Bailey can’t bridge the credibility gap

In July 2019, after serving for over 27 years with a backwater county police force, Nicholas Bailey took the short, but well worn path, from Cheshire Constabulary to its metropolitan neighbour, Greater Manchester Police, the fourth largest force in the country.

He followed in the footsteps of past chief constable Peter Fahy; the present incumbent Ian Hopkins; and a former assistant chief constable, Garry Shewan, to name but three, who had all passed through the same revolving door.

At the time of the appointment, GMP’s beleaguered chief constable said in his standard hyperbolic style: “We are delighted to welcome Nick to our GMP family. He is an extremely experienced officer with a wealth of knowledge and skills from a vast policing career, spanning over three decades [emphasis added by author for reasons which should become clear as this piece unfolds].

“His extensive background in policing will help us continue to protect the people of Greater Manchester and his work around local policing will help us continue keeping our communities safe.”

Rather clumsy, one might observe, in the wake of the Manchester Arena Bombing and the Grainger Inquiry, at which the force was thoroughly disgraced, and described by leading QC, Leslie Thomas, as “rotten to its core“.

For his part in the usual mutual backscratching that, inevitably, accompanies these appointments, Bailey said: “I’m thrilled to join GMP as it gives me the opportunity to give back to the city [whilst drawing a salary of around £110,000 per year plus substantial benefits] and surrounding areas where I have lived and spent most of my life. My father was a GMP officer and to follow in his footsteps is a great honour, as well as being a challenge in such a high profile force, with so much ambition.

“When I started my role as a police officer I found my vocation and understanding of how I could help the public. Since then I’ve had many memorable moments and found there was no better feeling than locking up an offender and making a difference to victims of crime or vulnerable people [Bailey has been asked to recall the last time he locked up an offender].

“Unfortunately, a sad reality of the job is the tragic and traumatic incidents that stick in your mind and remain with you forever. I was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene of the [IRA] Warrington bombing in 1993 [Bailey presumably refers to the second bombing on Bridge Street in which two children died and 56 other people were injured] and was the senior officer on duty at Cheshire Police on the night of the Manchester Arena bomb. Both these events ended in a huge loss of life, which only further increases my motivation to be a police officer and do all I can to help. [‘Huge’ equals 2 at Warrington and 22 at Manchester Arena. Tragedies both, but not on the scale to which Bailey carelessly alludes. Which might give rise to doubts about his ability to objectively assess evidence and give straight answers].

“I look forward to the challenges ahead and being involved with a force that has the ambition to have such a positive impact on the communities, particularly through placed (sic) based partnerships.” For the unitiated, including the author, read more here.

What neither Hopkins nor Bailey alluded to was the swathe of deep scandal in which GMP was mired, or the trail of Command Team officers that had left the force in disgrace over the past few years. Or indeed, the perennial scandal surrounding Hopkins’ most recent recruit at that rank, Assistant Chief Constable Maboob Hussain. Now known irreverently as ‘Mabel’, the former West Yorkshire officer apparently prefers ‘Mabs’.

Or, indeed, the even bigger scandals surrounding the senior officer that Bailey replaced: the despicable Steven Heywood. Very fortunate to escape prosecution over his antics at the Grainger Inquiry, amongst a lengthy tariff of other alleged misdemeanours, he still faces a much-delayed public gross misconduct hearing at which neither his former force, nor himself, will likely emerge with any credit.

Add in Terry Sweeney of Shipman body parts and Domenyk Noonan notoriety, Rebekah Sutcliffe’s ‘Titgate’ outrage and Garry Shewan scuttling off, once it became apparent how disastrously his much-vaunted IT Transformation Project, including the now infamous ‘iOPS’ installation, was turning out to be, and the question that simply begs to be asked is: Why would any self-respecting, law-abiding officer want to be involved or associated with persons of such questionable character? That is another question that has been put to GMP’s newest and, for the present, shiniest ‘top brass’.

Bailey, for his sins, appears to have recently taken over the iOPS poisoned chalice from the hapless Chris Sykes, another recent assistant chief constable appointment, commenting for the force on social media, and in the local newspaper, as another catastrophic failure beset the ill-fated project in early February, 2020. One day after this article was published, more whistleblowers came forward to highlight another round of problems. This time, it is reported, connected to Crown Prosecution Service interface, access to crimes and reports, and, most crucially, huge backlog of child protection cases.

It has also emerged that, whilst an iOPS inspection report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary is constantly delayed, the force are trying to implement as many of the HMIC recommendations as possible, before publication, in order to mimimise reputational damage and hoodwink the public.

Another GMP Command Team member, the seemingly gutless Debbie Ford, accepted a rare neutral transfer back to her previous force, Northumbria Police, rather than confront the wrongdoing of the senior leadership miscreants amongst whom she sat every morning and, she said, were making her feel ‘uncomfortable’.

But the most persistent, and obvious, Command Team ‘villain’ within GMP is, very arguably, the chief constable himself.  The persistent failings of this belligerent and self-adoring individual are well documented elsewhere on this website (read more here). The most recent scandal post-dated the publication of that widely read, and shared, article when the outcome of the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Assurance Review of Operation Augusta (an abandoned investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rochdale in 2004) was pubished on 14th January, 2020. Hopkins had planned to abdicate responsibility for appearing at a press conference, offering up arch-sycophant ACC Hussain instead.

But the assembled media was having none of that and, eventually, Hopkins was coaxed down from the 4th floor at GMP’s plush HQ. But, only to read out a prepared statement after which he departed in high dudgeon, refusing to answer any questions. A shameful performance, by any measure, and one for which he has been quite rightly and robustly criticised in the press, on television and on social media.

The full Augusta report, which some readers may find distressing, can be read here.

Hopkins deleted his Twitter account later the same day, or early the following morning. He had disgraced himself previously on the social media platform, appearing to abuse his position of authority – and an official ‘blue-ticked’ Greater Manchester Police account – to attack fellow users (read more here). The GMP press office, unusually for them, refused to even acknowledge the request for a statement from Hopkins over his sudden and unexplained disappearance from Twitter. Remarkably, the story didn’t make the mainstream media, particularly the Manchester Evening News whom, conversely and perversely, draw a significant amount of their output from daily social media trawls and, in particular, police force users.

Apart from Grainger, iOPS and Operation Augusta, commentary on another disgraceful GMP scandal now appears very frequently on social media. This concerns the tragic death of 17 year old Yousef Makki, a Manchester Grammar School pupil stabbed to death in a leafy street in the millionaire village of Hale Barns.

Yousef’s family, close friends and supporters have, through their grief, moulded themselves into a formidable and well-informed campaigning group against the apparently woeful police investigation led by DCI Colin Larkin (unsurprisingly nicknamed “Pop”) and, it seems, half-hearted prosecution. The senior police officer with overall responsibility for the investigation is the aforementioned Maboob Hussain. He has emerged as the force’s spokesman on the scandal and ‘Mabel’ has met the Makki family, where his focus appeared to be attempting to discredit former Head of the Major Incident Team at GMP, Peter Jackson, who has been assisting Jade Akoum, Yousef’s exceptionally resourceful and articulate sister and Debbie Makki, his distraught mother. The popular and widely respected Jackson is now well known, nationwide, as the country’s most vocal and effective police whistleblower and, as such, a persistent thorn in the side of GMP and Mabel, it seems.

Jackson has brought Employment Tribunal proceedings against Greater Manchester Police, listed to commence on 20th April, 2020, over the highly questionable treatment he received from fellow senior officers after he blew the whistle on a lengthy, and truly shocking, list of failings by them (read in full here). The Tribunal is expected to sit for 12 weeks as some very dirty GMP washing will get a public airing from a lengthy list of police witnesses.

But Hussain has not been able to shake off the controversy surrounding his own appointment to his senior position in GMP and the serious doubts about his own integrity that flowed from it. It is covered in forensic detail elsewhere on this website (read in full here) and, devastating though it is, stands completely unchallenged. The Hussain/GMP/West Yorkshire Police strategy of stonewalling and attempting to silence critics has not worked – and in the modern era of instant and connected communication was never likely to, either.  Especially as local, regional and national politicians, and policing figures, are now seized of the matter due to the significant adverse publicity being generated, and the consequent damage to public confidence in the police service more widely, and GMP in particular.

On any independent (or political or regulatory) view, Hussain should not be near any evidence chain until the doubts over his own trustworthiness, and those of a large number of other senior officers alleged to be involved in the ‘cover-up’, are resolved one way or another. Those include the deputy chief constable at GMP, Ian Pilling. A man with whom the author of this article has had extensive and mostly unsatisfactory dealings. Those interchanges may, very arguably, persuade anyone reviewing them that Pilling’s conduct, generally, and his approach to the indisputable misconduct of others, is highly questionable. To the extent that his seat as deputy chief constable is untenable at least until those doubts are satisfactorily, and independently, resolved.

After choosing to intervene in a Twitter thread concerning the Makki killing, Nick Bailey has been asked twice, on that social media platform to confirm if he believes that, on the basis of what is set out in the ‘When The Cover Up Becomes The Story‘ article, and the evidence behind it, three of his GMP Command Team colleagues, Hopkins, Pilling and Hussain are officers of unimpeachable integrity.

This is not a trick question, but one of the highest public interest and should, one might expect, have produced an immediate, and unequivocal, response in the affirmative. Especially, with Bailey having eulogised so profusely about the force, and those running it, when he joined Greater Manchester Police a short time ago.

It is also relevant to point out that he is highly qualified to make judgements on the integrity of policing colleagues, having spent a significant period of his Cheshire Constabulary as Head of their Professional Standards Department.

But the problem for Assistant Chief Constable Bailey is that he cannot endorse the integrity of any of those three senior colleagues, having read the Hussain article, without compromising his own.

So what will he do about it? An educated guess is NOTHING. Zero. Zilch. He will, presumably and having ignored the invitation on social media, be prepared to breach the College of Policing’s Code of Ethics requiring him to challenge inappropriate conduct and, of course, his first duty to those precept payers funding his huge salary by keeping them safe from other senior police officers whom, seemingly, cannot be trusted to do their job with unimpeachable integrity, without fear or favour and in accordance with the Oath of a Constable (read in full here). In the case of the Hussain ‘transfer’ from West Yorkshire to GMP there were, demonstrably, a fair few favours called in. It hangs over both police forces like the stench of fish, rotting from the head down.

Why is this situation allowed to pertain? Because that is how the top echelons of policing work. Almost every NPCC-rank officer will cover for another. Omertà is the operational code. We have seen another high profile example of that, very recently, in GMP, with the revelations and naming of the involvement of very senior officers in the premature closing down of Operation Augusta – and all that has happened since to stifle accountability and to silence another nationally-known, high octane whistleblower, Maggie Oliver. Where, undoubtedly, selective memory and refusal to co-operate with the enquiry were some of the most troubling revelations. Two ex-GMP officers who went on to become chief constables elsewhere head that list: Dave Jones, who suddenly quit North Yorkshire Police in mysterious circumstances in April, 2018 and Dave Thompson, still serving at West Midlands Police and known by former colleagues for his remarkable recall, across decades, on matters unconnected to the child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

It is not clear what Bailey actually does to earn his six figure salary at GMP, apart from publicly support menopause campaigns on social media. His biography on the force website appears completely absent of detail as to what his portfolio responsibilities might be (read here).

He is, however, National Police Chiefs Council lead for information rights, covering the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act: On this basis alone, Bailey should resign from GMP as they are, in the extensive experience of the author of this article, persistent and mendacious law-breakers of both Acts. The cavalier and unacceptable approach by GMP to disclosure in civil claims is also the subject of repeated and vitriolic criticism by claimants and their lawyers.

If he has national responsibility for information rights, as appears to be the case, then the reader can add, for certain, the disgraceful antics of such as the three Yorkshire police forces, Humberside and Durham to the list of law-breakers. It should also be noted that the situation is getting worse since Bailey was appointed, not better.

In conclusion, it appears that Greater Manchester Police has landed itself with another dud, out of depth assistant chief constable to add to a depressingly long list of previous failures. If he finds this article an uncomfortable read then he should begin today and start to put matters right. Make his family and the beleagured junior ranks in GMP proud of him: Challenge those around him that are, at present, deemed untrustworthy; forget mealy-mouthed excuses and come clean about iOPS; robustly sort out the information rights catastrophe across the police service, starting urgently with GMP; spend less time fretting about menopause; and then another article can be written, and published, enthusiastically lauding those achievements.

Over to you, Nicholas Bailey and please use your right of reply.

At present, over three days after publication of this article, the email sent to ACC Bailey requesting comment has not been acknowledged. GMP’s press officer were copied in to that communication.

That failure to respond is, of itself, a breach of the College of Policing’s Code of Ethics under the headings of Respect and Courtesy; Duties and Responsibilities. But as this article sets out, in the main, if you are a senior police officer engaged by Greater Manchester Police you regard yourself as above the law.

It would, after all, take just a few seconds to type: “Thanks, but no comment“.

 

Page last updated on Monday 2nd March, 2020 at 1445hrs

Picture credit: Greater Manchester Police

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