Time to get back to real police work

WILL Operation Lancet ever end? The answer is yes - when the final disciplinary proceedings concerning six officers reach a conclusion and the Police Complaints Authority publishes its final report.

Operation Lancet has gone on for four years. The Cleveland Police Authority has been told that the "scale and complexity" of Operation Lancet resulted in the serving of 572 regulation disciplinary notices to 63 police officers.

Allegations had included a prisoner being taken out of the police station and found to be in possession of heroin traces; other allegations concerned the supply - or offer to supply - drugs by police officers. There were allegations of officer involvement in drugs, improper relationships with informants and mis- appropriation of property.

Yet further allegations involved police officers being observed in drug taking, and informant-led police operations against known drug dealers being unsuccessful - with a suggestion that those subject to search warrants had been given advance warning from police sources.

On February 4, 2002, Ray Mallon unequivocally pleaded guilty to not investigating the supply of a controlled drug to a female prisoner in a prison cell; guilty to failing to investigate allegations that drug dealers were being tipped off about the imminence of a drug raid; guilty that he failed to take action in respect of a detective he knew or believed to be a drug user; guilty to covering up those investigations when others took on the role.

Guilty to lying.

These are serious charges to which a detective superintendent should plead guilty but they show the real concerns of the inquiry - that drugs, the scourge of our present day society, the scourge of young men and women in Middlesbrough - that drugs and their misuse was at the heart of the inquiry.

Middlesbrough has been built on civic pride and civic duty. Those early pioneers worked selflessly to build a town from nothing, when the Tees was deepened and labour brought in to build docks and wharves and factories, and houses for workers and their families. Through the local authority, they built an administration that would see the town thrive and grow through two World Wars.

Now, as we have turned the corner into the 21st Century, we have to ask ourselves: what kind of society do we want? The question will be tested in the May elections when Middlesbrough moves from having a ceremonial to an elected mayor.

And cohesion on Teesside will be further tested after the elections when there will be two elected mayors - Middlesbrough and Hartlepool - and two authorities with ceremonial mayors - Stockton and Redcar and Cleveland. How will they cope with pulling together in the interests of people who live within their districts? What manner of co-operation shall there be between them?

But do we want a town where police turn a blind eye to serious allegations, where they are not investigated, Middlesbrough folk do not care about drug addicts and drug addiction? Or are we a decent caring town that wants to know the truth of such matters, even if the Lancet inquiry took four years, through procrastination and obfuscation from those who managed to extend the inquiry far beyond its natural duration?

The cost of Operation Lancet has been £3.3m - not the £7m tagged to it. Of this £1.9m was returned by central government to local ratepayers.

The cost might appear small when compared to the defining of society - that we demand a police force free of conniving, of deceit, of lies, that Middlesbrough deserved better than it got, and that society as a whole will be a better place when such ills are rooted out.

What is needed now is a streamlining of the police complaints procedures, of a fast-track approach, where evidence can be provided and justice done, where verdicts are speedily reached - and where those innocent of all charges can quickly pick up their lives.

The Home Office has agreed to this, but it must be done quickly if other ratepayers are not to have burdens imposed upon them by necessary inquiries - since the police are a disciplined force - that go on forever and where more dust than light is thrown upon the complaints.

Nor is there a need for an independent inquiry since, as Ashok Kumar MP has said, Ray Mallon has pleaded guilty to disciplinary offences and obviated the need for further inquiries.

In the meantime, Cleveland Police is getting on with the job of tackling fundamental crime. Middlesbrough Police's Dealer a Day campaign has continued with ten more drugs raids in a seven-day period up to Sunday, February 17. Heroin, crack, Ecstasy and cannabis, with a combined street value of nearly £2,500, have been recovered and £20,000 seized in cash. There have been more than a hundred arrests since the campaign began.

The Cleveland Police Authority will increase police officer numbers in addition to the officers that will become available through the Government's Crime Fighting Fund.

It has also agreed to establish an Organised Crime Unit to continue the fight against drugs, with the provision of an additional £700,000. There is also to be an improvement in communications - covering staffing, improved technology and accommodation - that will cost a further £1m.

And resources will be maintained to fight crime across the four policing districts of Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool and Langbaurgh - so that no district will be deprived of the requisite resources.

Having been physically attacked twice in the last five years, my wife's car stolen, my own tampered with, I am personally aware that the fight against crime is the major battle of our times.

It can only be won by the public and the police working together under Government policy, safe in the knowledge that our police know where their duties lie, that there are boundaries to these duties - and that, at all times, police officers act fully in accordance with the rule of law.