How did gangland hit trigger criminal probe into Chief Constable in charge of police ethics? The astonishing supergrass scandal that is engulfing UK's most senior officers

Even by the standards of drug-related killings, the murder of Kevin Nunes was savage.

He was driven by his killers to the end of a lonely farm track then beaten and kicked so badly he would probably have died in any case: one blow, administered by the butt of a pistol, smashed part of his skull. But just to make sure, his assailants also shot him five times.

Nunes, 20, was a promising [black] footballer: he had been on the books of Tottenham Hotspur and trained with semi-professionals Stafford Rangers.

But, according to the police, his other interests were less savoury: transporting crack cocaine from the Midlands to Aberdeen, where the drug’s price was more than twice as high.

Detectives believed rival gangs killed him 11 years ago, near Pattingham in Staffordshire.

But now, in the wake of ‘Plebgate’ and other recent scandals, his case is emerging as another element in the crisis engulfing Britain’s police leadership.

Astonishingly, it will shortly lead to investigation files being sent to the Crown Prosecution Service on four very senior officers, including two chief constables.

The CPS will have to decide whether to charge them with criminal offences over their alleged roles in what an Appeal Court judgment – revealed in detail today by The Mail on Sunday for the first time – calls a ‘serious perversion of the course of justice’ and ‘a shocking episode’.

Even more remarkably, one of those senior officers is Adrian Lee, Chief Constable of Northamptonshire, who, until he stepped down last October, was the Association of Chief Police Officers ‘national lead’ on police ethics.

A presentation he gave in 2012 at a special conference attended by Home Secretary Theresa May on ‘Change in Policing’ was entitled: ‘Ethical policing – a non-negotiable requirement’. Last week, in an effort to ease the national crisis, Mrs May unveiled a new police ethics code, embodying the very principles Mr Lee advocated.

In addition to files on ten more junior officers, the CPS will also consider charging Suzette Davenport, the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Marcus Beale, Assistant Chief Constable of the West Midlands, and Jayne Sawyers, Staffordshire’s current Deputy Chief.

In 2008, six years after Nunes’s murder, five men were convicted and sentenced to life. But last year the Court of Appeal heard astonishing evidence of serious malpractice inside the Staffordshire police force – where all 14 officers who may face charges served before the trial.

A secret, 247-page dossier compiled after a two-year investigation focused on the elite squad which dealt with the Nunes case – Staffordshire’s Sensitive Policing Unit (SPU). It revealed that the evidence of the critical prosecution witness at the trial was potentially contaminated in extraordinary circumstances – that two officers were using the safe house where he was living to conduct a sexual relationship.

The dossier added that the witness had gone out drinking with officers, stolen police funds and had access to drugs.

All this was bad enough. Even worse, months before the trial, senior Staffordshire officers had received a report on the SPU and the Nunes case, which revealed many of these failings. Yet despite its obvious relevance, the police failed to disclose it.

In an excoriating appeal judgment last year, Lord Justice Hooper quashed the five convictions, saying: ‘It is to be hoped that the appropriate measures will be taken against those responsible for what appears to us to be a serious perversion of the course of justice, if those measures have not already been taken.’

Here, for the first time, we reveal the scarcely comprehensible events that led to this sorry state.

GRASS WHO WENT TO CLUBS WITH POLICE

For several years after Nunes’s murder in 2002, the police had few leads. But in 2005 they made a breakthrough – statements from Simeon Taylor, who claimed to be a close associate of the killers.

He told police – as he later would tell the jury at Leicester Crown Court – he had driven Nunes and two of the alleged murderers, Adam Joof and Antonio Christie, to the site of the murder, and witnessed the attacks.

Afterwards, with Nunes’s body left on a verge at the end of the track, he drove Joof and Christie away.

For this, he might easily have faced a murder charge himself. Instead, he was taken into the witness protection programme, and guarded by the SPU.

It was a comfortable life. He was taken drinking in nightclubs with officers, and allowed to spend time with his girlfriend. But as the secret dossier presented to the Court of Appeal makes clear, the police were determined to get him into the witness box. One Crown lawyer wrote in a memo that the SPU’s most important task was ‘to keep Simeon Taylor on board’.

They succeeded. After a five- month trial, Joof, Christie, and three other men, all said to be members of two Midlands gangs, the Uken Demolition Crew and the Raiders, were jailed for life, with a minimum term of 25 to 28 years.

One, Levi Walker, was already serving life for the 2004 murder of a soldier. Joof and Christie had only been released from custody on the morning of Nunes’s murder, having been arrested for the alleged kidnap and rape of Joof’s former girlfriend.

THE POLICE'S WHISTLE BLOWER

Well before the trial, the secret dossier would show, there was reason to believe there were serious problems with the SPU and the Nunes investigation.

Soon after Taylor agreed to become a witness, the unit acquired a new leader – Det Insp Joe Anderson.

Appalled by what he saw, he turned whistleblower. In an official complaint to the Staffordshire Professional Standards Department, he said he had found evidence of ‘corruption, dishonesty and falsification’ by SPU officers on the case.

For a year, the man ultimately responsible for handling his complaint was Deputy Chief Constable Adrian Lee, later to be the national ethics specialist.

The force was so concerned by Anderson’s allegations that Staffordshire’s then-Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport asked for a ‘review’ of the Sensitive Policing Unit. The 73-page report, which focused on the handling of Taylor, was issued months before the Nunes trial began.

Yet Staffordshire police did not disclose it either to the CPS or to the defence – though its authors, according to the dossier, ‘expressed their concerns’ about this.

Lord Justice Hooper’s comments in his judgment were devastating: ‘The report was not disclosed and there is no doubt it should have been .  .  . [it would have] undermined both the credibility of Simeon Taylor and the integrity and honesty of Simeon Taylor’s handlers, both generally and in respect of him.

‘With the report, the defence could have shown that the SPU was a dysfunctional organisation fractured by in-fighting, containing officers whose honesty and integrity were open to question, and whose documentation in respect of Simeon Taylor could not be trusted.’

DAMNING FINDS IN THE NEW INQUIRY

Fittingly, perhaps, it was Simeon Taylor who began the process by which the case unravelled. In a phone call to an associate who secretly recorded it, he retracted his evidence, saying he had lied.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) normally begins to investigate a case only after defendants have already lost an appeal. But the Court of Appeal also has powers to ask it to make inquiries before that stage is reached. It did precisely this, partly in response to Taylor’s retraction.

The CCRC asked Derbyshire’s Mick Creedon, one of the few chief constables who spent most of his career as a detective, to lead the fresh investigation which would generate the 247-page dossier. After the successful appeal, this has continued, with Creedon’s team now investigating the officers who may be criminally charged.

Creedon’s team also examined the question of a reward for Taylor. During the trial, both he and one of his handlers gave evidence he had not been promised any payment.

Having received the CCRC dossier, the CPS admitted this ‘conflicts with what is now known’. In a written statement to the Appeal Court, it said it appeared that at least three officers had discussed a reward, and Taylor had been led to expect £20,000 for giving evidence.

Another area Creedon investigated was Taylor’s theft of police funds. According to the CCRC dossier, the police had deposited £320 to pay for him to stay at a luxury hotel.

But instead of checking in, he ‘dishonestly obtained a refund’.

Then, in the words of the appeal judgment, SPU officers ‘had deliberately not recorded the incident in the appropriate document intending thereby to prevent disclosure to the defence’. In other words, they hid his theft in order to preserve his credibility.

It was also clear that Taylor’s minders drank alcohol with him – a fact, the CPS admitted, which raised awkward questions ‘about the integrity and closeness of the relationship of the witness with the police’.

But perhaps the most troubling issue of all was the affair that started in the safe house between one of Taylor’s minders, named in the judgment as Det Con Nigel (a pseudonym to protect his identity), and the murder inquiry disclosure officer – the female detective in charge of the documents and exhibits.

The dossier described their behaviour as ‘totally unprofessional,’ because Taylor’s minders were not supposed to know anything about the evolving murder inquiry. If his evidence were to be contaminated by information from other sources, its value would be destroyed: the defence could argue that he was not telling the jury what he had seen but what he had been told.

Amazingly, it seems that this is exactly what happened.

In its statement to the Appeal Court, the CPS said: ‘When Simeon Taylor gave evidence, he said he knew that the enquiry team had no forensic evidence.

‘He was unable to say how he knew that .  .  . He knew about the absence of cell-site [mobile phone location] evidence. He knew what Joof had told the police.’

Previous headlines: How the story of the police probe broke

Previous headlines: How the story of the police probe broke

THE END GAME: POLICE AT THE CROSSROADS

Of the five men convicted for killing Kevin Nunes, only Walker remains in prison: the others are all at large.

Yesterday the CPS said it had already received files on six officers, and expected the remaining eight before Christmas.

Spokesmen for three of the forces whose senior officers face possible charges said that they could not comment because ‘the matter is ongoing’.

Staffordshire’s Deputy Chief Jayne Sawyers said she ‘welcomed’ the news that her file would soon be sent to the CPS. She added: ‘The investigation has been going on for some time now and this development brings it closer to conclusion. My focus will continue to be my job, serving the people of Staffordshire.’

A police spokesman said that it was routine for case files to be submitted to the CPS: ‘It is a matter for them to establish if wrongdoing has taken place.’

What is unarguable is that the revelations of the details of the Nunes case come amid a gathering sense among senior officers and MPs that police leadership is at a crossroads. Many believe that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has so mishandled Plebgate, standing by officers who now appear to have lied, that if any are charged and convicted his position will be untenable. If so, he would become the third commissioner in succession to leave office prematurely.

Last week, the former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, called for ‘root and branch’ police reform and a Royal Commission on the service’s future. Meanwhile, the chief constables of West Mercia, Warwickshire and the West Midlands were all grilled by the Commons home affairs committee over their own roles in Plebgate.

Other scandals – such as the inquiry into the Hillsborough football disaster, which revealed police doctored 194 statements and forced the resignation of West Yorkshire Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison – are still recent memories.

One very senior officer, who asked not to be named, commented yesterday: ‘I have never seen the service in such utter disarray.

‘Morale is absolutely on the floor. There are some chiefs who keep on saying that because crime has been falling, everything is fine.

‘They’re wrong. It’s not.’

The question now remains whether this latest development becomes yet another addition to the charge-sheet besmirching the reputation of Britain’s police.

Original report here

　

　

(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here