Austin Stoton successfully represents police officer accused of corruption and assisting an organised crime group

Austin Stoton, instructed by Sam Haldane of JMW Solicitors, recently successfully defended a police officer in contested misconduct proceedings before a police misconduct panel.

Austin’s client was accused of taking payments from an organised crime group to obtain and provide sensitive police material from police databases. Plainly, these were allegations of the utmost seriousness going directly to honesty, integrity, confidentiality, and public confidence in policing.

Following multiple disclosure applications focused on the adequacy of the investigation in early interlocutory proceedings, Austin was successful in excluding all material relating to organised crime and any alleged passing of information to third parties.  As a result,  the Appropriate Authority substantially reframed its case. What had begun as an allegation of corruption and criminal association was reduced to a narrower disciplinary case, namely that the officer had accessed police systems without a policing purpose, knew that to be the case, and had failed properly to record reasons for certain searches on the audit trail.

At the conclusion of the Appropriate Authority’s case in the main hearing, Austin successfully argued that the allegations that access to the database was for no proper policing purpose could not properly be established merely by pointing to database access, generic or insufficient audit entries, and the absence of a fuller written rationale. It was submitted that the case depended entirely on circumstantial reasoning, yet failed properly to engage with alternative, reasonable inferences consistent with lawful police activity.  In particular, it was argued that where a case rests on inference, competing innocent explanations must be addressed rather than ignored. Suspicion, even strong suspicion, is not evidence. Nor can an absence of detail in record-keeping, without more, do the work of proving a knowingly improper purpose.  

The panel agreed with Austin’s submission that there was no case to answer in respect of the central allegations of knowing and improper access to the police databases.  

At the conclusion of the case, the only finding against Austin’s client was that the officer’s written record-keeping had been inadequate in relation to the audit trail requirements. That conduct was found to amount to misconduct, not gross misconduct, and the case was disposed of by way of a written warning.