Cops & Spooks

Andrew Malkinson – miscarriage of justice

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In the early hours ot 19 July 2003 a mother of three was walking home in a rural part of Salford. She was assaulted, strangled until she was unconscious and raped.

Andrew Malkinson had been stopped by police in the area some time before the assault.

Greater Manchester Police officers found two witnesses, a couple, who identified Malkinson as having been in the area around the time of the assault. Both had convictions for dishonesty. The female witness originally failed to identify Malkinson from a video ID parade, but changed her mind. Her boyfriend only identified Malkinson six months after the incident. Shortly after he identified Malkinson several charges against him were dropped.

The victim had told police she had scratched her attacker’s face. Malkinson had no scratch marks when he was picked up by police.

Malkinson was convicted in 2004 on the basis of identification evidence.

In 2007 Operation Cube was launched by the police, reviewing cases and convictions using recently developed DNA techniques. The Malkinson case was reviewed and DNA evidence of saliva on the victim’s vest (from an area near where she had been bitten) was found of another male. The DNA from that sample did not match Malkinson. Partial evidence of the DNA from another, as yet unidentified man, not Malkinson, was also found in tissues found on a speculum used during an internal examination of the victim. The DNA evidence was reported to be ‘searchable’, meaning it could have been run through the police DNA database to identify any matches or close matches which might lead to the identification of the male. GMP did not conduct a DNA search.

The vest the victim had been wearing at the time of the rape was destroyed in 2016, although it was known Malkinson still denied his guilt. The DNA testing that exonerated Malkinson was only possible because cut-out samples of fabric had been stored separately.

It was not until 2022 when the charity Appeal was able to get the Criminal Cases Review Commission to run a database check that another potential suspect was identified, Paul Quinn. Quinn had been cautioned for a sexual assault when he was 12 years old. In 1992 he was also convicted for a sexual assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Some of the police officers who investigated the rape are currently the subject of an IOPC investigation.

Pro-Israeli Special Constable under investigation

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david soffer

David Soffer, a Metropolitan Police Special Constable, was filmed in Golders Green haranguing a journalist. He was part of a crowd that surrounded the Al Jazeera journalist who had come to report on the March 23 arson attack in which four ambulances were burned. The arson has been categorised by the Metropolitan Police as a hate crime. .

Reports of the altercation quote Soffer as calling the journalist a ‘dog’ and telling hin to ‘go back to Qatar’. Soffer is also said to have retweeted an offensive post about Gaza.

Declassified UK website reported that, in 1924, Soffer had retweeted a post by far-right activist Steven Yaxley-Lennon. Yaxley-Lennon, who likes to use the name of a football hooligan,Tommy Robinson, as one of his many aliases (presumably to cutltivate a ‘tough’ image), posted on Twitter saying “Fuck Palestine”. He added “The shithole is full of inbred Islamist parasites and terrorists.” Soffer responded, saying that Robinson “is telling the truth”.

One journalist, Matt Kennard, commented ‘Imagine if a Muslim off-duty police officer called a Jewish Chronicle reporter a “dog” and told them to “go back to Tel Aviv”. Would be front-page of every major newspaper. Starmer would have to make a statement. Let’s see if it’s even covered at all when it’s this way round…’

Soffer is also reported to be involved in a ‘reputation management’ company. You have to wonder what reputation he was trying to manage when he got involved with the mob that intimidated journalists. We will wait to see what action the Metropolitan Police takes against a pro-Israeli activist who intimidates journalists.

PC assaults women on her way home

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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 dirty cop

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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.

Bad cops

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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.
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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.

Cop murders his wife

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Adrian GoldsmithA 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.

Bad cops

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Bad cops Telegraph articleI was looking up some facts and figures about our thin blue line “heroes” when I cam across this article from the Telgraph, which is almost 3 years old now. But I could not have put it any better myself. The facts speak for themselves:

Forces across England and Wales employ policemen and women with convictions including burglary, causing death by careless driving, robbery, supplying drugs, domestic violence, forgery and perverting the course of justice. 

Those with criminal records include senior officers, among them two detective chief inspectors and one chief inspector working for the Metropolitan Police. 

At least 944 currently serving officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) have a conviction, according to figures released by 33 of the 43 forces in England and Wales in response to Freedom of Information requests. 

Many forces could not provide details of criminal records dating from before their staff joined the police, meaning the true figure will be significantly higher. 

The Metropolitan Police, Britain’s largest force, came top with 356 officers and 41 PCSOs with convictions.