IPCC rejects appeal over harassment warning to newspaper reporter
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Version 0 of 1. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has rejected an appeal against a harassment warning that was given to a reporter after he questioned a convicted fraudster. Gareth Davies, the Croydon Advertiser’s chief reporter, was served with a “prevention of harassment notice” (aka police information notice or PIN) in March 2014 while investigating Neelam Desai, a woman who had previously admitted frauds involving dating websites totalling £230,000. The Metropolitan police decided that Davies’s attempts to question Desai went “beyond what was reasonable”. The paper says that these attempts amounted to a single visit to her home and, at the time the allegation was made, one email. The newspaper made a formal complaint to the Met, but the force dismissed it. So the Advertiser appealed to the IPCC on the basis that the warning was issued without an investigation, and against a reporter who had acted responsibly. It further argued that the inquiry into the complaint included numerous inaccuracies, and that it also failed to consider that, while claiming she was being harassed, Desai made repeated calls to Davies pretending to be her cousin. But Paul Berry, casework manager at the IPCC, rejected the appeal. In his letter to the paper he said “the evidence would suggest that the warning was properly issued and no misconduct concerns have been identified”. Part of the paper’s appeal concerned the fact that the harassment warning would appear on an enhanced criminal records check, but Berry said that was “not necessarily the case”. He wrote: “Whilst I acknowledge the concerns that you have raised, the issue of the PIN is not based on, or suggestive of, any guilt on your part”. The harassment warning was condemned by freedom of speech groups, international media organisations, other newspapers and legal experts. I also weighed in with a comment supporting Davies and attacking the Met police. The Croydon Advertiser is clearly unhappy about the IPCC’s decision. In its article, it asks: “who was harassing who?” and points out that the warning to Davies was issued after Desai had pestered them to do it. She called the police on 19 March to claim that Davies had harassed her between 5 March and 18 March. But, accordng to the paper, emails obtained by Davies via the Data Protection Act show that it took officers 12 days - and repeated calls from Desai - to act on her allegations. Comment: This decision by the IPCC is a disgrace. Davies acted as any reporter worth his or her salt should have done. He approached a convicted person and, when rebuffed, he did no more than send a follow-up email. This was not harassment. It was journalism. I’ll tell you what harassment is. It occurs when a group of police officers raid a reporter’s house in the early hours of the morning because she is suspected of paying someone to obtain stories in the public interest and then place that journalist on police bail without charge for months on end. Gareth Davies received that notice for doing his job, just as the Sun’s Whitehall editor, Clodagh Hartley, was arrested, charged and declared innocent at trial for doing hers. IPCC? I wonder if that word “independent” before PCC really means anything at all. |