A new low for policing in the UK

In Jan 2019, the following 3 publicly released a pack of lies about the results of road safety policing:

Martyn Underhill, PCC Dorset Police

James Vaughan, Chief Constable, Dorset Police

Adrian Leisk, Chief Inspector Devon and Cornwall Police, Head of roads policing for the Alliance

Safest year ever
Copy of page in case they do have the decency to remove it (although an apology and correction is required)
My analysis and complaint
 

Their statements are false, there is no doubt about that, but I can confidently declare them lies, rather than “mistakes”, as:

1. Martyn Underhill and James Vaughan have previously covered up similar lies a few years ago, assisted by a long list of others, including Jonathan Mair (now Corporate Director Legal and Democratic Services Monitoring Officer, Dorset Council). Hear for yourself the ex Head of Professional standards at Hampshire Police (Colin Smith) agreeing with me:
misrepresentation of finances
misrepresentation of safety benefit
He later stopped communicating, delayed for a year, wrote there was nothing wrong, retired and vanished even before Martyn Underhill allowed me to see the report and question it!!

2. It simply is not possible that those working at this level (not to mention salary, £ 1/4 million for JV and MU alone) could make such elementary mistakes with very simple numbers and the analysis of them.

3. They and their professional standards departments have been fully informed, all of the normal complaints processes and appeals have been completed, but (as I have seen so many times before) the complaints have been comprehensively shut down, the lies protected, everything covered up, and incredibly, the lies still remain in the public domain. Therefore regardless of any "error" there may have been before, these false statements to the public remain, while those who published them know them to be untrue.

Of course, a PCC, CC and head of roads policing would not get away with such appalling conduct without the assistance of the system and everyone around them:

Simon Bullock (Chief Executive for Martyn Underhill) – his response was an obvious attempt to make the problem “go away” for his boss, said I had made some interesting points but refused to discuss them. He did at least confirm that the use of course money to fund the activities of a charity were against the rules.

Genene Wilson at the IOPC said the case was a repeat, in a point-blank breach of the simple rule about what can and can’t be considered as a repeat (new evidence)

Wendy Williams and Simon Peachey at HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, rated Dorset Police good despite these and many other problems and in conflict with numerous news articles about poor confidence in / performance of Dorset Police

Dorset Police and Crime panel, Mike Short, John Adams, etc, sent a serious complaint about the PCC back to the PCC himself to deal with! (it should have gone to the IOPC)

Peter Thomas (Acting Chief Inspector – Roads Policing, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset) – produced some of the most feeble, irrelevant, incorrect, evasive and incomplete nonsense I have seen to dodge a complaint

Professional Standards Dept Devon and Cornwall - decided to deal with the complaint by “Local Resolution” in a point-blank breach of the “Suitability test”, (unless lying to make money is no longer considered to be a disciplinary matter in the police)

Shawn Sawyer (Chief Constable, Devon and Cornwall Police): Has been informed about this but has done nothing

Alison Hernandez (PCC, Devon and Cornwall Police): Has been informed about this but has done nothing. Yes, the person with the responsibility of making the police accountable to the public on the matters of road safety has ignored lies to the public from the police facilitating the extraction of money from them at the cost of saving life. (Road safety lead for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners).

Michael Tomlinson MP has been informed about this but has done nothing. Annette Brooke (previous Dorset MP) understood and tried to do something, but was stonewalled by the police and the system just as I have been

Worse still, the lies have been used not only to justify spend of public money, but to ask for more. This is therefore a simple matter of attempting to obtain and spend public money by deception (fraud).

And you usually don't have to dig too deep to find motivations for senior police to favour money-making and misrepresenting over saving life. For example, Dorset Police have in recent years sent £ 1/3 million to Safewise, a "charity", with, on the board of trustees and directors, guess who, James Vaughan and Martyn Underhill!! Some of this money clearly comes from driver awareness courses, a point-blank breach of the rules, according to Martyn Underhill's own Chief Executive, Simon Bullock. You couldn't make it up.

Senior public officials should not even be seen to be in the position where decisions they make in their primary duty to the public involving large sums of public money could be clouded by other personal interests / opportunities etc now or in the future and yet here we have JV and MU in this remarkable conflict of interest.

No wonder JV and MU are so keen on "education", entirely deaf to the facts that in the UK, the driver / speed awareness course which will one day be recognised as the greatest scam of all time and the greatest backwards step for road safety, despite consuming £100,000,000 a year and 2500 person years of resource (enough to run a force like Dorset) sold to the public as a road safety solution, achieves no identifiable casualty reduction benefit. I strongly believe that most would struggle to consume so much money and resource and achieve so little even if they tried.

And while this approach of "education" has been ramped up over the last decade, we have seen widespread ridiculous speed limit reductions (including 20), even cars which now refuse to crash into things, the long term casualty reduction we have been enjoying has completely halted, entirely as I predicted nearly a decade ago: https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/9046512.no-excuse-no-difference/

Considering all these realities it seems the “Alliance” has probably felt the need to misrepresent road safety results as they have been so bad, but the senior police involved would prefer things to seem to be successful so they can continue to play their games. Although the county I live in, Dorset, is one of the worst, I have over the years seen just as bad everywhere I have looked, including Hampshire and now Devon and Cornwall.  

So this misrepresentation is far worse than a fraud, it is likely to result in poor police performance continuing, and that will have cost lives, and thanks to this shocking coverup assisted by all those named above, will cost many more. The saddest thing of all is that those who have been given the crucial responsibility of making the police accountable to the public, the PCCs, seem not only to be selectively blind to these and other problems but a central part of them.

On www.dorsetspeed.org.uk you will find a shocking history of police corruption, coverup and protection, along with all the proof and full information about the comments above, which as you will see are just the tiny tip of the iceberg. If it is so easy to find this much corruption, we can only guess at how much is going on and should consider the continuing falling policing standards one of the most worrying problems of our age. The answer now is NOT more police powers or funding, it must be to improve standards first.

Ian Belchamber