Today I am going to introduce you to three people who, in all likelihood, you will never have heard of before. You are far more likely to have heard the results of their decision-making in recent days, for this trio were the members of the disciplinary panel that decided to sack Detective Constable Mark Luker from his job within the British Transport Police (BTP).
DC Luker had used some unwise language when discussing the traveller community in a private WhatsApp group. He admitted his minor indiscretions to this panel and duly apologised.
He had also sought out assistance from the officer within BTP who was the single point of contact for the Gypsy Roma Travelling community, and as a result, he had educated himself on what language to use when discussing those who largely live in caravans.
DC Luker admitted that his words on WhatsApp had amounted to misconduct, but that was not sufficient repentance for this panel, who, in my opinion, inflicted an entirely over-the-top and disproportionate punishment by dismissing Luker without notice for the offence of gross misconduct.
And so, in the spirit of holding those who make important decisions to account, I thought I’d do a bit of research into this panel, and this is what I discovered;
Stacey Patel sat as the ‘Legally Qualified Chair’ at Luker’s disciplinary hearing. Ms Patel clearly enjoys deciding the fate of others, because apart from sitting on police misconduct hearings, she has also chaired hearings held by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), and has acted as an advisor on fitness to practise reviews for Social Work England.
Patel is registered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. I’m taking a guess here, but I strongly suspect that in her role as a solicitor, she has probably not been one of the first responders on scene at a marauding terrorist attack, where a number of people were brutally murdered.
DC Luker has. I’m also guessing that the most serious physical threat Ms Patel has faced at work is that of getting a paper cut.
Sacking an officer over a traveller slur after he responded to Islamist terror is unforgivable - Peter Bleksley
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Mark Dent is another solicitor who sat on the panel, although he was in the role of ‘Independent Panel Member’. Mr Dent apparently has more than 20 years’ experience in the world of employment law, and his biography proudly boasts of clients within many sectors, including banking, property, legal, pharmaceutical, insurance, retail, and public sectors, including the NHS and blah, blah, blah.
Dent is also a Workplace Mediator, and we’re told that he has been involved in high-level mediations, including one with a major international food retailer. He clearly loves a disciplinary panel, as he has sat as an Independent Member of the Metropolitan Police Misconduct Panel since 2014.
However, despite his wide experience of pen pushing, I somewhat doubt that he’s ever set his alarm for 3am, in order to be at a 4am briefing for the search of a traveller site, and all the unpleasantness that one of those operations can sometimes involve.
Another Mark made up the third member of this panel, this time Mark Cleland. He is an Acting Chief Superintendent within the BTP. This means that Cleland’s substantive rank is that of a Superintendent, but he is currently ‘acting up’ in the rank above the one that he actually holds.
As an officer approaches retirement, it is sometimes helpful to perform this ‘acting up’ role for a period of time, because it can qualify the officer for the pension of the higher rank, even though they may never have substantively held that higher position. Cleland has served as a police officer for over 32 years, so he could retire tomorrow if he wanted to.
He is famed within his organisation for developing a Crime Reduction Partnership, and he serves as deputy to the chair of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) Metal Crime Steering Group.
His LinkedIn profile reads like that of a very busy man, because he also has responsibility for Specialist Operations, catalytic converter thefts, and he’s the BTP lead for retail crime. Gosh, I can only wonder at the number of meetings he must have to attend, not to mention disciplinary hearings.
As a big cheese within the world of metal theft, you would think he must be aware that some of the criminal element within the traveller community like to steal cabling from the railway, which causes massive disruption and inconvenience for passengers. I wonder if he’s ever heard a traveller being referred to as a ‘Do as you likey’? That’s what they’re called down my way.
Regardless, these are the sort of people who decide the fate of police officers who may have erred, or not. All of them are Establishment types, invariably university educated, and I certainly couldn’t describe them as being ‘of the people’, like a jury in a criminal trial might well be.
Mark Luker deserved a second chance, but the elites said no. It is little wonder that a recent survey showed that nearly 40 per cent of police officers are planning to leave the job within the next 12 months. I don’t blame them.
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