Cops & Spooks

PC OLiver Banfield, a 25 year old PC with the West Midlands constabulary, was convicted of ‘assault by beating’ in January.

The attack occurred in July 2020 when Banfield grabbed his 37-year old victm by the throat and tried to drag her to the floor.

In her victim impact statement the woman he attacked said it took police over 30 hours to take a statement over the phone, nine days before they came to see her, and eight weeks before an officer carried out house-to-house enquiriers. A West Midlands police statement was issued apologising that its ‘initial response to the report of the assasult was not as swift as it should have been’.

Banfield was told by the court he would have to pay £680 (£500 compensation to his victim, £95 victim surcgharge and £85 court costs). He was also required to stay home between the hours of 7pm and 7am for 14 weeks.

“To be verbally abused with misogynistic slang, grabbed by the neck, and forced to the floor on a dark road by a drunk man a foot taller than me is terrifying, but to then find that he was a police officer shook my belief system to its core.”

As for the rest of us it serves as a reminder – the belief system propagated by the media that cops are the righteous guardians of the public, with a ‘few bad apples’ is a myth. A police officer is no more virtuous than the average citizen. And often they are less so. The priveleged position in which they find themselves during most court proceedings, particlarly magistrates’ courts (when in doubt, the defendant is lying and the police officer is telling the truth) leads to countless miscarriages of justice.

There is a reason why magistrates’ courts are often referred to as ‘police courts’.

Another police officer has been found guilty of a heinous offence. This time it is Lee Martin-Cramp, a 26 year old Metropolitan Police officer who was found guilty of rape.

Martin-Cramp was on holiday in Antigua where he used Tinder to meet a US woman who was on the island to attend a family wedding. The reporting on the court case suggest he used his status as a police officer to dupe his victim into trusting him.

They were in her apartment drinking wine when she became dizzy. The police officer was found guilty in the Antigua High Court and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Guardian Friday 3 Aug 2018

PC Daniel Reed was one of six officers from Durham police who went to the Dalesman pub in Darlington to arrest a 43-year-old man on suspicion of a public order offence and witness intimidation on 8 November 2016.

When the man did not cooperate, officers deployed pepper spray and then a stun gun. An independent panel determined that the man had been brought under control at that point but Reed, an acting sergeant at the time, nevertheless struck him six times before the suspect was placed in a police van.
…
Miranda Biddle, the regional director for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), said:

“Our investigation found evidence that the force used by police constable Reed was excessive, and the independent panel, who also had the benefit of hearing live evidence this week, agreed that the evidence amounted to gross misconduct. The panel decided that the sixth strike to the head was excessive because PC Reed was aware that the man was incapacitated when this blow was delivered.”

After completing its investigation in April last year, the IOPC submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, which charged Reed with assault causing actual bodily harm. Reed was acquitted of the charge at Sunderland magistrates court on 6 September last year.

O’Neill’s behaviour was found not to amount to misconduct but Reed was dismissed without notice.

A Northamptonshire police officer was convicted today of murdering his wife.

Adrian Goldsmith, a Nothamptonshire police officer, was accused of killing his wife by beating her with a mallet, a battery and a can of paint. When he rang the police he claimed she had attacked him and he had killed her in self-defence.

Observers of police defence strategies will recognise this standard strategy. “I was in fear of my life, m’lud’ so I had to kill them, they plead. “I thought his empty hand was holding a gun, so I shot him.” Or ‘He raised his umbrella and pointed it in my direction. I mistook it for a firearm and shot him.’

It does not matter how far fetched, they stick like leeches to the ‘fear of my life’ stories.

But Goldsmith went too far. In order to prove that he was being attacked, he inflicted several knife cuts on his own face, and eventually had to admit to faking the wounds. But he still stuck to his guns about the self-defence issue.

The jury found him guilty.

So for the last 28 years Adrian Goldsmith has been one of those good apples.You know – the ones who put their lives on the line daily, and who are the real cops, not like those bad cops who let down the side. So remind me next time an officer stands in the witness box and swears to tell the truth, to remember the lying murderer who was an upstanding officer until he was found guilty of brutally murdering his wife.