News that Avon & Somerset’s top cop Nick Gargan was found guilty of EIGHT minor charges of misconduct and was furnished with EIGHT final warning letters has got a bizarre coalition of Police Federation wankers, former chief constable wankers (yes, that’s you Colin port) and local politician wankers demanding his head on a plate.
A similar coalition led by fat twat Liberal Democrat, Gary Hopkins – notorious for his over-friendly relations with BROADBURY ROAD POLICE STATION – are also behind attacks on Avon & Somerset’s Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens. They are blaming her for wasting £0.5m suspending Gargan on full pay for over a year while investigating his conduct.
Gutbucket is now promising a full investigation by his committee of old farts at the POLICE AND CRIME PANEL. He says they’re going to “scrutinise the Police and Crime commissioner” due to “serious concerns” especially around Gargan’s “recruitment and what happened prior to his suspension”.
Which makes you wonder if the useless fat bastard and his gang of dodgy old coppers have bothered to actually read the Misconduct Panel report into Gargan’s misdemeanours?
This report does agree that forwarding confidential work emails to one of your many squeezes – local BBC journalist LAURA JONES – and assisting various other attractive women with their applications for senior posts with Avon & Somerset Police is probably the height of stupidity for a public servant on a six-figure salary employed for their absolute integrity. It also concludes GARGAN’s conduct is worthy of disciplinary action.
However, it seems, the wider story concerning this fiasco is being buried amid huge amounts of bluster from an establishment gang of old white men committed to scoring political points against a female PCC and who want to maintain an old school cop culture of RACIST POLICING and ENDEMIC CORRUPTION at Avon & Somerset. A culture Gargan had been committed to removing.
Indeed, if you read the Misconduct Panel report into Gargan, they don’t seem much bothered by his minor misdemeanours and they don’t identify anything Mountstevens has done wrong at all.
In May 2014 Mountstevens received allegations regarding Gargan’s conduct around women from TWO WHISTLEBLOWERS. Mountstevens suspended Gargan and then passed the case to the IPCC to investigate, as she’s legally required to do.
The report makes clear that responsibility for most decisions regarding Gargan then passed to Avon & Somerset’s IPCC commissioner, JAN WILLIAMS. An inexperienced and incompetent health service manager who had already fucked up and delayed an IPCC investigation into the death of BIJAN EBRAHIMI.
Ebrahimi was the Iranian asylum seeker BEATEN AND THEN BURNED TO DEATH in a horrific attack in 2013 in Broomhill under the noses of coppers from BROADBURY ROAD POLICE STATION. An episode that resulted in the suspension of TWELVE police staff and the prosecution of THREE under Gargan’s leadership.
The EBRAHIMI INVESTIGATION was crucial to Gargan and his efforts to modernise the Avon & Somerset Constabulary and sweep away what we can politely and lawfully refer to as his force’s “old fashioned practices”. In this context, the report by Gargan’s Misconduct Panel is extremely enlightening as it spends far more time discussing the conduct of the IPCC than Gargan’s minor transgressions.
It was Williams at the IPCC who, having discovered within two months that the allegations regarding sexual harassment against Gargan were baseless, embarked on a FISHING EXPEDITION of his iPhone. It was this investigation that formed the slim basis of the disciplinary action eventually taken against Gargan.
It was Williams at the IPCC who WITHHELD from Mountstevens’ office for months the fact she had obtained no admissible evidence from any female witnesses in support of the original hearsay harassment allegations against Gargan.
It was Williams at the IPCC that MISLED Mountstevens throughout the summer of 2014, in order to keep Gargan suspended, that there was a likelihood of a criminal prosecution being brought against him under the Data Protection Act.
It was Williams at the IPCC who consistently REFUSED to lift Gargan’s suspension and therefore used our council tax to pay him to sit at home.
It was Williams at the IPCC who continually FRUSTRATED disclosure of evidence to Gargan between 2 February and 27 May 2015 and therefore DELAYED Gargan’s Misconduct Panel hearing by months.
It was Williams at the IPCC who FAILED “to comply with its disclosure obligations all the way to the Misconduct Panel’s door”.
It was Williams at the IPCC who under cross-examination COULDN’T EXPLAIN what the term “evidence” means.
It was Williams at the IPCC, according to the Misconduct Panel, whose understanding of the concept of ‘relevance’ was, until 24 April 2015, ‘CONCERNING’.
It was Williams at the IPCC who was described as “ALMOST INCOHERENT” when giving evidence to the independent Misconduct Panel.
It was Williams at the IPCC whose submissions were described by the Misconduct Panel as “A LITTLE UNREAL”.
It was Williams at the IPCC who supplied a spreadsheet redacted “BEYOND COMPREHENSION” to the Misconduct Panel.
It was Williams at the IPCC who continually promised Mountstevens a ‘HARD HITTING’ report into Gargan despite knowing full well that her investigation had unearthed NO ADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE in relation to the original harassment allegations while the data protection breaches she uncovered did not merit criminal proceedings.
By the end of June 2014, when the investigation into the original harassment allegations had unearthed no admissible evidence, Mountstevens’ CEO Jonathan Smith had started action to prepare for Gargan’s return to work.
This was PERSONALLY STOPPED by Williams at the IPCC who had by then embarked on her iPhone fishing expedition against Gargan. The very same man who had complained about her conduct of another IPCC investigation into the death of – who else? – BIJAN EBRAHIMI!
And it was Williams who then had to have the simple concept of “CONFLICT OF INTEREST” explained to her by a lawyer when she gave evidence to the Misconduct panel.
Meanwhile, the Misconduct Panel’s report contains NO CRITICISM of Sue Mountstevens and treats the soppy list of minor allegations against Gargan as lightly as they deserve.
The whole investigation into Gargan has, therefore, more than a passing resemblance to a STITCH-UP by VESTED INTERESTS and OLD SCHOOL COPPERS desperate to get rid of a modernising influence on our police.
The IPCC’s got a lot of questions to answer here and JAN WILLIAMS’ position seems untenable. Does anyone believe this useless, dodgy bureaucrat is capable of independent oversight of our dubious police force after this?
And will Gary Hopkins’ and his political Police and Crime Panel be doing an investigation into the conduct of their IPCC Commissioner rather than pursuing a pointless and very public witch hunt for their own DIRTY POLITICAL REASONS against Mountstevens?
Don’t hold your breath.
What a load of rubbish Gargan clearly has a few issues with Females, and despite they being unable to give evidence (for whatever reason ) he was stupid enough to use his police issue phone to transfer things to his private phone and pass information to outsiders —- and guess what —yes to attractive women !!
Not rubbish at all. It’s all taken from the Independent Misconduct Panel Report.
The women who were allegedly harassed did give evidence actually. They just didn’t have any complaints. The woman who did have a complaint wasn’t harassed and had said to colleagues she would “get” Gargan.
It’s you that seems to have the problem with Gargan and women. Is it because he gets laid far more often than you do?
No-one comes out of this sorry saga well, but in the end that should not mean we have to put up with a Chief Constable with 8 final written warnings. Nor one with the following record – there is evidence of his womanising – he was thrown off the Princess Diana enquiry for forming an inappropriate relationship, and he was warned by our PCC when she appointed him not to form relationships with junior females. As well as data protection breaches he was also found to have intervened in a recruitment process making it potentially unfair, and to have inappropriate content on his police phone. If he had any decency he would go, but then decency and Gargan don’t seem to go together.
Gargan has previous for indiscretion and having been around him is a cocksure French graduate with a supercilious manner- he has met with the esteemed HMIC many times, and is the one of the architects of Direct entry . He is an arch privatiser of services and is concerned , primarily with Nick Gargan. Yes I too have read all of the reports, no-one comes out smelling of roses- including Mountstevens. That,even, with all of its so called improvements, the I.P.C.C. continues its ineptitude is also a matter of much concern. Your article indicates a slight imbalance in stance- that Hopkins is a despicable greaseball is indisputable, similarly, the execrable Jan Williams is ill trained and way out of her depth – even at the IPCC. I personally know officers who have been unceremoniously ditched for much less and cut adrift by either PF, or in the case of Police Staff, Unison. Yes..we all know what you think about SW1- I feel the same , but unlike you , I know almost all of the actors in this scenario – the story is complex and Political. By the way your response to Mike is unbecoming and before you ask- I get laid on a regular basis without payment and without a powerfully coercive job or the ability to dispense largesse.
The problem here is that your reasons for wanting Gargan gone are personal. We don’t doubt he’s an arrogant, obnoxious tosser who thinks he’s above the rules and ‘the little people’. He’s a senior public sector manager – they’re all like that!
He’s also undoubtedly, by cop standards, a moderniser. His work around Ebrahami was excellent as was his apology to Christopher Jefferies. We all knew Port’s Avon & Somerset was leaking to the tabloid press like a sieve over that (for cash?). Gargan clearly had different ideas.
The question is whether he should be dismissed? And the answer is probably no because the original complainant had a political agenda; the IPCC investigation was bent and the IPCC Commissioner, Jan
Williams, overseeing it all had a conflict of interest and should have stood aside.
The Misconduct Panel chair, Dorian Lovell Pank’s very well-written report clearly infers all this too. You can almost see him holding his nose as he dishes out Gargan’s punishment for these ridiculously minor transgressions – mainly involving his personal email account linked to a work phone – before skewering the real issue by focusing entirely on the IPCC and Jan Williams’ many misdemeanours.
It’s transparently obvious that the IPCC investigation was absolutely shite and so lacking in due process that it should have been thrown out and Williams and her minions fired for a combination of incompetence and grubby politics.
Let’s just hope Gargan drags this whole sorry affair into the courts where we’ll be able to see the dodgy politics at work and see some of the other people involved get their just desserts when the rest of the press finally wakes up to what’s gone on here.
Bristol Blogger – Gargan’s transgressions are not ridiculously minor. He is a serial offender and has not met the Chief Constable job description requirements for integrity and leadership (have you read those?)
It’s extremely unfortunate that the incompetence of most of the other parties in this fiasco seem to have provided avenues which Gargan can now exploit, either pragmatically or cynically depending on your point of view.
When you look at what Chief Constables got away with at Hillsborough and Orgreave, then Gargan’s iPhone records are small beer.
BBC London ‘Security Group’ brought in for several weeks to protect Bristol journalists covering Nick Gargan (ex Police Chief) story after ‘You better watch your back’ and ‘We’ll destroy your career’ threats from ex Bristol police NARPO group led by Colin Port (former Chief Constable).
Sue Mountstevens, PCC for Bristol, has consulted same legal adviser, John Smith, as Colin Port employed so was taking bad legal advice; John Smith is now chief executive of the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner too.
Colin Port worked on case of lawyer Rosemary Nelson’s murder in Northern Ireland – considered a cover up by some.
Whatever people say about Nick Gargan the way his men policed the May 2013 attempt by the EDL – posing as Help For Heroes was exemplary.
The ‘old guard’ unofficially employ fascists on operations and abuse their power to kill prosecutions and cover for them.
https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/bcfm-politics-show-with-tony-gosling-18/
It shows how desperate they were to get rid of Gargan he was about to clean out institutional corruption at Broadbury Road police station we no that Hopkins was running a sustained attack against the Gothic Mansion aided by bent coppers in knowle
Pingback: Political economist Richard Murphy: Osborne’s Big Lie, he knows he will never balance the books | BCfm Politics Show
Does anyone have any idea who “Female A” was in the report? Or even what the new job Gargan created for 50k a year was, that he was so keen for her to do? Please email me paddycomeback@gmail.com