5 Police misconduct in the twentieth century
At the start of the twentieth century, many sections of the public had a high degree of confidence in the police. But not all. Shocked at an instance of police brutality he had witnessed, the campaigner James Timewell set up the Police and Public Vigilance Society in 1902. Its purpose was ‘to publicise police misconduct and advise private complainants’ (Johansen, 2011, p. 62). While standards were improving, scandals continued and misconduct was common.
Figure 7: Kate Meyrick, proprietor of a notorious Soho nightclub, who was convicted in 1926 of bribing a police officer, George Goddard. [Description: Black and white photograph of a smiling Kate Meyrick dressed in hat and fur coat standing in a room behind mounds of flower bouquets.] Source: Getty https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/kate-neyrick-proprietor-of-the-43-club-at-43-gerrard-street-news-photo/591972822?adppopup=true
Timewell and his Society were active during the period of the Royal Commission into the Duties of the Metropolitan Police. Its 1908 report ‘revealed not only dubious or outright illegal practices, but also inadequate accountability and complaints mechanisms’ (Johansen, 2011, p. 13).
Problems continued into the 1920s, typified perhaps by the case of P C George Goddard, who was found to have been bribed by the proprietors of the Soho nightclubs he policed – either to turn a blind eye or tip off when a raid was imminent. This and many other cases (including the sentencing of two constables to prison for the sexual assault of Helene Adele in 1928, and multiple accusations of inappropriate questioning of women) led in turn to the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure of 1929.
The Commission’s report, while not uncritical of the police, cleared them of the more serious charges that had been made. This, and a change of government, meant that once again there was little substantive change in police approaches to internal corruption and misconduct. The status quo remained until a further series of scandals in the 1950s.
Activity 3 The Brighton police scandal, 1957
In 1957/58 the press reported extensively on a corruption scandal involving the Brighton Borough Police. Senior officers, including the Chief Constable, were charged with receiving bribes from business owners to allow after hours drinking, receiving ‘protection money’ from individuals running call girl operations, and tipping off criminals to forthcoming raids.
Look at the image below to read an extract from the Daily Mail discussing the case.
How shocking do you think this kind of coverage would have been in the 1950s?
Figure 8: Daily Mail report on the Brighton police scandal [26/11/1957] [Description: Black and white photograph of a newspaper page from the Daily Mirror with the headline: Police chief got £20 a week for covering up late drinks: QC tells Court. There is a photograph of Chief Constable Ridge.] Source: https://go-gale-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Newspapers&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&retrievalId=df1d486b-0c1d-49d9-ae3a-4436bd16da27&hitCount=1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm¤tPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CEE1863908943&docType=Article&sort=Pub+Date+Forward+Chron&contentSegment=ZDMH-MOD1&prodId=DMHA&pageNum=1&contentSet=GALE%7CEE1863908943&searchId=R2&userGroupName=tou&inPS=true
HP: we’re going to need to also provide the text, for accessibility
Discussion
As you learned in Week 2, the 1950s were generally a period of low crime and high trust in the police. The disclosure that senior police officers, including the Chief Constable, had been conspiring with criminals to cover up and enable criminal activity, was a shock to the public. The investigation and subsequent trial was reported extensively in the national press and contributed to the pressures which led to the appointment of a Royal Commission on the Police in 1960.
The number of scandals during the 1950s contributed to the formation of the 1964 Royal Commission on the Police. While its subsequent report was focused more on the organisation of police forces, its recommendations for agglomeration and centralisation of forces (enacted in the Police Act, 1964) were intended to strengthen oversight and professional standards.
Yet problems with misconduct still persisted. Most notable is the ‘Operation Countryman’ investigation into police corruption in London in the late 1970s. Accusations were made that many officers were receiving bribes from criminals to alert them to raids or drop charges. As the operation developed, it became clear that the corruption was not limited to a few ‘bad apples’. While never made public, and while few prosecutions resulted, leaks of the investigations findings revealed that over 250 police officers had been forced to resign.
Further police misconduct scandals emerged from time to time in the later decades of the twentieth century. A cyclical pattern can be seen, with scandals leading to official investigations which in turn led to greater centralised oversight and control. The following sections will investigate the history of these efforts to raise standards, professionalise forces and tighten complaints procedures.