morale

Missing Morality of Merseyside’s “MRO”

iodpa caselaw, morale
Missing Morality of Merseyside’s “MRO”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
― Desmond Tutu

And the elephant will thank you for being on its side.

Justice is rooted in morality. All laws are based on that which decent folk think is right. Injustice raises it ugly head when decent folk are gagged and afraid to speak out, or when people in power act not according to a moral sense, but for other, perverse, reasons.

Morality comes from us – we make it. It starts with a few biological sources, such as the basic survival instinct, and behaviours of social species. After that, human philosophy, theology, and assessment of harm versus benefit, establish the remaining nuances of morality.

The recent RSS newsfeed search of the BAILII database has revealed that Merseyside Police has historically had a disproportionately high number of judicial reviews compared to other forces and evidently has or had a moral compass that is badly out of kilter.

The Metropolitan Police (understandable given its size) and Northumbria Police (not surprising given the ubiquitous and nasty Nicholas Wirz is the force solicitor) are also widely referred to as either defendants or appellants at appeal.

There are apparent institutional deficiencies at the heart of the correlation between Merseyside and the frequency this force appears in England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions cases concerning police injury pension decisions.

If you read the Judicial review transcripts it is easy to conclude that Merseyside had a culture where serving officers perceived they were being bullied, victimised or not supported. This led to a spiral down into sporadic and then long-term absence from work, as well as stress, depression, and no doubt the unseen dependence on alcohol or drugs; even manifestations of the physical symptoms that accompany such mental conditions.  Complaints about  management failures must have repeated themselves in occupational health  referral meetings and HR offices but it is apparent that Merseyside forgot the principles of what was right and proper, and the cycle repeated.

Organizational culture, power, hierarchies and poor leadership capacity clearly contribute to a culture of failures.  Quite likely Merseyside has glossy leaflets or fancily worded policies and procedures describing their approach to dealing with bullying, victimisation and other management failures.  Often serving officers in difficulties will rely on the support of the occupational health unit but if the culture of an organisation is corrupt then the morals of the occupational health unit will prevent careers being saved and, as sure as night follows day, peoples’ health will deteriorate.

The courts have declared that the mere provision of an occupational health unit does not excuse a failure of a employer to provide decent working conditions.  Intel Corporation (UK) Limited v Daw (2007) made it clear that there is a duty on employers to be proactive in reducing stress. There is a clear pattern that the occupational health unit at Merseyside seems to have been at best ineffective – at worse deliberately negligent.

It seems that morality within Merseyside’s occupational health unit, in it’s capacity to prevent the situations stated in the Judicial reviews, was found wanting.  Where did the institutional culture to not help those in need come from? From the cold, impersonal commandments of senior managers?

Or from Mr Peter Owens?

Peter Owens is a retired Chief Inspector who served in Merseyside Police as the Head of Merseyside Police’s Occupational Health Unit, and now is employed as the self-styled Medical Retirement Officer (MRO) of the same force.

So, what motivates Mr Owens?

To quote from Freshexpressions.org, Mr Owens used his church connections to create a religious cell  that included at least 4 high ranking officers.

Early in 2006, Peter Owens, Chief Inspector of the Occupational Health Unit at Merseyside police and a leading member of the Merseyside Christian Police Association, planted a church at work, known as Riverforce.

From the initial suggestion made by his vicar, it took a year to set up the first cell, which consists of four high ranking police officers.

It is disconcerting and unfortunate that freshexpressions.org also quotes Mr Owens stating in the same press release that “Christians were filling key roles in the force”.  According to Merseyside’s 2015 equality publication 98% of serving officers are white and 43% have a religious affiliation, so it is no surprise that active Christians are well represented in senior management – what is of concern is the insinuation that a sect such as Riverforce, as an Evangelical Christian Support Group,  is actively recruiting members within a civil authority.

The phrase “separation of church and state” is generally traced to a January 1, 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Jefferson wrote,

“ I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”[1]

Peter Owens has managed to knock the wall down and truly embed the law with his church.

Belonging to a clique can only result in unconscious people preferences (biases) playing a significant part in the way Riverforce ‘cell’ members engage with others and the decisions others make about them. Perhaps it was connections such as this that led to Peter Owens being re-employed as the MRO directly after his retirement.  A shoo-in, so to speak.  The job application of the MRO was written in a way to certainly only be favourable to a preferred candidate given its narrow suitability to a small number of people with a specialised knowledge and interest – such as a former Head of Occupational Health with connections.

Whether nepotism did or did not actually exist, the mere perception of nepotism will poison the newly created MRO post that Mr Owens moulded for himself.  What is corrupted is the ‘special trust’ and neutrality that now can never be invested in the position and makes the exploitation or misuse of authority a natural progression for the compromised post-holder.  Baggage from previous decisions will haunt and prevent the correct administration of the Police Injury Benefit Regulations and the Chief Constable as the true Police Pension Authority, thinking he has a ‘safe pair of hands’ doing all his work for him, will be kept blind to the real travesty happening in his name.

Peter Owens has also been regularly attending NAMF (National Attendance Management Forum) meetings at least as early as 2004 as Merseyside’s ‘attendance coordinator’ – and we all know the thin moral fibre of NAMF is so weak and elastic that it stretches with them to commit whatever outrages they can get away with.

namf 2004 attendance cropped

The tenure of Mr Owens overlapped all the Judicial reviews that Merseyside zealously pursued, and so there is high probability that the God fearing, faith moralistic Mr Owens was acutely aware, possibly even a leading protagonist, of the following legal proceedings:

Williams, R (On the Application Of) v Merseyside Police Authority [2011]

Merseyside Police Authority v Police Medical Appeal Board & Ors [2009]

Merseyside Police Authority, R (on the application of) v Gidlow & Anor [2004]

The 2004 case of Gidlow concerned medically retired Police Sergeant Mr Reilly-Cooper who was given an injury award on appeal after the original SMP rejected the application. Dr Gidlow, the appeal  SMP (this was before the days of PMABs),  decided to uphold the appeal as in his view the Sergeant’s diagnosed adjustment disorder and mixed anxiety/depression being found as “an injury received in the execution of his duty as a police constable”.  Merseyside disagreed and took the decision of the SMP to Judicial review where  the decision of Dr Gidlow was quashed and the judgement made that Mr Reilly-Cooper will have to see another SMP.

The sorry episode chronicled from 1997 to 2001 shows that Mr Reilly-Cooper developed a  psychiatric condition resulting from resentment and poor handling by the force of the grievance procedure over an allegation made against Mr Reilly-Cooper and his perception that he had not been supported by senior officers.

Simply put, Merseyside Police made him ill. Mr Reilly-Cooper’s complaint was that he felt that he was being punished for an allegation against him being upheld suggestively, though not directly expressed, even though he was found not to be guilty.

The occupational health unit, headed by Chief Inspector Owens, seemingly failed in their duty of care. Where is the moral compass here? Who made the moral judgement that it was acceptable to visit mental distress on an already ill individual, presumably to attempt to win a point about how the Regulations applied?

The 2009 case  involved two former police officers who served with Merseyside, a Mr McGinty and Mr Hudson.  PMAB panels found that each were permanently disabled from performing the ordinary duties of a member of the police force.  Merseyside Police Authority disagreed and challenged the Board’s determination that the respective disablement of each was received in the execution of duty.  Merseyside Police seemed eager to go the extra-mile to attempt to stop people getting injury awards.

In this case the Judicial review found in favour of the PMAB and rejected Merseyside’s appeal.  The noteworthy aspect of the transcript is the theme that there were concerns of the fairness or propriety of the procedures that the Merseyside force took against Mr McGinty and Mr Hudson.  Again Merseyside seemingly failed in its duty of care to its serving officers.

The 2011 Judicial review concerned a Mr Williams, whose claim involved the issue as to whether or not the former police officer, compulsorily retired due to permanent disablement as a result of psychiatric illness, could establish an entitlement to a police injury pension on the basis of – yes, you guessed it – that the psychiatric illness was received … in the execution of his duty.  In this instance the appeal was upheld.  Merseyside is nothing but consistent in reasons to force its former officers to the high courts after it neglected the same officer whilst in service.  Not a good advert for the head of the occupational health department.

  1. It is clear that this account includes reference to requests for training which were rejected and to Mr Williams’ perception that his employers were not listening to his concerns. It also refers to Mr Williams “struggling to cope” with his new duties. This is also consistent with a report produced by a Mr Ganley, a clinical psychologist, dated 22 April 2004, who in the course of recounting the history given by Mr Williams at the appointment, wrote:

    “Due to imposed changes in 2001 Mr Williams was then transferred to get back to active service. From this period Mr Williams reports increasing stresses due to being overwhelmed with new aspects of the role. Mr Williams reported his concerns but he feels he was not given the extra support and training. Subsequently Mr Williams’ anxiety developed to such an extent that he developed significant symptoms of anxiety and depression and was unable to remain in his post.”

The Judicial review quashed the PMAB decision on points of law and ordered that Mr Williams shall be seen by another PMAB panel.

Who won or lost at the above court actions isn’t the point of this blog post.  It is the fact that the Judicial reviews needlessly happened when it is clear by reading the transcripts in each and every case that if senior officers, personnel department and the occupation health unit had the moral compass to have treated the officers with fairness and compassion from the beginning it is arguable that the court actions would never had materialised in the first place.

The concern is how Merseyside Police mistreated these four former police officers and drove each to an illness so severe that they had to be medically retired.  Once retired the officers came up against the full force of Merseyside who continued the trauma by pursuing them through the courts.

We question the values of an organisation which is apparently content to allow someone in a position of authority when this all happened to continue in a similar role in the present day.

In 2015 history repeated itself.  How many retired Merseyside officers were similarly mistreated when they served and driven to medical retirement by the same senior management team that supposedly were there to lead, manage and support them?

Did Mr Owens ignore that the injury pension of victims such as Mr McGinty and Mr Hudson (Mr Reilly-Cooper and Mr Williams if they were eventually successful) are unique to that person’s individual circumstances of disablement and continued to review them anyway despite such a review only being allowable to occur at a suitable interval relevant to that individual’s circumstances.  Or or did he take the cynical judgement to conveniently forget about a review of those who had the temerity to challenge Merseyside’s failures at the Administrative courts – if challenging them provides protection from future abuses then its a sure sign that it is never advantageous to acquiesce to bullies.

In any case, Regulation 37 does not empower a police force to neglect its duty of care. Where mental health issues are identified in an employee and the occupational health unit blithely ignores or participates in management failures to influence and strengthen the hold of the illness, to the extent that the person becomes so ill that they are medically retired then later, once that person is trying to move on with their lives, blindly reviewing them along with 501 others just reduce the financial burden of the force is inexcusable.

If that person suffers a repeated attack each and every time they are reviewed, just because they are a band three or four it is quite plausible, given Intel v Daw, for retired officers to consider bringing retrospective claims for personal injury.

When Chief Financial Officers foolishly cook up ideas to corrupt and misuse a Regulatory power to exert heavy pressure by mass reviewing everyone in order to extract money they should stop to think whether reopening any individual’s history will start a process that will generate many unpleasant and complicated problems, that they or their predecessors caused, over which they will have very little control.

The Chief Constable of Merseyside can not be neutral over this. He is the boss of both the mouse and the elephant. At present he is giving the nod to the elephant. We say this to the Chief Constable: elephant dung makes a whole lot more mess compared to mouse droppings.

 

Why Things Hurt

iodpa morale, police injury award, selected medical practitioner, smp
Why Things Hurt

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

This post is about the complexity of pain and the observation that the doctors used by police pension authorities are not able to comprehend how the world of a previously fit and high-achieving police officer collapses once they are injured on duty.  It shows that the consultants, GPs and clinicians of the former officer -who know of and have treated the individual – heavily out-guns the opinion of any given selected medical practitioner.

You haven’t had any contact with the police for years and now they want to reduce their financial commitment by reviewing your injury award .  There has been no change, in fact you’re worse now than ever.  You just want to be left alone to live your life.  Or you are a serving officer struggling on long term sick leave and currently the victim of an UPP.

How can an occupation health doctor make a valid judgement on your health in a 60 minute ‘interrogation’ – don’t fool yourself into thinking it is anything but an inquisition: imagine Tomás de Torquemada assisted by the full incompetence of a HR department.

An injury on duty can involve both body and mind and quite likely both.  A physical injury has psychological consequences. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), is caused when a person experiences an ordeal that causes physical harm or mental harm. The individual was either harmed, someone close to them was harmed, or they experienced events that was imprinted in their brains.  In PTSD, there are two main parts of the brain that are affected and also where all the chemical imbalance in the disorder is located at. The two main parts are the Hippocampus and the amygdala.

http://www.chemistryislife.com/the-chemistry-of-post-traumatic-stress-disorder

The hippocampus is a part of the brain that is located inside one of the folds of the brain so it is not identifiable by the human eye but the way we can find it is that it is located at the temporal lobe which lies right under the temple of the human body. An important function that the hippocampus does is that it makes information into memory and stores it in the brain. So, for example, someone experiences a traumatic event in their life and they can’t forget about it even though they try really hard to. The hippocampus has taken this traumatic event that this person has and stored it in their brain as a memory which explains how PTSD works. This part of the brain can also send connections to the amygdala which then could explain the beginning of strong emotions triggered by specific memories or events. But it is not just for making memories. It also plays a huge roll in the making of creating new brain cells for the brain. The hippocampus may look intimidating but it can be affected very easily. Alzheimer’s Disease, Epilepsy, and little blood flow are just some of the injuries the hippocampus could have.

The other big part of PTSD is the amygdala. Like the hippocampus, it is also part of the limbic system and is also inside the brain just above the hippocampus and the lateral ventricle. This is the epicenter of emotional behavior, emotions, and also motivation. A lot of signals from the other brain parts go to the amygdala because it then makes those signals into emotion. The amygdala can produce components of emotion such as heart rate changes, blood pressure changes, and also respiration changes in the body. While the hippocampus makes memory, the amygdala takes those memories and combine them with emotion which could explain why certain memories produce certain emotions for us such as happiness and fear. This is where the “fight-or-flight” mechanism comes into play. Since so many alarm circuits of the human body are located in the amygdala, there is a lot of triggers that can activate the “fight-or-flight” response.

Sufferers of PTSD are prone to chronic pain and sufferers of the chronic pain of debilitating physical injuries are liable to suffer from PTSD-like chemical imbalances.

The author of this post has a physical injury that has also manifested itself psychologically.  Chronic pain does that.  A life not lived; a career cut short. Over time, to treat the condition, nociceptive prescription pain medication is supplemented with neuropathic medication.  But we are still dragged in front of a SMP and demanded to explain ourselves.  Questioned in a hour window on why we are no longer the high achievers we once were.

This video gives an interesting insight into pain but reveals a terrible dilemma.  We are all individuals,and as IODs, all our circumstances are different.  Herein lies one of the complexities that makes understanding and treating chronic pain so difficult.

Professor Lorimer has the advantage of being on the top of his game.  He has a successful career in clinical Neurosciences. His lecture is factually correct.  Experience doesn’t always match the explanation.

For the individual chronic pain is a reinforcing web of pain signals, personal history, seeking security in what you know (pain) and limited ability to envisage a future.  It is life consuming and this is why the Regulations are there to compensate for work-related injuries.

SMPs are not equipped to understand how the brain creates and perpetuates pain.  They will always fail to make a valid judgement on your health in an allotted 60 minutes.  For this reason if you are ever unfortunate to go in front of a SMP, for whatever reason, go prepared.  Make them understand the complexity of your illness.

Snakes, no Ladders

iodpa Degree of Disablement, morale, police injury award, Regulation 37, Review
Snakes, no Ladders

The only way is up down, baby
For you and me now
The only way is up down, baby
For you and me
Read more: Yazz – The Only Way Is Up Lyrics | MetroLyrics

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in Colliers Magazine on May 27, 1922.  The film version stared Brad Pitt but wasn’t as good.

Fitzgerald wrote a comic farce, which the film turned into a forlorn elegy. The film’s approach makes Benjamin the size of a baby at birth. Fitzgerald sardonically but consistently goes the other way: The child is born as an old man, and grows smaller and shorter until he is finally a bottle-fed baby.  He starts as infirm and dilapidated and becomes more healthier and youthful as he ‘ages’.

And? … you say, whether Benjamin started as a baby-sized old man or old man sized newborn is moot as both versions of Benjamin Button’s story is a fantasy – and what’s your point anyway? I hear you ask.  

A tragic story in the style of the great Fitzgerald could be written in the modern day as the telling of the story of the disabled former officer, injured on duty through no fault of his or her own, who as they age, they can only get better. In other words their degree of disablement can never, ever deteriorate by means of a substantial alteration and their degree of disablement never spirals upwards.

Is this still fiction?  No.  It’s happening in Merseyside.

No single person on a band one in Merseyside was reviewed in 2015.  Of the 502 reviewed they were all band two or higher, of these 25 were reduced and 477 unaltered.  But this force has 880 IODs, so what happened to the remainder?  The stark answer is that the 378 that were left alone and not reviewed were all band ones – just like Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button, Merseyside has taken the view that they can only become healthier as time progresses.

Hang on though.  Is there more devious and nefarious  plotting going on here.  Could it actually be that Merseyside hasn’t reviewed band ones because this opens them up to the possibility of increasing the awards of those they review?  Enough of the grimly mocking  tone.  This is real and is exactly what has happened.

The Merseyside review process has deliberately ignored the tranche of IODs that can only have two responses if ever reviewed – increased, or kept the same.  This is not down to chance – this is overt maladministration in its dirty and unambiguous obloquy .  The blue in the below chart shows the band ones that were not reviewed against those higher bands that were.

MerseysideReviewedByBand

As mentioned before on these pages, we have data from most other forces concerning recent reviews and, overall, nearly 7% resulted in an increased injury pension payment – so, of the 502 reviewed, we should have seen approximately 35 people increased in 2015.   Not only are Merseyside deliberately failing to review those band ones whose degree of the pensioner’s disablement can alter only by virtue of his or hers earning capacity deteriorating, of those that they did review not one person was increased.  The probability of no person out of 502 being increased when 35 should be expected to be increased is 0.0000000049 (chi-square test). In context, the probability of winning the National Lottery is  0.0000000222.

In other words there is no fluke here,  no bizarre influence of chance that saw not a single increase in banding – it was deliberate.  As deliberate as ignoring all those who are band one.  Merseyside has acted totally contrary to the purpose of the Regulations and are unlawfully using reviews as a cost saving device.

If mass reviews could ever be fair then there is a prerequisite that it is more likely for someone to be increased as there is for someone to be reduced.  After all, time is by it’s nature degenerative – only Benjamin Button enjoys the opposite. It is a travesty that band ones are likely to remain trapped in the lower realms of percentages, unable to become upwardly mobile because they are deliberately ignored purely as a review of them will increase the forces injury award commitment and, in the absence of any knowledge that they can ask to be reviewed, likely to continue to struggle with an award too low in relation to their lost capacity to earn.

Too many snakes and no ladders.  For every snake, there should be a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.  But not in Merseyside – here there is one snake: the HR department.  And this creature is greased with slime.  Once down, there is no way back up.   This is not the purpose of the Regulations.  Merseyside are blatantly abusing their position as the administrator of the injury award system and should be held to account.

Misconceptions

iodpa Chief Constable, morale
Misconceptions
“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?”
Shannon L. Alder― Shannon L. Alder
— 

This group has asked what this all ‘means‘ continually. Why are we putting so much effort in broadcasting the failings of a police service we served.  The answer: A&S has attempted to shamefullly bully former officers with their unlawful agenda to reduce their duty to pay injury pensions.  What other interpretation can be placed on the events of the past two years?

IODPA is thankful for our source within Avon & Somerset who informs us that the force thinks that we as a group are misinformed.  It transpires that the force thinks we are confused and that all the questions we ask to justify the position of the force are only asked to reaffirm our ‘misconceived’ view that the force is unlawfully seeking to reduce  injury on duty awards. The spin A&S presents is that it is a force for good (excuse the pun), continually acting in the best interests of those that it has medically retired (as if).

So this blog post needs to set the record straight and state that no matter how much spin the force tries to pass the buck, it is in fact it itself that has the misconception, IODPA is not against regulation 37.  Reviews are a necessary mechanism and important as the regulations are forbidden to speculate on the degree of disablement.  The Scoffield report summarises the position of IODPA when it comes to the invocation of regulation 37, so there is no need to repeat this group’s position in this blog post. A&S can not rewrite history.

The letter from Mountstevens;  the minutes from finance meetings; correspondence from the HR managers; the email from the PCC’s finance officer Mark Simmonds; the make believe threat of prosecution under a law that does not exist if a questionnaire is not filled in to their satisfaction; the selection of 16 of the youngest and highest IOD band  – a group that still have not had closure 18 months later; the communication between Johnson and Bulpitt where these 2 doctors discuss revisiting causation and reapplying apportionment. IODPA does not need to alter the facts to fit our narrative.

The force is the organisation that has attempted via subterfuge and duplicity to present their own spin. We just tell it how it is.

The interesting piece of information given to this association through our friendly person on the inside is the time and resources the force has spent monitoring and logging social media in an attempt to infiltrate and undermine IODPA.  In a way this group is flattered that a police service with stretched resources is willing to draft personnel from their usual tasks to take on a group of retired former officers. Who needs to catch criminals when the force can spend it’s time on facebook monitoring the ‘likes’ of those it has retired?

It is not ourselves who have the misconception.  We served with this force.  We know all too well the pits it is willing to drop into to defend its position. Even when it knows it is on the wrong side of the fight it just entrenches itself further.

We can see history repeating in the way things are playing out in the current news stories involving the saga of the chief officers. Yet another brave serving officer speaks out the truth.

THE FEAR OF REPERCUSSIONS:
Hi Bullshire Polfed, Please will you post the below for me. As a serving female police officer with Avon and Somerset Constabulary, I agree with everything said by PC B Standard in his letter to you on 30th July 2015. I too have so much I could say but have been warned if I do I will be breaching our Codes of Conduct by bringing the force into disrepute. I have personally witnessed the vile attacks on frontline colleagues by senior ranks of A&S. I have also tried to support them after the event.Bullying is rife within A&S and the Grievance Procedure so underhand that no one has any faith in it. My colleagues are too frightened to approach the federation for help, as they fear repercussions from making a formal complainant in confidence.
Officers are suffering high levels of stress and in some cases finding life not worth living when they speak out against bullying and being punished
As a female officer will I report any inappropriate conduct / sexism from male colleagues??? Not if they have any rank I won’t! If our chief constable can get away with it why not anyone else. It appals me to think those poor women that spoke out now have to work alongside Nick Gargan again. It wouldn’t surprise me if they felt the need to leave.
Tow the line or find another job is the message we are receiving. Loud and Clear SMT, loud and clear! Regards,
PC V Concerned

— 

How long is it before the force’s management is put on special measures?

It would not be surprising if the paper shredders at Portishead will be red hot and in overdrive – there is a lot of covering-up that needs covering-up –  just as the trouble shooters from the Home Office are driving along the M4 corridor to take on the huge task to start the reorganisation of a  police service that has lost it’s way.