By Victoria Mckeown-
Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, has been personally accused for hampering an inquiry into police corruption in the long-running Daniel Morgan murder case.
The criticism is poor for the image of the police, which needs public confidence due to the wider important role the force plays in society. The panel criticised the Met for then-Assistant Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick’s initial refusal to grant it access to a police internal data system and the most sensitive information.
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It made no suggestion Cressica Dick herself was corrupt in the investigation surrounding corruption of the police in its handling of the murder case, but her role in hampering the investigation into the corruption itself has been categorically criticised. The refusal for the Dick to grant it access may itself have been corrupt, but the panel did not specify under what circumstances Uk’s police chief had denied the access, and what reasons she gave for the refusals.
Police are meant to discover corruption in society and deliver it for prosecution, not indulge in corruption itself.The Metropolitan Police repeatedly failed to take a fresh, thorough and critical look at past failings,” the report said.
The damning report accused the Met of “Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”
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The report of an independent panel inquiring into his death in 1987 found that the Met was “institutionally corrupt” in its handling of the case, and accused the force of placing concerns about its reputation above properly investigating. It said the Met misled the public and Morgan’s grieving family.
It said the Met delayed handing over vital documents, which then delayed the work of the panel, which was set up in 2013, but has only been able to make its report today, eight years later. Theresa May had set up the inquiry in response to strong indications of corruption in the Metropolitan police’s handling of the case, a concern that would prove itself for 8 long years.
The report criticised police delays in giving access to a police sensitive database, called “Holmes”: “The panel has never received any reasonable explanation for the refusal over seven years by [then] Assistant Commissioner Dick and her successors to provide access to the Holmes accounts to the Daniel Morgan independent panel.
Mr Morgan was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, on March 10 1987.
Despite five police inquiries and an inquest, no-one has been brought to justice over the father-of-two’s death, with the Metropolitan Police admitting corruption had hampered the original murder investigation.
The report says it“caused major delays and further unnecessary distress to the family of Daniel Morgan”.
Private Detective
Morgan, 37, was a private detective based in south London. Together with his business partner, Jonathan Rees, he ran an agency called Southern Investigations.
On 10 March 1987, Morgan was found murdered in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south London, with an axe embedded in his head. Two sticky plaster strips had been wrapped around the axe handle to prevent fingerprint evidence from being left behind.
The Metropolitan police have conceded that the first murder investigation was blighted by corruption. To this day, no one has been convicted of Morgan’s murder despite five investigations. The last attempt collapsed at the Old Bailey in 2011.
In 2017, four men targeted by the Met sued the force in the high court, alleging malicious prosecution. Among them were Rees and his brothers-in-law, Glenn and Garry Vian. They denied charges of murder. The three men lost their case against the Met but subsequently won an appeal, and were awarded £414,000 between them. The fourth man, Sid Fillery, accused of perverting the course of justice, won part of his claim. He left the Met in 1988, having served as a detective.
The investigation had been examining “police involvement in Daniel Morgan’s murder, the role played by police corruption in protecting those responsible for the murder from being brought to justice, and the failure to confront that corruption”.
It also looked into “the incidence of connections between private investigators, police officers and journalists at the News of the World and other parts of the media, and alleged corruption involved in the linkages between them”.
Morgan’s family has fought to get the killers convicted, and expose those who were allegedly corrupt and those who failed to stand up to corruption. His brother Alastair has claimed there was a cover-up.
Daniel Morgan was married and had two children at the time of his death.
There are ongoing suspicions that corruption may also lie at the heart of the police’s failure to charge Martin Bashir for fraudulently mocking up bank statements which was used to lure Princess Diana to agree to the 1995 panorama interview. The Met police are yet to provide a reasonable explanation why the former BBC veteran journalist has not been scheduled for an appearance before a judge-but have stated they are going through the Dyson report.
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