Vexatious Complaints Against Police Should Be Prosecuted For Wasting Time

VEXATIOUS complainants against the police should be prosecuted for wasting time, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

Less than 1 per cent of complaints received about officers end in dismissal, according to figures released by the Home Office this month.

There were 14,393 public complaints in the year ending 31 March 2021. No action was taken in 92 per cent of these cases and only one per cent were referred to proceedings. 68 officers were dismissed in total.

Steve Kent, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair, said: “Police officers are put under outrageous, exceptional scrutiny, and this is a clear example of that.

“Yes, there has to be transparency. There has to be a complaints system. But the stresses, and I can speak personally from this, people go through when they’re under investigation take a massive toll on people’s mental health. Even when it’s totally spurious, which it is in the vast majority of cases.

“The worry about it is enormous, and I just don’t think there’s any other industry that has the same level of scrutiny as police officers. And what I would like to see now when a case is found and indicated to be clearly vexatious or malicious, we should actually start pursuing those people.”

Steve said he would welcome legislative change to effect this, adding that laws about wasting police time could be used.

He said: “We should be pursuing those people because there are people who actually make a living out of trying to make a complaint against police officers, and that’s just not acceptable. And we don’t have the backing of our MPs who highlight this.

“There is an attitude amongst our MPs and the press that if a complaint is made, it’s automatically true. And that is totally unacceptable. I think people need to have a reset and give our officers a little bit more respect for the 99.9% of them going about their jobs in horrendous circumstances every day.”