Police Action Lawyers Group Resignations
In February 2008 over a hundred lawyers who specialise in handling police complaints resigned from its advisory body, citing various criticisms of the IPCC including a pattern of favouritism towards the police, indifference and rudeness towards complainants and complaints being rejected in spite of apparently powerful evidence in their support.
The IPCC responded to these criticisms with a letter to The Guardian, in which the then IPCC Chair Nick Hardwick acknowledged some cases could have been handled differently in its infancy, but pointed out that despite repeated requests for the group to provide contemporary examples where expectations had not been met, there had been no further cases identified.
It has been noted that "no policeman has ever been convicted of murder or manslaughter for a death following police contact, though there have been more than 400 such deaths in the past ten years alone.". Although a number of these were determined (by inquest juries) to be suicides, other cases such as that of Ian Tomlinson, were found by inquest juries to be 'unlawful killings'.
There have been a number of police officers convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, including those responsible for the deaths of Hayley Adamson and Sandra Simpson.
Read more about this topic: Independent Police Complaints Commission
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