Police cor­rup­tion is some­thing no decent law abid­ing per­son likes or want in their soci­ety. It erodes trust, increas­es crime and cre­ates a soci­ety in which jun­gle jus­tice becomes the law of the land, among oth­er ills.
On that basis, I join with every­one, regard­less of where they live, in con­demn­ing police abuse and cor­rup­tion in all its ugly forms.

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I must declare my 10-year law enforce­ment his­to­ry which I must admit have influ­enced how I look at all issues which deal with law enforcement.
Nevertheless, I am with any­one who wants police offi­cers who fol­low the laws and do what’s right.
We need to be able to trust the word of our police offi­cers. The stakes are sim­ply too high and the con­se­quences too severe when the peo­ple we depend on to be the first link in the chain of jus­tice are cor­rupt­ed and compromised.

Since we depend on the integri­ty of our police, it is crit­i­cal that when they tell us that they arrest­ed some­one for a crime, it is impor­tant that the per­son arrest­ed is indeed the cor­rect person.
If by an mea­sure the arrest­ed par­ty was arrest­ed wrong­ful­ly, it must be attrib­uted to an error and should nev­er be the result of police malfea­sance or col­lu­sion to incrim­i­nate that arrestee wrongfully.

Every instance of an offi­cer tak­ing a bribe is a betray­al of the sacred oath that offi­cer took to uphold the laws faith­ful­ly, with­out fear or favor, mal­ice or ill will toward none.
Whether that bribe is a cup of cof­fee, or a mil­lion dol­lars, the cor­ro­sive result is the same.

Hence it is cru­cial that all of our offi­cers are of the best character.
In much of what I write, I have received crit­i­cism for what some see as not enough cre­dence giv­en to the issue of police corruption.
I some­times make the mis­take in assum­ing that every­one knows and under­stand my aver­sion to cor­rup­tion wher­ev­er it rears its ugly head.
I also assume some­times unwit­ting­ly, that they knew that dur­ing my decade as a police offi­cer I was instru­men­tal in weed­ing out a few dirty cops.
For that, I apologize.

Even though I speak out about police cor­rup­tion I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hes­i­tant about being caught up in the weeds where many would­n’t mind hav­ing sup­port­ers of the rule of law like myself ensnared.
If they can silence us by get­ting us into a defen­sive pos­ture of defend­ing police cor­rup­tion their job would have been done.
So even though we abhor these igno­ble acts of cor­rup­tion and malfea­sance it is impor­tant that we keep our focus on crime in all its forms includ­ing crimes com­mit­ted by those who wear the uni­form of police officers.
There are more than enough peo­ple out there with fin­gers point­ed at the police, so it’s impor­tant that at least for this writer my eyes remain sin­gu­lar­ly focused on crime in general.

Police depart­ments are made up of peo­ple, fal­li­ble peo­ple who are prone to fall vic­tim to the wiles and lure of those who would com­pro­mise them.
These humans, have the same char­ac­ter flaws as the rest of us. Unfortunately, a few months or a cou­ple of years train­ing is nev­er enough to cleanse every­one of the flaws in their char­ac­ters. In fact, some­times the more time a per­son spends on a police depart­ment is the more cor­rupt and com­pro­mised they become.
Hence the rea­son it is impor­tant that there be checks and bal­ances in who we allow on our police depart­ments and who we pro­mote to high­er positions.

It’s also impor­tant that we look clos­er at those in whom we have placed even more con­fi­dence than we place in the police.
I speak about those we ask to police the police.
Now I cer­tain­ly under­stand that our police do not come from Utopia or some plan­et san­i­tized of crime and corruption.
They are humans, sub­ject to human frail­ties. But as we look at our police let us also look at those polic­ing the police.
I believe it is only fair that since we hold our police to cer­tain stan­dards of fideli­ty it is even more impor­tant that we are clear-eyed about the char­ac­ter of those we ask to keep the police honest.

It is nat­ur­al for many in my coun­try of birth to demo­nize and dem­a­gogue police officers.
It can hard­ly be said that the police have not brought much of it on themselves.
Nevertheless, some of the blame has attri­bu­tion else­where, we will not both­er to address those today.
So as we admit to the need for over­sight of the police lets dig a lit­tle into the lives of those who have been put in place to police the police.

Let us look at Hamish Campbell deputy Commissioner of INDECOM.

♠

The fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against Ira Thomas

On 30 June 1988, one Freddy Brett was shot at close range in the thigh by a tall black man wear­ing, accord­ing to a wit­ness, a light-col­ored coat. It hap­pened out­side the Hope & Anchor pub on the River Lee Navigation in north London, an area cov­ered by what lat­er became the very noto­ri­ous Stoke Newington Police Station.

Ira Thomas was also a tall black man. But he was not the per­son who shot and injured Brett.

Ira Thomas was con­vict­ed of the shoot­ing a year lat­er — but on 13 February 1992, after 2½ years in prison, the Appeal Court, most unusu­al­ly, quashed the jury’s ver­dict. The Appeal judges’ ver­dict was with­er­ing: “The victim’s account of events was sim­ply ludi­crous”, but also, more rel­e­vant­ly to this arti­cle, “The so-called foren­sic evi­dence was unavail­ing”.

Brian Moore, who togeth­er with Hamish Campbell may have orga­nized the plac­ing of firearms residue in Barry Bulsara’s pock­et, was, in 1988, a senior offi­cer in the Crime Squad in the cor­rup­tion-rid­den Stoke Newington police sta­tion. An anti-cor­rup­tion probe, Operation Jackpot, was set up lat­er and result­ed in the con­vic­tion of sev­er­al offi­cers for co-oper­at­ing with drugs and crime lords in the area. Many cor­rupt offi­cers, how­ev­er, escaped conviction.

The orig­i­nal SIO in the Ira Thomas case was Detective Sergeant Gordon Livingstone. Shortly after the shoot­ing of Freddy Brett, how­ev­er, Livingstone was pro­mot­ed to the Flying Squad at Rigg Approach, anoth­er group of senior offi­cers also rid­dled with corruption.

On 25 April 1989, two offi­cers, act­ing on an anony­mous but false tip-off, arrest­ed Ira Thomas for the attempt­ed mur­der of Freddy Brett. One Terry McGuinness searched Thomas’s flat, find­ing noth­ing of inter­est. He did not believe there was any evi­dence against Thomas. Later that day, at 4.15pm, McGuinness released Thomas, stat­ing on the cus­tody record that the mat­ter had been ‘dealt with’.

Livingstone had mean­while recent­ly been replaced as the Head of the Stoke Newington Crime Squad by Brian Moore, now an act­ing Detective Inspector. At this point in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing of Freddy Brett, he took over the reins of the investigation.

At 7.25pm, Brian Moore amend­ed the cus­tody record in bold black ink, as follows:

“With ref­er­ence to the entry [by McGuinness] timed at 4.15pm, I have now traced a num­ber of state­ments, which were not avail­able to DC McGuinness at the time he advised the cus­tody offi­cer that this mat­ter had been dealt with. The griev­ous bod­i­ly harm and firearms offens­es have NOT been con­clud­ed and my inquiries are ongoing”.

For what­ev­er rea­son, maybe to pro­tect the real shoot­er of Brett, Moore was deter­mined to charge Thomas with the shoot­ing. He refused to release Thomas from custody.

He asked two oth­er detec­tives, Peter McCullough and Dave Edwards, to search Thomas’s flat again for a ‘light-coloured coat’ which a wit­ness claimed to have seen a black man wear­ing after the shoot­ing inci­dent with Brett. Two such coats were found and tak­en for foren­sic evi­dence – I will deal with that evi­dence in a moment.

There are then two whol­ly con­flict­ing accounts of what hap­pened next at Stoke Newington police cells.

Brian Moore said that Ira Thomas:

a) refused to come out for an interview

b) admit­ted to shoot­ing Brett, but refused to sign the officer’s notes record­ing his con­fes­sion and

c) demand­ed to see a par­tic­u­lar solicitor.

Moore said he called Solicitors Les Brown and Co. – lat­er to be involved in cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions. The cus­tody record states that Les Brown called the police sta­tion at 10.48pm say­ing he would con­tact Moore in the morn­ing. Moreover, it states that Thomas was ‘checked hourly’ and was ‘asleep until giv­en break­fast at 8.45pm’.

Ira Thomas gave a whol­ly dif­fer­ent account. Gillard and Flynn com­ment wry­ly that it remains “‘an abid­ing mys­tery how Thomas’s ver­sion of events was so rad­i­cal­ly different”.

This was Thomas’s account of events, which in the light of sub­se­quent events appears to be the truth­ful one. He says that what occurred that night was as follows:

a) he made no admis­sion of guilt

b) Moore shout­ed at him

c) Thomas asked to be rep­re­sent­ed by his solic­i­tors Goodman Ray; Moore refused

d) Instead, Moore arranged for solic­i­tor Les Brown to attend. When he did so, Thomas asked him: ‘Do you work for Goodman Ray?’ When he said ‘No’, Thomas said ‘F_​_​_​off, then’.

e) a white man claim­ing to be a fraud­ster was placed in his cell. Thomas said: ‘He kept ask­ing me what I was in for and did I do it. I was sus­pi­cious he was under­cov­er police…I demand­ed that he be removed’

f) a black man alleged­ly arrest­ed for theft was then placed in his cell. He had with him a quan­ti­ty of cocaine which he offered Thomas. Once again Thomas was sus­pi­cious that he was a ‘plant’ of some kind and suc­cess­ful­ly asked for him to be removed from his cell.

That same night, police offi­cers McCullough and Edwards searched Thomas’s flat again and, con­trary to police pro­ce­dures, did so with­out an inde­pen­dent per­son present. They removed two coats, a beige mac, and a camel-haired coat, shown to Thomas the fol­low­ing morn­ing. Thomas and his flat-mate both insist­ed they belonged to his flat-mate.

On 6 June, Moore ’phoned Thomas’s solic­i­tor, Anne Chiarini, to say that no firearms residue had been found on either coat.

Yet less than two months lat­er, on 2 August, Thomas was re-arrest­ed and told that “a sec­ond foren­sic test had found firearms residue in both cuffs of the beige mac, because the sci­en­tist car­ry­ing out the first test hadn’t rolled down the cuffs prop­er­ly the first time”.

Thomas was asked to com­ment on the new evi­dence against him. He replied: “Yes. You are try­ing to fit me up”.

Subsequently, Stoke Newington Police blocked the release of the orig­i­nal April cus­tody record, but was even­tu­al­ly forced to release it. This caused g Thomas to ‘go bal­lis­tic’, because it was evi­dent­ly whol­ly false.

The pros­e­cu­tion of Thomas came to court on 19 March 1990 at the Old Bailey.

A sen­sa­tion­al moment in the tri­al came when the foren­sic sci­en­tist, Robin Keeley from the Forensic Science Service (the same foren­sic sci­en­tist used in the Jill Dando case) said that he had found three specks of firearms residue, two on the out­er sur­face of the mac and only one inside the cuff.

He solemn­ly told the court that any residue left on the out­side of the mac ‘I would expect to have fall­en away with­in 12 hours of a gun being fired’. Moreover, he said that the police had told him that the man had been lying ‘undis­turbed’ inside a wardrobe for a long time.

Thomas and his flat­mate, by con­trast, point­ed out that they had no wardrobe, only a rail on which clothes were hung, and that the coat had been reg­u­lar­ly worn and even machine-washed a few weeks before the offi­cers seized it.

Later, Terry McGuinness, who orig­i­nal­ly searched the flat, told Gillard and Flynn: “The beige mac caused me con­cern because I hadn’t seen it or found it when I searched the flat”. Read more here https://​jill​hav​ern​.foru​mo​tion​.net/​t​9​4​5​7​-​a​-​b​i​o​g​r​a​p​h​y​-​o​f​-​h​a​m​i​s​h​-​c​a​m​p​b​e​l​l​-​t​h​e​-​m​a​n​-​c​h​o​s​e​n​-​t​o​-​h​e​a​d​-​o​p​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​g​r​a​nge

Judge Herrod QC gave a very fair sum­ming-up of the evi­dence, call­ing the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence ‘insub­stan­tial’, and point­ing out numer­ous oth­er flaws in the prosecution’s evi­dence. Despite this, the jury returned a major­i­ty guilty ver­dict. Most unusu­al­ly, the judge in the case, who was bound of course to accept the jury’s ver­dict, wrote to the defense bar­ris­ter and said: ‘You will obvi­ous­ly be appealing’.

The Appeal Court heard the appeal on 13 February 1992 and quashed the jury’s major­i­ty deci­sion. Thomas was imme­di­ate­ly released from prison. 

After the tri­al, new evi­dence came to light. One Lee Pritchard approached Thomas’s solic­i­tors and told them that offi­cers from Stoke Newington Police Station had approached him and offered him size­able quan­ti­ties of hero­in if he would make a false state­ment, say­ing that he had seen Ira Thomas on the same toad where Brett was shot, car­ry­ing a gun in his hand. The offer had been repeat­ed many times, but Pritchard refused to help the police. 

Moore’s career then took a steep upward path, despite his actions in the Ira Thomas case. He was pro­mot­ed to a top anti-cor­rup­tion intel­li­gence unit, CIB3, known as ‘The Untouchables’, and lat­er left that élite but cor­rupt squad to become a DCS at Belgravia Police Station in the Met, soon after­ward becom­ing the SIO on the Dando case. One would have to raise a ques­tion about how a man who was deeply involved with what looked like a delib­er­ate plot to frame an inno­cent man by plant­i­ng firearms residue on a coat could ever have been cho­sen to lead such a high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tion as the Jill Dando mur­der hunt.

Brian Moore and Roy Clark

A fur­ther ques­tion aris­es as to who placed Brian Moore as SIO and Hamish Campbell as IO in the Dando inves­ti­ga­tion, thus replac­ing the pre­vi­ous SIO and IO. It was one Roy Clark. I am going to take a few para­graphs to exam­ine a few aspects of Clark’s career.

Moore’s career had become entwined with that of Roy Clark. 

In 1998, Roy Clark put Moore in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of seri­ous cor­rup­tion at the Flying Squad, based at Rigg Approach. This was a high­ly ques­tion­able appoint­ment because “Moore knew many of the detec­tives he was now inves­ti­gat­ing because they had pre­vi­ous­ly worked togeth­er at Stoke Newington Police Station” (“The Untouchables, p. 427). 

Brian Moore, as we have seen, was cen­tral to the ‘fit­ting-up’ of Ira Thomas, and the SIO in charge of the deeply flawed arrest and charg­ing of Brian Bulsara over the mur­der of Jill Dando. 

What sort of man put Brian Moore in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing cor­rup­tion of a group of offi­cers (at Stoke Newington Police Station), amongst whom he had worked, and where he had been involved in the ‘fit­ting up’ of a man who wrong­ly served 2½ years in prison for an offense he did not commit?

Clark entered the police force in 1967. During the 1980s he worked his way up at the thor­ough­ly cor­rupt Stoke Newington Police Station. Continue read­ing more here. https://​jill​hav​ern​.foru​mo​tion​.net/​t​9​4​5​7​-​a​-​b​i​o​g​r​a​p​h​y​-​o​f​-​h​a​m​i​s​h​-​c​a​m​p​b​e​l​l​-​t​h​e​-​m​a​n​-​c​h​o​s​e​n​-​t​o​-​h​e​a​d​-​o​p​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​g​r​a​n​g​e​#​2​4​1​343

A biography of Hamish Campbell, the man chosen to head Operation Grange

by Tony Bennett on 28.04.14 23:11

This arti­cle is an exam­i­na­tion of the man cho­sen as the Senior Investigating Officer for Operation Grange, the review of the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann. Its remit was even­tu­al­ly prised out of the Metropolitan Police by means of a Freedom of Information Act ques­tion. It was:

“To exam­ine the [dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann] and seek to deter­mine (as if the abduc­tion occurred in the UK) what addi­tion­al, new inves­tiga­tive approach­es we would take and which can assist the Portuguese author­i­ties in pro­gress­ing the matter….The ‘inves­tiga­tive review’ will be con­duct­ed with trans­paren­cy, open­ness, and thoroughness”.

Although when the inves­ti­ga­tion had been archived in Portugal two main alter­na­tives were sug­gest­ed — either abduc­tion, or the hid­ing of Madeleine’s body by her par­ents — those who set up Operation Grange were clear. From the Prime Minister to the Home Secretary to the then head of the Met, Sir Paul Stephenson, abduc­tion was the only hypoth­e­sis to be inves­ti­gat­ed. The review, as the Prime Minister’s spokesman clar­i­fied, was ‘to help the fam­i­ly’ (the McCanns).

Every police inves­ti­ga­tion or review of a seri­ous crime has an inves­ti­ga­tion coör­di­na­tor, known as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), and a deputy, called the Investigating Officer (IO). The role of the SIO is to set an inves­ti­ga­tion strat­e­gy and to decide and obtain the resources he needs to do the work required – in this case, a review. The job of the IO is basi­cal­ly to car­ry out the agreed strat­e­gy and to direct operations.

Sir Paul Stephenson decid­ed to appoint one Hamish Campbell as the SIO, with an addi­tion­al require­ment for the SIO to present his report to one Simon Foy. Andy Redwood, a Detective Chief Inspector, was appoint­ed as the IO. Before long, Campbell and Redwood deter­mined that they would need a staff of around 35 to 40 to car­ry out the review.

The main pur­pose of this arti­cle is to look at the back­ground his­to­ry and con­nec­tions of Hamish Campbell.

The mur­der of Jill Dando

Seven years ago, on 28 April 2007, the McCanns set off from East Midlands Airport for their ill-fat­ed hol­i­day in the Portuguese Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

It was also on 28 April, 15 years ago, in 1999, that TV Crimewatch pre­sen­ter Jill Dando was shot dead at point-blank range in a killing that had all the hall­marks of a pro­fes­sion­al con­tract killing.

Two indi­vid­u­als con­nect­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion into the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann were also con­nect­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion into the mur­der of Jill Dando.

They are:

Clarence Mitchell — who was at the time work­ing for the BBC as their senior crime reporter. He was appar­ent­ly the very first reporter at the scene of the crime, and cov­ered the inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s mur­der in the months fol­low­ing her death

Hamish Campbell — who was the investigation’s IO — placed in charge of the day-to-day inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s mur­der in 1999. He was pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for the arrest and charg­ing of Barry Bulsara, known also as ‘Barry George’, with the mur­der of Dando. Bulsara was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment for mur­der­ing Jill Dando but sub­se­quent­ly acquit­ted, sev­en years lat­er, on appeal.

Years lat­er…

Clarence Mitchell, three days after Madeleine McCann was report­ed miss­ing, was asked by the Prime Minister Tony Blair to cease his full-time job as Head of the Media Monitoring Unit and work full-time on pub­lic rela­tions and rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment for the McCanns

and

Hamish Campbell was appoint­ed in May 2011 as the SIO for Operation Grange, the review — now re-inves­ti­ga­tion — into the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann being con­duct­ed by Scotland Yard.

This arti­cle will also exam­ine aspects of the back­ground of Ian Horrocks, the ex-detec­tive, hailed as one of Britain’s fore­most inves­ti­ga­tors, who was sent out to the Algarve by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun news­pa­per in February 2012 and deliv­ered reports to the Sun and SKY NEWS back­ing the McCanns’ abduc­tion claims and heav­i­ly crit­i­cis­ing the Portuguese police.

The Jill Dando inves­ti­ga­tion was run out of Belgravia Police Station, London. So is Operation Grange.

Here are some basic facts about the ill-fat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s death, led by Hamish Campbell:

A. It was car­ried out at the time the McPherson report on the mur­der of Stephen Lawrence had been pub­lished. The Metropolitan Police was dis­graced by that report. Scotland Yard’s rep­u­ta­tion was in tatters.

B. Barry Bulsara was wrong­ly con­vict­ed by a jury and served sev­er­al years in jail for an offense he didn’t commit.

C. The only foren­sic evi­dence against him was a speck of firearms residue said to have been ‘found’ in his coat pocket.

D. Cliff Richard, a friend of Jill Dando, was inter­viewed ‘a num­ber of times’ by the police inves­ti­gat­ing Dando’s killing.

E. No-one apart from Barry Bulsara has ever been charged with killing Jill Dando. Her killer, and any­body who may have hired the killer, remain at large.

F. The main the­o­ry, put for­ward repeat­ed­ly by the police them­selves and reg­u­lar­ly in the main­stream media, is that a Serbian hit-man car­ried out the attack in revenge for NATO bomb­ing the TV sta­tion in Belgrade.

G. A sec­ond the­o­ry, with some cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence to back it up, is that Dando was mur­dered by a hit-man on the instruc­tions of a career crim­i­nal and drugs lord Kenneth Noye.

H. A third the­o­ry, with – as far as I am aware – no evi­dence to back it up, is that Dando had become aware of a high-lev­el pedophile ring, and was killed by hit-man act­ing on behalf of one of the country’s secu­ri­ty forces.

The Dando inves­ti­ga­tion and the role of Hamish Campbell

In November 1999, a detec­tive named Brian Moore was pro­mot­ed from the rank of Detective Superintendent (DS) to Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS). At the same time, he left a top secret and very cor­rupt intel­li­gence unit, CIB3, known as ‘The Untouchables’. The cor­rupt nature of ‘The Untouchables’ is dealt with at length in a book of the same name by Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn, pub­lished in late 2004, near­ly 10 years ago. Michael Gillard has recent­ly been at the cen­ter of expos­es in the nation­al print media about exten­sive cor­rup­tion at the heart of the Metropolitan Police Force. He has researched links between very senior offi­cers in the Met, and a num­ber of lead­ing drugs lords.

Brian Moore’s first job in his new role as DCS was to take over the fal­ter­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, code­named ‘Operation Oxborough’, into the mur­der of Jill Dando. He became the inves­ti­ga­tion coör­di­na­tor, or ‘Senior Investigating Officer’ (SIO), on 6 December 1999. By this time, Dando had been dead for over 7 months. In this respect, his role matched that of Dr Goncalo Amaral, who head­ed up and co-ordi­nat­ed the ini­tial inves­ti­ga­tion into Madeleine McCann’s dis­ap­pear­ance, before he was removed from the inves­ti­ga­tion less than four weeks after he had made the McCanns for­mal sus­pects in the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine.

Moore appoint­ed Hamish Campbell as his day-to-day chief inves­ti­ga­tor, or ‘Investigating Officer’ (IO).

Prior to the appoint­ment of Moore and Campbell to run the case, the inves­ti­ga­tion had found noth­ing of inter­est, despite over 7 months on the case. The Met had thou­sands of reg­is­tered infor­mants. Not one of them had come up with any infor­ma­tion at all about who might have killed Jill Dando and why. A reward of £250,000 for infor­ma­tion (about £½ mil­lion today) had pro­duced noth­ing. Operation Oxborough had inter­viewed in depth Dando’s fam­i­ly, friends, lovers (of whom there had been many) and col­leagues. As Gillard and Flynn cor­rect­ly observed in their book (p. 428), “The mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion was at an impasse”.

All that was to change once Moore and Campbell took over the investigation.

As an aside, there was a sig­nif­i­cant amount of at least low-lev­el cor­rup­tion at Belgravia Police Station at the time. Belgravia Police Station is close to Harrods, owned by Al-Fayed. Al-Fayed did favors for Belgravia-based police offi­cers. Police offi­cers returned the favors. Indeed, there was already an anti-cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion at that time into the so-called ‘Hamper Squad’, a group of Belgravia-based offi­cers who would arrest and harass any­one, includ­ing his own employ­ees, sus­pect­ed of aid­ing and abet­ting his bit­ter busi­ness ene­my, Lonrho tycoon ‘Tiny’ Rowland. The greedy offi­cers had a con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of free ham­pers and huge dis­counts on Harrods goods. Indeed, one hon­est offi­cer, Bob Loftus, gave the anti-cor­rup­tion unit the actu­al names of police offi­cers who had accept­ed these bribes. No police offi­cer, how­ev­er, was ever pros­e­cut­ed for these crim­i­nal offenses.

At the time, Al-Fayed owned the now-defunct satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, Punch. Officers also leaked details of the Dando inves­ti­ga­tion to Punch, prompt­ing a leak inquiry.

By March 2000, the team of Moore-&-Campbell was hom­ing in on Barry Bulsara, though quite why they did so is unclear. He was an obses­sion­al and delud­ed lon­er, fas­ci­nat­ed with him­self, and lived in a pig-sty. There was no evi­dence that he was capa­ble of car­ry­ing out a cold-blood­ed, pro­fes­sion­al killing, though he did have an inter­est in guns. Eleven days before the anniver­sary of Jill Dando’s death, Bulsara’s flat was searched, and a blue Cecil Gee over­coat was seized.

At the same time, main­stream media crime cor­re­spon­dents were briefed that the inves­ti­ga­tion had iden­ti­fied an obses­sive lon­er as the pro­file most like­ly to have com­mit­ted the crime. This seemed at odds with a killing at point-blank range, appar­ent­ly with a sawn-off shot­gun fit­ted with a silencer.

DCI Hamish Campbell appeared on Crimewatch to rein­force in the public’s mind that it was an obses­sive lon­er they were look­ing for. He asked for the public’s help in iden­ti­fy­ing such a person.

It was a full 15 days after the Cecil Gee coat was seized that it was tak­en to a Mr. Robin Keeley of the Forensic Science Service on 2 May 2000. That 15-day delay has nev­er been explained. He then found a sin­gle speck of firearm residue inside the left pock­et, and said that it was con­sis­tent with the type of firearm used to kill Dando. This was to form the crux of the case against Bulsara, even though no oth­er firearm residue or tools for mod­i­fy­ing guns were found in his flat. At his tri­al at the Old Bailey in May 2001, pros­e­cu­tion bar­ris­ter Orlando Pownall claimed it was ‘com­pelling evi­dence of Bulsara’s guilt’.

During the tri­al, it emerged that dur­ing the foren­sic pro­ce­dure, Bulsara’s coat was first of all tak­en to a police stu­dio where it was pho­tographed on a tailor’s dum­my. Firearms had pre­vi­ous­ly been pho­tographed at the same stu­dio, rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of acci­den­tal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. This extra­or­di­nary deci­sion, accord­ing to Detective Sergeant Andy Rowell, was made by DCI Hamish Campbell. Campbell lat­er denied this, but since he was the IO, this con­vinced no-one.

As we now know, Bulsara was con­vict­ed. He appealed against con­vic­tion, but his first appeal was reject­ed in July 2002. He appealed again in 2008 — and this time his appeal succeeded.

In April 2010 it emerged that the Ministry of Justice had denied Barry’s claim of £1.4 mil­lion compensation.

The deci­sion was made by Jack Straw, Justice Secretary at the time. A High Court appli­ca­tion for com­pen­sa­tion was also refused, with judges reject­ing his claim that the Justice Secretary had ‘unfair­ly and unlaw­ful­ly decid­ed he was not inno­cent enough’. A year lat­er, a fur­ther claim was turned down when High Court judges ruled: “There was indeed a case upon which a rea­son­able jury, prop­er­ly direct­ed, could have con­vict­ed the claimant of murder.”

The ques­tion obvi­ous­ly arose as to whether the police might have fab­ri­cat­ed the case against Bulsara by delib­er­ate­ly plac­ing a speck of firearm residue in his coat pock­et. This sug­ges­tion has been giv­en added cred­i­bil­i­ty by the involve­ment of DCS Brian Moore, the SIO in this case, in anoth­er case of a man being fit­ted up — Ira Thomas.

Given that senior Met offi­cers chose Brian Moore to act as the SIO in the case of Jill Dando’s mur­der, it is instruc­tive to look at his major role in anoth­er case where it was accept­ed that an inno­cent man had been ‘fit­ted up’.

TALKING ABOUT CORRUPTION

In 1987 pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Daniel Morgan was report­ed to be on the verge of reveal­ing extreme­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion of mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the Metropolitan Police.
Mr. Morgan, was found in a pub car park with an Axe buried in his head in 1987.
According to the Telegraph​.com Mr Morgan’s mur­der was the sub­ject of a long-run­ning and com­plex inves­ti­ga­tion. Thousands of lines of inquiry were pur­sued and over three-quar­ters of a mil­lion doc­u­ments exam­ined. No-one was brought to jus­tice despite five police inquiries and three years of legal hear­ings, esti­mat­ed to have cost around £30 mil­lion. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed in 2008 but two, includ­ing a for­mer detec­tive accused of per­vert­ing jus­tice, were dis­charged after a string of super­grass­es were discredited.

INDECOM’s own Hamish Campbell who was Detective Chief Superintendent at the time and a senior Scotland Yard detec­tive, apol­o­gized to Mr. Morgan’s fam­i­ly after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case against the remain­ing three sus­pects, admit­ting that police cor­rup­tion was a “debil­i­tat­ing fac­tor”.

In May of 2013 then Home Secretary and Now Prime Minister Theresa May ordered an inquiry into the killing of mis­ter Morgan.
Two years after the Inquiry was ordered Metropolitan Police had not turned over a sin­gle doc­u­ment to investigators.

A senior back­bench MP also crit­i­cized the Metropolitan police, blam­ing the force for delay­ing the start of the inquiry. Labor MP Tom Watson said: “It is extra­or­di­nary that a case involv­ing police cor­rup­tion has tak­en near­ly two years to yield even a sin­gle doc­u­ment. Even for the Met, it is a remark­able state of affairs.“They are clear­ly refus­ing to coöper­ate with an inquiry that is in the pub­lic inter­est and has the author­i­ty of the home secretary.”

Since Hamish Campbell could not get a con­vic­tion in a case involv­ing his very own col­leagues who have been accused of mur­der and mas­sive cor­rup­tion, includ­ing fail­ure to act as it relates to a legit­i­mate Inquiry Order from the home sec­re­tary, what makes him qual­i­fied or com­pe­tent to inves­ti­gate cops in Jamaica?
Speaking to Nationwide News in October of 2016 Hamish Campbell told reporters that DCP Glenmore Hinds com­ments were shame­ful, dis­ap­point­ing and untrue.
Hinds had told the Parliamentary com­mit­tee that Terrence Williams INDECOM com­mis­sion­er had been problematic.

I sub­mit that it was the fail­ure of Hamish Campbell to bring his own col­leagues to jus­tice which was shameful.
It was Hamish Campbell’s action in the case of Ira Thomas the black accused which was not only shame­ful, but I sub­mit rep­re­hen­si­ble, to say the least.,

Nevertheless, Hamish Campbell is now on the pay­roll of the Jamaican peo­ple, he could not bring any of the high pro­file cas­es he was tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing to an appro­pri­ate conclusion.
Campbell nev­er once acknowl­edged the deep cor­rup­tion which has been endem­ic in the Metropolitan Police. He is how­ev­er in Jamaica pass­ing judg­ment on Police officers.
So this writer ask, what is it which impressed the Government of Jamaica about Campbell, out­side, of course, the col­or of his skin?