Guest Post: Ignore the rumours: the IPCA are awesome

A guest post by Lucy Rogers:

It was with slight reservations that in November 2023 I laid a complaint to the Independent Police Conduct Authority about the police wrongfully arresting me. Literally everyone seemed to distrust the IPCA. At first I was cautious but kept an open mind. A few months later this progressed to extreme stress when someone purporting to have firsthand knowledge of the IPCA’s practices told me things about the IPCA that I later discovered to be factually untrue.

Why am I speaking up?

I don’t think anyone should have to go through the kind of stress I faced a few months into an investigation re: a life-defining event that threw me into the public sphere. I also do not believe that the IPCA deserves the distrust and hostility it seems to face from a significant proportion of the public. It is for these reasons that I want to do my bit to set the record straight here.

The IPCA are awesome

The staff members I was dealing with at the IPCA were exemplary people. On the one hand, Sarah Bullen and Warren Young (from whom I sought permission to name) did not approach my case with an ideological assumption that all police are certain to be evil and dishonest people. Having such people in a position to review police conduct would be a disaster for this country. On the other hand, neither of them were police cronies. 

Here is an example of the IPCA’ s commitment to truth

Sarah was professional, intelligent and at times kind. I would like to provide one example of her integrity. One of the police officers who arrested me was foolish enough to provide the IPCA with photos of my arrest taken by a member of the public which she had found on social media. She did not know that he also had footage of the incident. Sarah, however, contacted him independently and had the insight to ask if he might have footage, which miraculously he did.

The video was critical

Uncovering that piece of evidence has significantly impacted my life, because the police alleged that I was screaming at people in a state of “excited delirium” and that they thought I was a mental health patient. If I had not been able to prove that the police were lying, this would have destroyed my professional reputation and seriously impacted my career. I only had footage of the second half of the incident and the police knew that and exploited the fact. The truth is that I was silent and motionless: I did not say a single word to the protesters, let alone yell or act hysterically.

Further examples of ICPA professionalism

Sarah and Warren always took my calls, or if they couldn’t, they called me back promptly. They did not stonewall me. In fact, I called Warren once when he was on a ski field with his grandchildren on holiday. Despite not being at work, he was kind enough to take my call. (I hasten to add that I quickly assured him that it wasn’t urgent and he could call me back later.) When Sarah was interviewing me, I remember making an off-handed comment about an aspect of the evidence without intending to expand on it. Sarah prompted me for further information, which flagged to me that she was sincerely interested in the truth and the facts.

The causes of public distrust of the IPCA

There are lots of reasons for the IPCA’s reputation, but I think one of the problems it faces is illustrated by today’s events: in the face of the IPCA’s finding that the police arrested me and lied about me to justify it, the police nevertheless put out a press release maintaining that my arrest was justified. They reiterated alleged facts about my arrest which were in fact debunked in the IPCA report, without providing any reason for questioning the IPCA’s findings.

The IPCA unfairly takes blame for things

In other words, the police (I suspect) have a habit of getting away with it because the IPCA does not have the discretion to prosecute and that power ultimately lies with the police themselves. The IPCA then takes the blame for this. That’s not fair.

More thoughts on various matters including the IPCA report itself will probably follow in due course in a separate blog post. For now, I need a good book and a glass of wine. It has been a hectic day.