A police officer received a suspended prison sentence after a Police Ombudsman investigation found that he had fabricated interview notes about an assault outside a Belfast nightclub in December 2008.
The officer (Officer 1), who has since resigned from the PSNI, had initially denied forging two handwritten notes of interviews with suspects in the case.
However, when he appeared in court after the Police Ombudsman recommended that he should be prosecuted, he admitted offences of misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice and received a two year prison sentence, suspended for three years.
The forged notes purported to relate to interviews with two men who had been arrested by the officer for assault outside a nightclub at Bradbury Place in Belfast on 3 December 2008.
One of the men said that when he arrived at a police station a week later to answer bail, he was told the officer was too busy to meet him and would contact him again.
He said the officer never did, and he heard nothing more until about six months later when he received a summons about a charge of Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm, which included a record of an interview with his signature on it.
Accused said he had not been interviewed and statement and signature were false.
The man maintained that he had never been interviewed and said the signatures on the notes and an associated form were false. The Chief Constable of the PSNI asked the Police Ombudsman to investigate the allegation.
When they looked at the paperwork associated with the notes, Police Ombudsman investigators found that their log numbers related to interviews which had taken place two months earlier than stated, involving two completely different people. No relevant interviews were found for the date in question.
A civilian police employee who was recorded as having certified the notes, said that the signatures on the documents were not his. Records showed he had been on duty at that time at Lisburn Road police station, whereas the interviews were supposed to have taken place at Donegall Pass station.
The officer’s notebook was seized and this showed that on the alleged date of the interviews he had been part of a police patrol with another officer. That officer recorded in her notebook having responded to a reported theft during the time the interviews were supposed to have happened.
She had not recorded if Officer 1 had gone with her, but she said she would not have responded to the call on her own and believed he had, though could not be certain.
Neither could she recall whether she had gone to Donegall Pass station with him to interview the suspects in the Bradbury Place case.
Enquiries were made to check whether Donegall Pass station had a PIN number or swipe card system which could show whether or not Officer 1 had been there at the times stated, but no such system was in place.
Police radio transmissions were examined, but Officer 1 did not make any transmissions during the supposed time of the interviews.
During the course of his investigation of the assault, Officer 1 was questioned by his supervisor as to why he had recommended no further action in the case when an independent witness had given a clear account of what had happened, and one of the suspects had been recorded in the alleged interview notes as having made a full admission. The officer was not recorded as having replied to the query.
Officer’s supervisor suggested he may have been having difficulty completing the investigation.
The supervising officer later told Police Ombudsman investigators that Officer 1 may have been having difficulty completing the investigation.
Having reviewed the evidence, the Police Ombudsman, Dr Michael Maguire, concluded that Officer 1 had failed to conduct a proper investigation and had breached the police code of ethics relating to integrity. This, he said, “impacted his ability to continue in his role as a police officer.”
A file was submitted to the Public Prosecution Service, which directed that the officer should be prosecuted.
Dr Maguire also recommended that a full powers misconduct hearing should take place, but Officer 1 resigned before the hearing took place.
The case against the two men accused of assault was progressed by Officer 1’s supervisor, and both pleaded guilty to common assault.