing – others who legitimately protest. Do we really need a representative of legalised thuggery and corruption on our march? Get back to your form filling, PC Plonker, or better still, get back on the street and prevent a few muggings and stabbings… http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12791.html/ While he was on that gay pride march his officers in Alton were investigating me for 'homophobic harassment' because of a complaint by the ? security guard at the jobcentre. The investigation lasted four months and failed to produce a case against me. Hardly surprising, since it was based on palpable lies. The march was also just a fortnight after the collapse of the prosecution in my friend's trail, where the same ? guard's testimony turned out to be untruthful. None of the constabulary's press officers gave these events any publicity. Of course, the Chief Constable of Hampshire was a New Labour placeman. He climbed to the top, like Sir Ian Blair at the Met, by mouthing politically correct platitudes and espousing the fashionable cause of 'minorities'. The people of Hampshire would be better served by police officers who uphold the law rather than posture on gay pride marches - which, of couse, is precisely the point that the writer in 'Pink News' made. 8-)

The legal aid solicitor who represented me and my friend struck me as very jaded and cynical. He never said a word in any of our police interviews. Yes, it was very easy for him to pick up the legal aid work. He just waited for the phone call from the police and then came along and sat there and said nothing. According to my friend, he sat through his police interrogation doing a crossword puzzle in a fishing magazine. The same solicitor failed to get incident reports from the jobcentre and failed to get the jobcentre manager to come and testify. The defence was good in the end, but only because of the efforts of my friend, me and the barrister. We gave it everything we had and blew the prosecution out of the water. * * * Okay, I will look out for The Murder of Billie-Jo. Ten Rillington Place is the classic book on a miscarriage of justice, which I've read and re-read. The Justice Game by Geoffrey Robinson is good, seriously questioning the adversary system of justice we have. I wonder how many policemen read these books? It would do them some good. But they are too busy doing all that 'diversity' training introduced by New Labour instead.

Yes, it happened in this case. My friend's legal aid solicitor said he should accept an offer from the prosecution to plead guilty to section 5 of the Public Order Act (and take a fine) to avoid trial for section 4a (which is an imprisonable offence). He refused the offer and was vindicated in court. I developed a very low opinion of this solicitor, who I judged to be a leach on the legal system. Fortunately, the defence barrister, who was then still in pupillage, was excellent and impressed me with the quality of his advocacy and his commitment to the cause of justice. At the end of the trail, the Crown Prosecutor stood up to commend him for having defending his client so ably. * * * I've read 'Error of Judgement'. I'll look for the book on the Sean Jenkins / Billie Jo Jenkins case. That one always concerned me. Jeremy Bamber and Michael Stone are two innocent men still wrongly imprisoned.

Sad Story I have commented on my unhappiness about the Hampshire Constabulary failing to heed my warnings about the lying guard in January 2008 and charging an innocent man a year later. Here is a sad story of how another member of the public tried to help the police. Just hours after police in Alton, Hampshire arrested and charged my friend with threatening behaviour on 20 January 2009, a concerned member of the public phoned the Hampshire Constabulary to warn them about hazardous flooding on a road near Winchester. The call came in at midnight on 22 January 2009. A civilian employee requested a police car to visit the scene, but the request was cancelled by his colleague, a police officer. The police officer should then, as an IPCC investigation later concluded, have contacted the local authority to warn them of the flooding, but ‘he failed in his duty’ and did nothing. Hours later, between about 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. – no one is quite sure when – a car hit the flooded road and careered into a tree in a nearby garden. After the car was eventually spotted, the injured driver was cut free by emergency services but later died in hospital. He was PC James Drew, aged 27, who was based at Alton Police Station and travelling to work that morning. The Chief Constable of Hampshire, Alex Marshall, said, ‘We are all saddened by this tragic incident. Our thoughts and sincerest condolences go to both James’s family and to police officers and staff who have lost a good friend and a valued colleague.’ References: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7846452.stm http://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/4764148.Worker_did_not_report_flooding/

Yes, the Independent Police Complaints Commission is not as independent as it name suggests. They usually just pass the complaint to the station to be investigated locally. The police inspector who investigated has simply not answered all the points in the complaint registered by the solicitor and me. I've read many books on miscarriages of justice, including most of Ludovic Kennedy's and the shocking accounts of the Guildford 4, MacGuire 7 and Birmingham 6. In Kennedy's book on the Luton Post Office Murder he tells of how the police deliberately approached an alibi witness they knew would be vital to the defence to prevent the defence talking to him. Then they failed to produce him in court so the defence couldn't question him. Innocent men ended up in prison, their names only cleared decades after the robbery and years after they died. In my friend's case, the police were less interested in the truth about what happened than making a case against him. They try to shift the blame to the CPS for giving the go-ahead to prosecute, but the Crown Prosecutor, when he actually saw the ridiculous evidence the police had gathered, stopped the trail.

A flawed and incomplete response from the police Here l offer my own response to the letter my friend has received. The police made a bad mistake to charge an innocent man, but will not admit any failings. 1. Failing to acknowledge that the guard was previously a subject of a complaint that she lied in a police statement. The inspector makes no mention that in January 2008 I had complained that the guard made a false statement to the police about me. Official police papers show that an inspector at the police station reviewed my arrest and concluded that his officer had been right to de-arrest me. He also advised me to complain to Securitas about her. In other words, the police already had strong grounds for believing that the guard was an unreliable witness. I told police that she twisted innocent words I had spoken to make it sound like I had threatened her, exactly what my friend also claimed. I went out of my way to warn the police about her only for them to ignore me. 2. Failing to recognize that the discrepancies between the guard’s police statement and the CCTV showed her to be an unreliable witness. The inspector writes: ‘the CCTV does not prove any physical behaviour by yourself which would indicate that you were being abusive.’ The guard gave a statement that she was physically threatened, a claim unsupported by the CCTV. In other words, the police had another strong reason for concluding that she was an unreliable witness. She had claimed, for instance, that my friend clenched his fists and stepped menacingly towards her. The CCTV shows that he innocently put papers in his pocket with one hand and pointed to a jobpoint with the other hand. He then stepped towards the jobpoint, not toward her, and she deliberately moved across to block his path. Despite acknowledging that the CCTV does not show physically threatening behaviour, as the guard had alleged, the police still treated her as a reliable witness when it came to her claims of being verbally threatened. 3. Failing to discuss the obvious discrepancy in the guard’s police statement. There is an obvious discrepancy in the guard’s police statement which the police inspector does not discuss. She claims that her order for my friend to leave the jobcentre was ‘enforced’ by the jobcentre manager; but then she says that when he left the building the jobcentre manager followed him outside and came back in with him. This should have made the police suspicious, and of course it is a third reason for regarding the guard as an unreliable witness. The CCTV clearly shows the jobcentre manager bringing my friend back into the jobcentre and then physically intervening to keep the guard away from him. It also shows her going to the guard’s desk after my friend left and looking angry with her. It should be obvious to any impartial viewer of the CCTV that the guard’s claim that the jobcentre manager ‘enforced’ the order for my friend to leave the jobcentre was not true. Yet the police ignored this. 4. Failing to discuss the linguistic misunderstanding in the case. In her police statement, the guard claimed my friend threatened her by saying, ‘I’ll see you in the street one night.’ Another witness similarly believed he had heard a threat. In his police interrogation, my friend told the police that he said, ‘I’ll see you down the road,’ and that ‘down the road’ means ‘sacked’. He told them this seven times, always using the same words. Clearly therefore the meaning of the expression was important. If ‘down the road’ does mean ‘sacked’ then the obvious conclusion would be that my friend had not threatened her with violence but rather had been misunderstood. The police did not investigate this important linguistic aspect of the case. I conducted my own research on the internet, finding several examples of the use of ‘down the road’ meaning ‘sacked’. I printed four of them, which were later entered as Defence Exhibits 1 to 4 in court. To me, and to the defence barrister, it was obvious that this part of the case involved ‘a linguistic misunderstanding’. The bench accepted the defence’s argument that the defendant had spoken innocently. The Chairman of the Bench already knew the meaning of the expression, which he confirmed to the other magistrates. 8) The police failed badly in not recognizing that my friend, as he so clearly told them, has spoken innocently. External evidence, which they failed to look for, exonerated him in court. It took me half an hour to find the four articles which were exhibited in court to help prove the defendant’s innocence, and it cost me about £4 to print them out at the library. The defendant spent six months awaiting trial, and the prosecution cost about £5000 to £6000. 5. Passing the buck to the CPS You will have noticed that the police pass the buck to the CPS (a common tactic in deflecting complaints against the police). As the CPS did not request further statements from staff who worked in the Job Centre, these were not obtained. This is not the fault of [the investigating officer] ... Yet the police officer should have noticed the profound problems with the case, especially the huge discrepancies between the guard’s police statement and the CCTV. It is obvious that he should have spoken to the jobcentre manager who supposedly ‘enforced’ the order to go. He himself should have suggested this to the CPS. The defence barrister and I both recognized that she was an important witness and wanted her to testify in court. She failed to turn up, but fortunately the CCTV was enough to win the case. 6. The supposed qualities of the constable The police inspector rejects the complaint that ‘the officer did not investigate the offence correctly’ and describes him as ‘a police officer with high integrity and impartiality’. I read history at Oxford University and am a former university lecturer. I am therefore trained in assessing evidence and understand the importance of impartiality. I also assessed the case before it came to court but reached a very different conclusion from the police. On 1 June 2009, a month before the trail, I told police in a taped interview that I believed they had charged an innocent man. I highlighted the obvious discrepancy in the guard’s police statement; I discussed the linguistic misunderstanding, quoting verbatim from the exhibits I had prepared for the defence; I pointed out their failure to interview an obviously important witness, the jobcentre manager. I reminded them of my warning about the guard being a liar in January 2008, obviously unheeded; I also reminded them of my letter to them in June 2008 enclosing an internet diatribe by the guard full of obviously false accusations about the police themselves; and I told them she was the subject of several complaints at the CAB. I had not then seen the CCTV, which would have allowed me to discuss the shocking discrepancies between that footage and her police statement. The police have not let me have the taped recordings of my interview, but two weeks later I wrote to them as follows: I have been trying to help H, a man I firmly believe to have been falsely accused and whose wellbeing I am concerned about. It is a source of concern to me that despite the abundance of evidence I have provided to you that [the guard] makes false accusations you continue to accept statements from her and act on them as if she were truthful. She twists people’s words to make them sound criminal. I cannot see how the present action against H, based on her obviously malicious complaint, serves the purpose of justice. H is the person I was trying to protect when I warned you about [the jobcentre guard] in January 2008. I did not warn people about [her] in order to say ‘I told you so’, and I find it disturbing that an innocent man should now be made to suffer needlessly because people have failed to heed my warnings. He had been charged by a police constable who is now backed by his inspector as having taken the correct decision to bring charges and who is described as a man of integrity and impartiality. I assessed the same case as deeply flawed and proclaimed the defendant as innocent before his trail. The court agreed with me, dismissing the charges against the defendant on the grounds that the prosecution failed to produce evidence to substantiate the charges. The police viewed the CCTV before the trail, but the CPS did not. When the Crown Prosecutor finally saw the CCTV in court he intervened to stop the trial, telling the bench there was no reason to believe the defendant had committed any criminal offence. The sad fact is, the police made the CPS look like a bunch of fools in court and allowed an innocent man to suffer needlessly. If they had properly discussed the CCTV with the CPS, which they clearly failed to do, the CPS would doubtless have realized what a disaster the case was and not have proceeded with the prosecution. (On the second day of the trail, I asked the Crown Prosecutor outside the courthouse, ‘Have you seen the CCTV yet?’ He said, ‘No.’ After the trial, my friend and I spoke to him in town. He was clearly unhappy about the case, and said he intended to look into what had happened. I told him that I had warned the police about the guard, whose lies about the defendant were so similar to lies she had earlier told about me.) 7. Overall criticisms The failings by the police are sadly typical. The police all too often fail to heed warnings from the public, and do not take sufficient notice of discrepancies in statements. And they too readily believe an accuser and disbelieve the accused. Time and again I have read of cases where this same pattern occurs, often, for instance, where a woman falsely alleges rape and an innocent man ends up in court. In many such cases it turns out that the police have ignored discrepancies in her story and that she has a history of making false accusations. In my friend’s case, the obvious lies of the guard were overlooked by the police and discrepancies ignored. They stupidly believed her and not him. The guard claimed that my friend physically threatened her, and he claimed that he did not. The CCTV shows that he was truthful, not her. The guard claimed that he had verbally threatened her, and he that she had misreported his innocent words. External evidence, not sought by police, showed that he was truthful, not her. A particular problem with the police is their tendency to look for evidence against a suspect and not evidence that may exonerate them. This is a common failing in many police investigations and one of the reasons that the British legal system has produced so many shocking miscarriages of justice. As an academic, I know how easy it is for people to get hooked on a theory. It becomes all too easy to grab every bit of evidence that seems to support the theory while ignoring or downplaying evidence that does not support it. This was precisely the failing by the police. A police constable got the idea in his head that an unemployed man had threatened a female security guard, just because she said so. And nothing could shake it from his pathetic little brain. Not the CCTV, which obviously told a different story, not the discrepancies in the statement, not the constant and unwavering protestations of innocence by the suspect under interview. It makes me laugh that this same police constable is now praised as a man of integrity and impartiality. Nothing will ever change the fact that he brought charges against an obviously innocent man and that the CCTV exploded in the face of the prosecution. My friend may at least take consolation from knowing that he got a measure of justice from the DWP investigation and that his court victory played a big part in getting rid of the lying guard. 8)

Unfavourable Response to the Complaint to IPCC My friend has received an unfavourable response to his complaint to the IPCC, which was investigated by a police inspector at the local station. Dated 25 March 2011, the letter says: The complaint relates to alleged public order offences committed in the Job Centre at Alton on the 16th December 2008. The complainant, a Security Guard called [name] provided a statement to Police alleging that you were agitated, angry and verbally abusive. A statement was taken from a member of the public who was in the Job Centre at the same time as this incident occurred and who is completely independent of your historic issues with [the guard]. They stated that your behaviour was ‘intimidating and abusive’. As an allegation had been made that you had been verbally abusive and suspected offences had occurred, you were subsequently arrested on 20th January 2009. Prior to your formal interview in police detention, the officer in the case had already viewed CCTV. This officer raised the same issues as you did with me [i.e. during the inspector’s investigation], being that the CCTV does not prove any physical behaviour by yourself which would indicate that you were being abusive. This does however tie-in with the account of the witnesses who state that you were verbally aggressive and intimidating rather than physically threatening. This is a subtle but really important aspect to the investigation. The Crown Prosecution Service reviewed all the evidence collated by the investigating officer. The CPS made a decision that they believed a prosecution would succeed based on the evidence obtained. As the CPS did not request further statements from staff who worked in the Job Centre, these were not obtained. This is not the fault of [the investigating officer], who was and is a police officer with high integrity and impartiality. Given all the circumstances of the allegations, the independent witness statement given to police regarding your behaviour, the decision of the CPS to charge you with public order offences on the evidence produced and my inspection of the officer’s investigation, I find that your allegation that ‘the officer did not investigate the offence correctly’ cannot be upheld. We had previously thought that the police failed to view the CCTV before charging my friend. I have written about how that CCTV footage obviously contradicted the guard’s statement about him physically threatening her and of how, after it was shown in court, it caused the collapse of the prosecution. Really it is amazing that the police, having viewed that CCTV, went ahead and charged an obviously innocent man. When I, my friend and the defence barrister first viewed the CCTV it was plain to us that the guard’s police statement was profoundly untruthful. I told police a month before the trial that I believed they had made a bad mistake in charging an innocent man; and the defence barrister, even before he saw the CCTV, said he thought the prosecution was 'ridiculous'. The failed prosecution, which collapsed so spectacularly, wasted thousands of pounds of public money. Later, I’ll post my own response to this letter from the police, which I regard as incomplete and flawed.

Quick update before news of IPCC complaint I wrote a while back that my friend had started a new job. It only lasted six days, but he is now working again on a much longer contract and finally getting a decent wage. I had my IUC in February and in a letter dated 1 April 2011 they said they were taking no further action. It was my fourth taped inverview under PACE in the last three years. I have now spent a total of nine and a half months under investigation for alleged criminal offences since January 2008 (five and a half by the police and four by the DWP's Fraud Investigation Service). I have never been charged with any criminal offence.

Thanks for posting. This makes a good companion thread to docktorjohn's on the whistleblower from JCP: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?301821-Jobcentre-Whistleblower-for-Sanctions-for-JSA

Stop the culture of targets.

Sorry, I'm unable to upload copies of the letters large enough to read. The most relevant parts are: Consolatory payments are made in circumstances where an official error has had a direct adverse effect on the life of the customer and/or on the life of another person. A payment for gross inconvenience resulting from persistent error will only be made if the errors are so persistent and over such a protracted period of time that it causes the customer gross inconvenience ... Your case definitely included 'official error' and over 'a protracted period of time'. Ignore the attachments below, which I cannot remove.

I'm pleased your case was NFA'd. That seems to be a common story on this thread. That seven-month wait was unacceptable. You might consider applying for a Consolatory Payment for the unnecessary stress caused you by the failure of the DWP to inform you that you had been cleared by the investigation back in October 2010. You could ask the jobcentre for the booklet 'Financial Redress for Injustice Resulting from Maladministration'. It's a bit cumbersome, but all you need to do is write to the appropriate address. State that you were innocent of the accusations and that the seven-month delay in telling you you were cleared was unacceptable and caused stress to you. The DWP give out about 2000 Consolatory Payments each year, average payment £85. A case like yours might merit compensation of between about £40 and £90. I am just guessing; the DWP is certainly very measly with its compensation. Last year, a friend and I got Consolatory Payments of £400 and £600 after being falsely accused of criminal offences by a security guard at our jobcentre. I am attaching one of the letters I received. Look especially at the last two paragraphs on page 1 concerning 'adverse effect on the life of the customer' and 'gross inconvenience resulting from persistent error'. I think you have a solid case for applying for compensation. I would recommend doing it with a short letter stating the facts of the case and highlighting the stress caused by the prolongued and unnecessary wait before they told you you were cleared. Good luck if you decide to go ahead.

I had an IUC on 10 Feb 2011 and got a letter dated 1 April 2011 saying they were not bringing charges and the investigation was now closed. I guess I was lucky that it was dealt with relatively quickly, seven weeks. The investigator told me there was a two-month backlog with the decision makers.

Terri, You should find a telephone number on the letter. Try calling that to ask exactly why they have invited you for the IUC. I had an IUC a few weeks ago and was able to get a bit more information about the accusation against me before attending. Good luck.

For a bit of relief from all this gloom here is a short clip from ‘Make Room for Daddy’ (1950’s sitcom). Rusty decides to look for a job to impress his father …

I'm glad this DWP employee has gone on the record and spoken out. These kinds of problems have been going on for years. The story told by the blonde girl of being sanctioned after getting a job because she only had one jobsearch in her record is identical to a story I told on another thread. He got a job in 2008 and recorded it in his jobsearch booklet, but his claim was sanctioned because he did not have two jobsearches recorded. The DWP stopped his money and so he could not afford to travel to work and lost the job. It was a stupid decision that defies all common sense. It took months, and the intervention of his MP, before the DWP finally admitted they were at fault. Too late to save the job ... It strikes me that some of these jobcentre employees are dishing out sanctions like over-zealous traffic wardens issuing parking tickets. It's time to put a stop to this.

Thanks everyone. I suspect that the introduction of the 'computer matches' with HMRC records is partly responsible for the rise in the number of investigations by the FIS. No doubt a few genuine fraudsters are being caught out that way. But innovations like this also bring into play the law of unintended consequences, and the failure of the DWP to recognise that some jobseekers are also trustees with bank accounts that hold other people's money seems to be one of them. If the DWP had handled this more informally - as the EHDC did - they would not have wasted so much time and public money. The heavy hand of bureaucracy was all over this investigation.

I am vindicated 8) This sorry tale has finally reached its conclusion. I have received a letter that reads as follows: Having considered all the facts of your case a decision had been taken not to institute criminal proceedings against you and the investigation is now closed. All that effort to make a case against me to no avail. The letter is dated 1 April 2011. Yes, and it was a big joke long before April Fools' Day. This is all part of the bigger scandal of incompetence and waste in the DWP. A whole load of public money was squandered on this pointless investigation. The East Hampshire District Council investigated the same matter much more reasonably last year. They rightly gave it a low priority and visited me informally to talk about it. The DWP, however, spent weeks investigating before even talking to me, writing to banks and gathering account details to make a half-baked case against me. The DWP didn't even know that the EHDC had already investigated, only learning about it because I phoned the EHDC who then got in touch with the DWP. So two public bodies were needlessly duplicating work in investigating me. While public money was wasted on this heavy-handed and time-consuming investigation other more needy people were having their DLA and ESA removed. Since January 2008, I have faced an amazing total of eight accusations of criminality, all of them from people working for the DWP. My police record remains clean with no charges, cautions or warnings against me, and no action following this latest FIS investigation. I wonder if anyone other jobseeker can claim such a high number of criminal accusations against him while maintaining an unblemished record. I suspect I may hold the UK record.

There's a simple reason why I didn't declare the bank accounts of the trust: the money in them isn't mine. I no more own the money than the Chancellor of the Exchequer owns the money in the Treasury. I've always declared my own money. The HMRC tax returns all have the name of trust on them as well as my full name and address. I am left to wonder why a HMRC 'computer match' to the accounts with my name and address on them could not also match the HMRC tax returns which also have my name and address on them. That's all computerised as well; in fact, we have made the tax returns online. The fact is, I have no idea how these FIS people go about their research. All I can say is that they acquired partial evidence that gave them a misleading picture of events. They got some information from HMRC computers that aroused their suspicions that the account money was personally mine, but not other information also on HMRC computers that clearly indicates it belongs to a will trust. Now I'm just guessing here - I can't claim expertise - but it looks like these 'computer matches' to HMRC records are a new thing that the FIS people are doing. If so, then they are probably coming up against lots of new and unexpected situations such as people who are trustees of accounts (i.e. don't own the money in them). The main investigator happened to mention another case where someone had said he was a trustee, and I will guess that lots of other trustees are getting needlessly called to these IUC's. Well, there we are. They investigated me after getting records from HMRC computers and I'm defending myself by sending them other information also on HMRC computers.

Quick update My friend is now near the end of his first week back at work. He got his last giros on Tuesday, inc his £100 Job Grant. I had an IUC at the jobcentre yesterday. I am being investigated for alleged benefit fraud following a misunderstanding about my name being on a trust account (the money in the account is my step-mother's). That's on another thread, and thanks to everyone who advised me there. http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?292436-Interview-Under-Caution-at-JCP-advice-wanted(1-Viewing)-nbsp The DWP's Fraud Investigation Service have been busy little bees investigating me since Oct 2010. Again I am being investigated! Good news about police DNA database The police have had my DNA since they arrested me in June 2009 despite the fact that I was never charged with any criminal offence. There's good news in the Daily Mail (09/02/2011): The Coalition's Freedom Bill will herald a blow against the state's 'Big Brother' powers. It signals an end to the practice of routinely and indefinitely keeping innocent suspects' DNA on police databases, which currently occurs even when no charges are ever brought. Under controversial laws introduced by Labour, police can indefinitely store the DNA of anybody arrested for a crime. As a result, there are an astonishing 1.1 million innocent citizens stored on the vast database. The powers have been savaged by civil liberties groups and ruled unlawful by the European courts. Now they will be torn up by the Coalition and replaced by tighter controls. Good. My arrest in June 2009 This is what happened when I was arrested in the summer of 2009. Two policemen arrived at my home on the afternoon of 1 June 2009. They arrested me at 14.59 hours (as they style it) on suspicion of 'harassment without violence' following a complaint from the jobcentre guard. According to her my letters to Securitas were 'letters of harassment'. I was then driven in a police van (aka Black Maria, sweatbox, etc) across town to the police station. I was processed in the usual fashion at the custody desk. Frisked, possessions taken and bagged, mug shot, height measured, smar[EDIT - PLEASE REFRAIN FROM PERSONAL ABUSE]er test, DNA swab, fingerprints taken, asked lots of medical questions saying 'No' to every one. Edit: Okay, I'll write it as two words, 'smart water' lol. At one point the custody sergeant, who was making the Custody Record, looked at me and said, 'I describe myself as White British, is that how you would describe yourself?' I said, 'I'm English.' He then typed in the box for Self Defined Ethnicity 'White British'. And under Police Defined Ethnicity he typed 'White Euro'. I have since discovered that the police have an official list of terms for people's self-defined ethnicity. It doesn't include English, although it does include Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese. Now that's funny because the English are an ethnic group. We have our own country (called England) and our own language (called English). Come to think of it, this is England. Could this perhaps be another bit of nonsense from those days of New Labour? When it came to the point that they said they were going to mouth-swab me for DNA, I said, 'What would happen if I refused to give you a sample?' And they said 'Then we'll take it by force.' I did not see the point of making life difficult, so I said, 'Well, you might as well go ahead then,' and let them swab me. I was hoping to have my fingerprints taken by inkpad and paper, but it's now done on a kind of photocopy machine that creates a big photo of your hand. I was then detained in cell 5 for from '15:56 BST' to '16:44 BST' without shoes or trouser belt. I was interviewed from 4.44 pm to 5.54 pm. Yes, a nice long two-tape interview in which I told them that the guard was a liar, and that they had made a bad mistake to charge my friend after the guard complained about him. I told them that on my assessment of the evidence - which I discussed at length - he was an innocent man. I went back into cell 5 at 5.54pm. And at 6.11pm the custody record reads, 'DP given a hot meal and hot drink.' That's me - Detained Person - and I was given a microwaved shepherd's pie. Well, I then spent more than two hours in that cell just waiting and waiting while the police consulted the CPS. And it's at times like that that you feel the whole world is against you. You've done everything you can to warn people about the lying guard but no one will listen. But as soon as she complains about you you're arrested, interrogated and slammed in a cell! And the man I've been trying to help - trying to help before I even knew him - has been charged by police and is going to court in a month! I had tried to stop that from happenening, but I hadn't succeeded. At 8.29 pm I was released from the cell. The CPS wanted witnesses interviewed and so I was bailed to return at a later date. At 8.37 pm I asked for a copy of my custody record and left the police station. A few minutes later I was at my friend's place. I said, 'I've just been arrested. I've been in the police station for the last five and a half hours.' Well, six weeks later my friend cleared his name in court, eight weeks after that the police investigation of me was NFA'd, and two weeks after that the guard left the jobcentre for the last time carrying a cardboard box of her possessions. It wasn't a nice experience to go through but our resistence got rid of her.

Was I right? I have been looking back at the letters I wrote to warn people about the guard. As far back as March 2008, I wrote to Securitas: ‘I am deeply concerned about the fact that this woman is employed as a security guard, and that she has continued to be employed despite the many complaints about her.’ But time and again my letters to Securitas about the guard, instead of being investigated, were given to the police in malicious attempts to have me charged with criminal ‘harassment’. Was I right to complain about her, and was my judgment sound? You can see for yourselves. * * * On 25 July 2008, I wrote to the HR manager of Securitas sending copies of the guard’s insulting internet writings of May 2008 where she accused the police by innuendo of being racist and homophobic. I commented: It is my misfortune, and now also that of my local police, to have encountered a woman who seems intent on pretending to be a victim of racial prejudice. Her persistence in playing the race card is an obvious example of crying wolf. And it is her mistake to believe that the race card – or the sexual orientation card for that matter – is a winning card. Was I right? Yes. The race card is a cheater's card dealt from the bottom of the deck; and for her it was a losing card. In October 2010, government investigators upheld my complaint that she had lied about me in a police statement in which she claimed I racially insulted her. * * * In August 2008, I wrote assessing the character of the guard: A view expressed by some clients of the Jobcentre is that [she] regards unemployed people with contempt. This is very likely true. There are reasons for believing that, if provoked, [she] will react with extreme malice to enact her revenge. The chief characteristic of [her] police statement [about me] was that she borrowed things I had actually said, perverting them into criminal utterances. This may be characteristic of her behaviour in other situations. Was I right? Yes. In December 2008, four months after I wrote this, she once again lied to police when she twisted my friend’s innocent words to make it sound like he had threatened her. She relentlessly pursued him and testified in court in July 2009 to try and get a conviction against him. * * * On 24 August 2008, I again wrote: The [internet] writings show that [the guard] feels very aggrieved with the Alton police, and she insinuates that they are racially prejudiced against her. For some reason, she has decided to air all this in public on the internet. Given that [she] must, on occasions, work closely with the local police in her role as security guard at the jobcentre, the question of her antagonism to them is something that may need to be addressed. Was I right? Yes, I was. She made numerous malicious complaints about police officers, wasting police time and taxpayers’ money. Securitas did nothing to stop her, and persistently failed to move her to a new work location, which is the very least they should have done. Is it any wonder that the local police now speak of her with such undisguised contempt? * * * Securitas persistently ignored my letters of warning. But I continued to write, and this is what I said on 4 Dec 2008: It has been my opinion ever since 24 January 2008 that [she] is an unsuitable person to be a security guard. This was a natural conclusion for me to reach, since I knew she had lied to the police about me, and that she had exploited the colour of my skin to insult me in an extremely offensive manner. The whole situation with [the security guard] raises the ancient question of Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? In this case, the answer is that it is for you at Securitas to watch over her, and to discipline her when you have evidence of her misconduct. You now have abundant and compelling evidence that she is a bully and a liar, and that she has abused and upset vulnerable people. To my personal knowledge she has now insulted at least six people in the town of Alton [whom I named, four clients of the jobcentre and two police officers]. … I trust you will soon discipline this disgraceful and insulting woman. Was I right? Yes, it was Securitas’s duty to watch over their employee and they should have heeded my warnings about her. The tragedy is, I wrote this letter just 12 days before she falsely alleged that my friend threatened her in the jobcentre. And who gave her permission to call the police and make her statement that day? Her Area Manager at Securitas, who spent just 70 seconds on the phone with her and accepted her word, entirely uncorroborated, that she had been threatened. * * * The police also stupidly ignored my warnings about the guard when they arrested and charged my friend after she complained about him in Dec 2008. I myself was arrested on 1 June 2009 because of a malicious complaint from the security guard that my letters to Securitas were ‘harassment’. Under police interrogation I argued at length that my friend (whom I had met just three weeks earlier and whose trial was due to start in a month) was innocent of the charges brought against him by Hampshire Constabulary. On 19 June 2009, I wrote to the police criticizing them for believing the lying guard and charging an innocent man: I have been trying to help H, a man I firmly believe to have been falsely accused and whose wellbeing I am concerned about. It is a source of concern to me that despite the abundance of evidence I have provided to you that [the guard] makes false accusations you continue to accept statements from her and act on them as if she were truthful. She twists people’s words to make them sound criminal. I cannot see how the present action against H, based on her obviously malicious complaint, serves the purpose of justice. H is the person I was trying to protect when I warned you about [the jobcentre guard] in January 2008. I did not warn people about [her] in order to say ‘I told you so’, and I find it disturbing that an innocent man should now be made to suffer needlessly because people have failed to heed my warnings. Was I right? Yes, he was an innocent man falsely accused. Four weeks later, the prosecution collapsed when CCTV revealed what a pack of lies the guard’s testimony had been, and the magistrates dismissed the case. In November 2010, the defendant received compensation after a government inquiry concluded he was a victim of injustice; and now the police officer who charged him is under internal police investigation. * * * It really is amazing! Not only were my warnings ignored, I was actually treated like a criminal for complaining about the guard! Our society has reached a sorry impasse when honest people trying to help others get treated like this. I thank God that we finally came out on top.

Okay, just one thing is worrying me now. I'm not concerned about prosecution but the interviewers were talking about how the decision makers can sanction claims. Is this something that could happen in a case like this?

Thanks Honeybee. I like your motto, 'Illegitimi non carborundum.' There is another version of that in 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Attwood which goes, 'Nolite te bastardes carborundum.'