“When did we stop caring about honesty and integrity” asked Superintendent Hastings in BBC’s popular drama, Line of Duty.
A recent case, Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset Constabulary v Eckland has highlighted that organised criminal gangs, corrupt police officers and missing evidence aren’t just the stuff of drama.
Detective Sergeant Nicholas Eckland joined the police in 1998. In 2018 whilst investigating organised crime networks he gave evidence at Bristol Crown Court as Senior Investigating Officer. His evidence concerned the death in prison of a defendant in a drug conspiracy, Mr W. DS Eckland said he’d identified the deceased, but this wasn’t accurate as he hadn’t visited the mortuary.
The Chief Constable appointed a panel to carry out a detailed investigation. DS Eckland said he’d feared for his life, blaming death threats and the existence of a corrupt colleague. He claimed this could be backed up by his notebooks but these went missing during the investigation. The panel held that DS Eckland’s inaccurate evidence to the Crown Court amounted to Discreditable Conduct “in that such conduct has a tendency to undermine public confidence in the integrity of evidence given by police officers in legal proceedings”.
He was dismissed for gross misconduct and brought a claim for disability discrimination against the Chief Constable claiming he was disabled by “depression and episodic paroxysmal anxiety”. A preliminary issue was recently decided. The Court held that the Chief Constable could be held liable for any discrimination committed by the panel that investigated Eckland.