Police Ombudsman must go

LEAKED REPORT EXPOSES MAJOR FAULTS | Public confidence in Al Hutchinson at rock bottom

Al Hutchinson

CONFIDENCE in Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson is at “rock bottom” and he should go, Sinn Féin Policing spokesperson Gerry Kelly MLA has said again. He repeated his previous call after the leaking to a news website of a draft report from the Criminal Justice Inspectorate critical of the way the Police Ombudsman’s office operates.
Reporter Barry McCaffrey of news website ‘The Detail’ described the draft report as “damning”. The Police Ombudsman has “lost the trust of key members of staff”, the report says. Two separate investigations were launched into the Police Ombudsman’s office after Chief Executive Sam Pollock resigned, claiming the NIO had interfered in the office and that there had been “a significant lowering of the professional independence” between the Ombudsman’s office and the PSNI.
‘The Detail’ says an investigation by Criminal Justice Inspector Dr Michael Maguire has concluded that a  “lowering of independence” in the Ombudsman’s office means it should now be suspended from investigating historic cases.
It also says that Ombudsman reports were altered or rewritten to exclude criticism of police with no explanation and key intelligence has been withheld from investigators.
Senior Ombudsman officials are also said to have demanded to be disassociated from investigation reports after their original findings were dramatically altered without reason.
Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly called for the immediate publication of the Criminal Justice Inspectorate’s report:
“It is clear that Dr Michael Maguire’s report is complete and it now needs to be published without further delay.
“Public confidence in Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson is already at rock bottom and it is important that swift action is taken to restore the credibility of this crucially important policing structure.”
But, Gerry Kelly added, replacing the Ombudsman on its own will not restore the office’s credibility if structural issues are not addressed.
“If the leaked detail contained in this report is true, it is clear that the removal of Mr Hutchinson, necessary as that is, will in itself not suffice. It seems that his report has uncovered a series of deep failures including a lowering of operational independence, key staff disassociating themselves from wrongful findings, the dominance of ex-police officers in decision-making, an arrangement to avoid criticism of Special Branch in inquiries into historic cases and the rewriting of reports at their final stage in contradiction to the findings.
“There are other deep-seated problems identified, including the use of former members of the RUC in carrying out investigations. The conflict of interest this causes in the office’s work on historic collusion cases is very obvious.
“It has been already well-documented that there are very serious issues of independence and effectiveness in the Police Ombudsman’s office. The report vindicates the deep criticism of the office by the families in the cases of the McGurk’s Bar bombing and the Loughinisland Massacre.
“We have already called for Al Hutchinson to resign. If the leaks in the CJI Report are true then it seems what has been going on within the Police Ombudsman’s office is actually even worse than people had feared.”