Jon Burrows: Fresh leadership and reform of the police ombudsman is necessary

The ombudsman’s role is to investigate complaints and pass the evidence to the relevant authorities for review. For criminal complaints, that authority is the PPS, and for misconduct matters, it’s the PSNI’s Professional Standards Department.

In a democracy, fairness demands that investigative agencies refrain from acting as judge and jury. The separation of roles in our justice system is paramount, and police officers, both past and present, deserve the same due process as everyone else.

I have felt for some time that fresh leadership and reform of the police ombudsman is necessary. For balance, it’s important to note that I’ve also been critical of the previous chief constable’s leadership and the policing board’s performance. The crisis in policing here had multiple authors, and changing the PSNI leadership alone is insufficient to resolve it.

When I was the head of discipline branch in the PSNI, I had a legal responsibility to review the ombudsman’s investigations and make decisions regarding their recommendations. I was often disappointed by the poor quality and slowness of the organisation’s investigations.

I was struck by how many investigations lacked a sense of proportionality or fairness. On occasions, investigations into the few predatory officers were inadequate, while good officers were subjected to punitive disciplinary recommendations.

I felt that ombudsman investigators lacked an understanding of the laws surrounding police use of force and the challenges of dynamic operational decision-making. Recently, a jury took only 30 minutes to acquit a police officer who was prosecuted for GBH following an ombudsman investigation; the officer was merely attempting to defend himself from a violent thug. I’ve consistently argued that the rise in assaults on PSNI officers can partly be attributed to a fear of punitive and lengthy investigations if they use force.

The ombudsman’s handling of the complaint related to the Ormeau Road incident, where an officer was unlawfully suspended, is a case study of the organisation’s shortcomings. From the outset, I maintained the officers were innocent and that the suspension was purely political, a stance vindicated by subsequent determinations. However, the ombudsman recommended absurd disciplinary charges against the innocent officer while failing to investigate the unlawful actions of senior officers.

The disciplinary charges against the officer were the most perverse I’ve encountered. The arrested individual complained to the ombudsman that the handcuffs were too tight and on for too long.

However, the Body Worn Video shows that he never once mentioned the cuffs being tight to any police officer, which is the usual trigger for a readjustment.

The extended period the cuffs were on was solely due to negotiations between senior police officers and Sinn Féin politicians.

The officers arrived outside Musgrave custody suite within minutes, but were denied access to the custody suite whilst undocumented and unethical discussions took place.

The second charge of failing to obey a lawful order was more perverse. The supervisor who issued the order in question had commended the officer’s conduct and provided a statement for the appeal, stating that their order was not breached.

The evidence of failing to obey a lawful order should come from the officer issuing the order, yet the ombudsman recommended a charge nonetheless.

These charges were struck out entirely on appeal, but only after years of stress for the innocent officer.

Not only were the disciplinary recommendations perverse, the Ombudsman’s recent public statement on the investigation lacked crucial details.

The statement should have debunked the claim that the officers interrupted a memorial by explicitly stating it ended five minutes earlier and all but four people left the scene.

There was no reference to the hostility the officers faced, of being surrounded, jostled, verbally abused, obstructed as they tried to handcuff an arrested person and an officer appeared to be slapped hard in the face.

There was no mention that the suspended officer asked on seven occasions for the arrested person’s name and repeatedly offered to release him if he provided it. Vital context and detail were absent from the public statement, which skewed the ensuing media reporting.

The ombudsman’s public statement added insult to injury to a serially wronged, yet exemplary police officer.

Storm clouds are gathering around Ms Anderson at the moment, and this is before we consider the extraordinary fact that a 17-month police investigation connected to an incident at her home remains outstanding.

The lack of transparency, unanswered questions, and inexplicable delay in that case continues to raise eyebrows and undermine trust.

The public should be able to rely on the police ombudsman for swift accountability when the minority of officers let them down. Likewise, law-abiding police officers, past and present, should have faith in the organisation’s fairness and adherence to due process. Neither the public nor the police are currently being well served; change is required.

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Jon Burrows is a retired senior police officer