Hardworking Frontline Officers Should Not Be Accountable For Failures Of The Past

HARDWORKING frontline officers from South Yorkshire Police should not be held accountable for the failures of the past, the force’s Federation has said.

Steve Kent, Federation Chair, was speaking after the Independent Office For Police Conduct released its report into Operation Linden this month.

The report, which examined the force’s handling of Rotherham child sexual abuse investigations between 1997 and 2013, found one officer guilty of misconduct.

Steve said: “Our force has already turned around significantly from those days. There were institutional failings back then and I want to make that absolutely clear. We, as an organisation, failed.”

But Steve said the majority of people involved at the time have either retired or moved on.

The investigation has been nothing more than a “witch-hunt” against individual officers, Steve said, who questioned whether it was a good use of public money.

He added: “I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing MPs quote the numbers of complaints made against officers, saying so many complaints have been made and no officers have been held accountable, or a small number have. That’s because there’s nothing for them to be accountable for.

“This excessively long investigation has only found one officer guilty of misconduct and another officer not only cleared but actually praised by the panel in the misconduct hearing to say he, individually, did a good job.”

Detective Sergeant David Walker – faced a South Yorkshire Police misconduct hearing earlier this year, and the panel said he “took entirely appropriate action” and was “hardworking, diligent and professional in his approach.”

Steve added that “the buck stops with the senior command team” of the force at the time – “not with our officers out there, working on the streets now”.

Steve added: “I think MPs need to actually stop grandstanding and trying to appeal by coming out with silly statistics about officers who have been bad and officers who haven’t, and actually acknowledge that this investigation going into the individual officers was probably never necessary. The institutional failings have already been highlighted by the force which has already changed.

“There’s a reason there’s not been more officers found guilty; because there isn’t individual guilt to be found. So the witch-hunt needs to stop now and we all need to move forward.