Who's Watching the Detectives? Panorama

The Police Watchdog's just been handed the task of investigating

one of the biggest policing scandals in British history.

Hillsborough. And all that means is still strongly with me 23 years

later. We cannot allow a police force to behave like this ever

again. But is the Independent Police

Complaints Commission independent enough to do its job? When you look

at the number of ex-police officers that are operating there, you do

wonder whether the canteen feels like a police canteen, it's almost

like an old boys' club. Tonight, Panorama investigates the case

where is police have been exonerated despite evidence of

serious wrongdoing. And we hear from families who've been failed.

Why should anyone have any faith or confidence in a body that behaves

in this manner? It's disgusting. The IPCC investigating were sitting

behind us and every now and again we'd look at him and think, shame

August last year and Tottenham in North London was ablaze. Over four

days of mayhem and rioting, police are attacked and businesses looted.

The trigger was the shooting of a young black man by police.

As with all police shootings, the watchdog, the Independent Police

Complaints Commission, or the IPCC, launched an investigation. It would

get off to a disUSA rous start. IPCC has admitted it may have

misled journalists into believing that the man may have fired at them.

The information may have misled a journalists and ultimately the

family as well. This mistake did lit toll dampen the rising tensions

as a result of Mark Duggan's shooting. The worst riots seen in

Britain for a generation followed. Duggan is one of a number of high-

profile cases which have contributed to a breakdown in

confidence in the IPCC. Among them, the heavy criticism the Commission

received in 2009 during the early stages of its inquiry into the

death of newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson.

The local MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, has lost faith in the IPCC,

since he watched his community go up in flames. The Commission is

still to deliver its final report on the Duggan case, but he believes

the body's earlier failures contributed to the violence. What

you needed was a sense that someone was going to investigate and

importantly, that that investigation was on the side of

the people, getting to the truth quickly.

On this occasion, they put out very quickly information that was wrong

and actually was fatally wrong. I think the test of a really

powerful watchdog is how it copes under pressure and again and again

and again, when you need that independence, the IPCC has not kept

the faith of families, it's not kept the faith of communities, it's

not kept the faith of the country. The point of creating the IPCC in

2040 was to replace the discredited Police Complaints Authority, a body

considered too weak to hold the police to account.

With a budget of around �34 million and 371 staff, the IPCC covers

England and Wales. It handled more than 6,000 appeals

last year from people unhappy about how police dealt with their

complaint. But crucially, it has the power to

launch its own investigations into the most serious and high profile

cases like deaths in custody. In its first eight years, with

around 300 independent investigations, it has had some

notable successes. In the Rachel Nickell murder, the IPCC's 2010

investigation uncover add catalogue of errors by the Metropolitan

Police. Cleveland Chief Constable, Sean

Price, was sacked last months after the IPCC found he'd bully and

intimidated staff. Earlier this year, the Commission found senior

officers from Scotland Yard has shown poor judgment in

relationships with News of the World journalists.

I think that it's significantly better than the Police Complaints

Authority. I think immediately on setting up the IPCC, it was

incredibly successful at creating new confidence amongst those people

who were involved in supporting families, of people who'd been

injured or killed, the lawyer community and the police. It's

crucial the IPCC is about seeking the truth and making decisions only

on the basis of evidence and in a sense no-one being given the

benefit of the doubt one way or another.

But if the critics are right, something has gone badly wrong

along the way. It isn't easy investigating the

police. But in ten years as a reporter at the BBC, make

programmes about police racism and corruption, I've learned how

crucial it is to have a powerful watchdog. So we've decided to focus

our investigation on one of the IPCC's most important functions -

death in custody inquiries. I don't think they had any choice

but to investigate Sean's death. We were left with no choice because we

weren't seeing an investigation happen.

He was a real protective big brother. We had a really good time,

you know. We used to go to jazz clubs. He was a dancer. We really

admired him for that. He was a brilliant, brilliant dancer. Sean

Rigg was also making a name for himself in London as a rapper. But

off stage, Sean was fighting a private battle. He'd suffered from

schizophrenia since he was 20. In 2008, Sean was gripped by a

psychotic episode. Staff at the supported hostel in Brixton where

he lived were so concerned, they Despite increasingly desperate

calls from hostel staff, police refused to attend.

Sean leaves the hostel. More emergency calls are made by the

public about his increasingly bizarre behaviour on the street.

He's doing karate kicks. He tried to drop kick him into the bushes.

This time the police respond and arrest him. In less than two hours,

this physically fit 40-year-old would die surrounded by officers on

the floor. After a two-year investigation, the

IPCC handed the family its conclusions.

The IPCC report wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. They found

there was no case to answer, that the police did no wrong and that

the police officers acted impeccably.

From early on, the Riggs sensed the IPCC would not deliver the answers

they craved. So the family started their own investigation into the

case, painstakingly analysing hours of CCTV, paperwork and statements.

What they found shocked them. We're looking at the CCTV when the

van arrives with the arresting officers and Sean is at the back of

the van. Along with their brother, Wayne, the Riggs piece together

Sean's final movements, uncovering a series of allegations about the

police' actions, missed by the IPCC. Custody sergeant, Paul White, had

claimed to the IPCC that he'd been What's the significance of this?

The significance of that is that Sergeant White lied when he said he

went to the van but he doesn't leave the catered area and he

doesn't go to the van. The family believe this was a lie designed to

hide the fact Sean was seriously ill at this point and in need of

urgent medical attention. This is the time when Sean is taken

from the van. He's immediately on the floor. Flat out. Do you think

that at this point an ambulance had been called -- that had an

ambulance been called his life would have been saved? Absolutely.

At this point Sean doesn't move at "He's feigning unconsciousness and

fitting?"? Yes. He's clearly in a terrible way. Sean didn't stand a

chance with any of them. The IPCC concluded that none of this was

inappropriate or that they didn't conclude that they hadn't acted

fast enough? No, they didn't. They found quite the opposite. But in

July this year, a coroner's inquest into Sean's death returned a

damning verdict on the police and the IPCC.

The jury found that police had more than minimally contributed to

Sean's death by using unsuitable and unnecessary force. The key had

been the family's discovery that these photos were taken four

minutes apart, fatally undermining the police account that they'd only

restrained Sean for a few seconds. The IPCC had this within hours of

arriving at Brixton police station on the night. The evidence was

always available. How does that make you feel? The IPCC are not fit

for purpose. The jury's verdict was clear - they

didn't believe the police. A purgery investigation is now

under way and in an unprecedented move, the IPCC has announced an

exterm inquiry into their own handling of the case. But how is it

that the jury was able to reach such a damning verdict based on

exactly the same evidence that was available to the IPCC? It begs the

question, is the watchdog too close to the police? I wanted to ask John

Wadham, the man who helped launch the IPCC, whether it was truly

independent. There are people at the IPCC

pushing to make it more courageous and there were counter-vaiding

forces from outside and elsewhere that were making that more

difficult. It's about the confidence that that the IPCC needs

to have to make decisions despite the fact that other people will be

annoyed with it, despite the fact that the next time it meets the

Chief Constable, the Chief Constable will be annoyed, the Home

Secretary won't like it, perhaps we weren't as confident in the vision

of independence and searching for the truth than perhaps we should

have been. The chair of the IPCC, Dame Anne

Owers declined to be interviewed but provided a statement saying

there were the eIPCC robustly challenged police evidence". She

said an expert inquiry was under way to see whether there were

lessons to be learned in the Rigg case. Panorama's discovered another

case where the IPCC's independence has been called into question, this

time in the Thames Valley area. Given how the IPCC have behaved,

why should we have any confidence in them? All they've done is wasted

what, four years of our lives and they continue to waste our life.

Habib Ullah was part of a loving family and a devoted father to two

He had a habit. He had been using drugs on and off the four years. It

was a managed habit. He had the support strut around him in the

family. But it would be drugs that would bring about his final

encounter with the police. One evening he and two others were

followed by police officers into a car-park. Four Police officers

brought into the ground and restrained him after they found him

swallowing a small packet of drugs. The struggle ensued which ended

with Habib Ullah losing By the time the paramedics got

there, he was dead. This meant an IPCC investigation. The family had

concerns about the amount of force used. But instead of interviewing

the officers involved and putting them under criminal Corsham, the

watchdog allowed them to submit their statements and challenged. In

March, 2010, two years after his death, the IPCC gave the family

their report which cleared the police of any wrongdoing.

actually thought that the IPCC had gone and interviewed each of the

police officers separately. Through our own work it became apparent

that they had allowed the police to confer, sit around comfortably over

tea and biscuits, put a story together. Once more it would be an

inquest and not the IPCC which would uncover the whole truth.

Eight days into the coroner's proceedings, the police story and

the IPCC's investigation began to unravel. Under oath, police claimed

that they had been told by a police lawyer to remove key passages from

their statements that they were preparing for the IPCC

investigators. The family believe that the decision to withhold

evidence suggesting the police knew his decision -- condition could be

life threatening, was designed to throw investigators off the scent.

What did you think? Utterly gobsmacked. Disgusted. As was

everybody else that was sitting in the public gallery, not least the

jury itself. One by one, under intense cross-examination, police

officers admitted to removing potentially key evidence from the

statements. You are advised by the solicitors to take out the evidence

in your statement that you had seen him being gripped by the throat.

That is right. I was advised by my solicitor to remove that. What

should have happened, right at the outset, there should have been a

robust investigation, where the police's evidence was tested in

interview conditions and the officers were not invited to

prepare statements and send them to the IPCC for later consideration at

the inquest. The Police Federation lawyer denies any wrongdoing. The

inquest had to be abandoned. Those police officers are now under

criminal investigation for alleged manslaughter and the lawyer

involved faces allegations of perverting the course of justice.

But how could the IPCC have missed something so potentially serious?

Panorama can now reveal an internal email sent from the IPCC's Deputy

Chair Deborah Glass to the case's lead investigator. Could this give

an insight into the way that the IPCC was handling death in custody

cases? In her email, Deborah Glass warns that if the police officers

were put on notice that they were being investigated, from being very

co-operative, police officers might become hostile if they were being

treated as suspects in a suspicious death. With the real possibility

that in future incidents, police officers would be much more

reluctant to co-operate with our investigators. She advises,

handling this very carefully if you do not want the barriers to go up.

Even though the police officers were later put on notice that they

were being investigated, they were never interviewed under criminal

court and. This concerned the family so much that they lodged the

failed legal attempt to force the IPCC to treat the officers as

suspects. Do you want to read this Good grief. OK. Why should it be a

matter of the police officers having to co-operate politely? It

is a matter of them having to comply, surely? This was the

framework of the investigation into Habib Ullah's death. This is from

the deputy chair of the IPCC? This is how they want to conduct

themselves, so why should anyone have any faith or confidence in a

body that behaves in this manner? It is disgusting. The IPCC told us

that it had repeatedly asked for powers to compel officers to attend

interviews. Regarding the Deborah Glass email, it said that putting

officers on notice of investigation earlier in a previous case had led

to war wall of silence, but in another case, detailed statements

were taken from the police officers. The Sean Rigg case has highlighted

major failings, but what about other experiences of the IPCC?

Regular surveys show that the majority of the general public has

confidence in the body, but are these the right people to be

asking? It seemed strange to me that they had never asked those who

would have had genuine experience of those that had had an

independent IPCC investigation. We decided to do a survey of our own.

We tracked down as many families as we could that it had the relative

die in an incident involving the police since 2004. -- that had had

a relative die. We sent a questionnaire to 20 families and

received 15 responses, 75%. The results appeared to be damning. 14

out of the 15 respondents said they were dissatisfied or very

dissatisfied about investigation into their relative's death. Only

one was satisfied. 12 out of 15 said they were dissatisfied or very

dissatisfied by the level of professionalism and respect shown

by IPCC investigators. Only two out of 15 thought that the

investigation was done in a timely fashion. 8 out of nine of the IPCC

senior investigators and just under half of their deputies of former

police officers. The result is there is a perception that it is

the police investigating the police, and how can that be independent?

The IPCC is stuffed with former Police officers operating in the

IPCC at the very highest levels. You do sometimes wonder whether

their canteen feels like a police canteen. It is almost like an old

boys' club. Eight years on, you would have expected them to develop

their own investigation expertise, their own investigators. The IPCC

said that all independent investigations were overseen by the

Commissioner of who by law may not have worked for the police. They

said that only 40% had been previously employed by the police.

What do we want? Justice. Since the IPCC was formed, there have been at

250 deaths in police custody. That the most serious cases that the

IPCC can investigate. -- those are perhaps the most serious cases.

Nobody has ever been convicted for causing such a death. Former Chief

Inspector of Prisons Dame and ours was appointed as chair of the IPCC

in February this year. The move was welcomed by critics. In the same

month, the Commission launched a review into how it handles death in

custody investigations, and sitting on the advisory panel will be the

human rights barrister who represented the family of Ian

Tomlinson. To their credit, in my view, one of the things they have

wanted to do is make short that that review include people that

have been critical of the IPCC in the past. -- make sure. And people

that when representing necklines and interested parties have seen

floors in the way the IPCC handles things. The arrival of the chair to

the IPCC is a very positive sign. Her track record of making

important effective change is very good in public bodies. It is

important for those that want to see change to at least give it a

chance. There is another issue looming for the IPCC. One of

Parliament's most powerful bodies is carrying out the root and branch

inquiry into the commission. Today Sean Rigg's family is giving

evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee. What the police officers

were saying in the interview and on oath was completely the opposite as

to what actually happened. I have absolutelyno IPCC whatsoever. --

absolutely no faith. The verdict vindicated the family. It is good

to see that they have not just put it in the bottom drawer and they

are seeing it through. You have got to have hope. Families have fought

for many years to make sure that the complaints commission is

independent. We are just seeing it through. But the IPCC is about to

come under the spotlight like never before. It has been handed the

inquiry into one of the biggest policing scandals in history.

Remember the author of the email in the Habib Ullah case? It fell to

Deborah Glass to set the terms for the Hillsborough investigation.

Since the report was published, the IPCC has been undertaking a

thorough review of it. We have also begun to examine the 450,000 pages

of evidence. The relatives of the 96 who died, like Becky Sharp, who

lost her mother that day, will be watching the IPCC investigation

very closely indeed. Hillsborough and all that means is still

strongly with me 23 years later. I know it always will be. We cannot

allow a police force to behave like this ever again. The word injustice

is not adequate to describe what we have been through. The 23 years.

The onus is on the IPCC to prove to me and to prove to all the other

families and survivors that they can deliver what we so badly need.

The ball is in their court. But to our survey. Were the respondents

confident that the IPCC was independent enough? More than half

so that prior to their involvement with the IPCC they would have been

confident that it was independent and impartial. But following their

experience, 14 out of 15 are not really or not at all confident the

IPCC is independent or impartial. The select committee inquiry is due

for publication next month. I went to see its chairman, Keith Vaz, and

I showed him the survey results. is shocking about any organisation

if you have results of that kind. You would expect at the very least

some people to be satisfied at the end of a lengthy process. What

should we do with the results of the BBC survey? The IPCC should

look at it and act upon it. I would want to know every single comment

that was made if I was them. When you are dealing with grieving

people, you really have to go beyond the call of duty to help and

they have failed to do so. The IPCC said the cases surveyed by the

programme were not representative by the Commission's work in general

or its current approach. They said they noted the Panorama survey

responses and they would explore with the families the reasons for

the dissatisfaction as part of their current review. At the moment

it does not appear to be fulfilling the obligations and the

responsibilities that Parliament placed on it. The chair herself

says there are problems with it. Can it cope with Hillsborough? I

don't think so at the moment. Unless it has the resources. You

cannot cope with 2400 people who you have to investigate one at the

same time you have fewer members of staff than work for the

Professional Standards Department of the Metropolitan Police. I do

not see how they can do it. IPCC says they have a robust track

record on corruption and misconduct cases. At Hillsborough will be its

biggest test yet. The families of the 96 expect. Others just hope

that past mistakes will not be repeated. They are supposed to go

in baring teeth in that regard. Isn't that the nature of the IPCC,