Bad-mouthing FOI
Jan 29, 2010 FOI in the news, Freedom of Information, Law Enforcement
I notice the naysayers are peeping their heads over the parapet again. I’m serving notice that any public servants moaning about having to account to the public under the Freedom of Information had better be prepared to undergo some intense investigation on their spending. I’ll be keeping my eye out for any FOI bad-mouthers in [...]
Bureaucrats and Blackmailers
Jan 1, 2010 Law Enforcement
Over Christmas I happened to catch the Orson Welles Sketchbook broadcast December 26th on BBC4. Welles may have been speaking decades ago, but his message couldn’t be more pertitent to today. He disccuses state surveillance, police powers and blackmailing bureaucrats.
You can watch it here: http://bbc.co.uk/i/plbtd/
Welles relates stories from his travels around the globe dealing [...]
Public locked out: FOI won’t cover private prisons
Nov 11, 2009 FOI in Parliament, Justice & Courts, Law Enforcement
Despite being paid for by the public, prisons operated under government contract by private companies such as Group 4 will not be covered by a proposed extension of the freedom of information act. This marks a dangerous shift in which public services paid for by us are no longer accountable to us because they have [...]
Article: Top cops’ pay should not be top secret
Aug 10, 2009 Articles, Campaigns, FOI in the news, Freedom of Information, Law Enforcement
Top cops, come clean
The Guardian, 10 August 2009
By Heather Brooke
Secrecy feeds suspicion of a boys’ club stitch-up. Chief constables need to be open on pay and perks
Secrecy can be sexy. It’s essential to any good mystery novel. But there should be no mystery surrounding the pay of top public officials. In October 2008 I made [...]
Article: Where is the UK version of The Wire?
Feb 28, 2009 Articles, Law Enforcement
Us & Them
The Big Issue, February 2009
By Heather Brooke
Not one to believe hype, I was sceptical when I popped in the first series of the much-acclaimed TV series The Wire. For those who haven’t seen it, this is a series that breaks all the rules of TV drama and yet the hype is merited: it [...]
Investigation into Police Chief Bonuses
Feb 13, 2009 Articles, Campaigns, Freedom of Information, Law Enforcement
I worked with the Times Crime Editor Sean O’Neill on an investigation into police chief constables’ bonus schemes. The first part of this investigation was published on 24 January 2009.
Police chiefs net thousands from secret bonus scheme
A secretive bonus scheme set up to reward the country’s top 300 police officers is paying out hundreds [...]
Article: Police Bonuses
Feb 13, 2009 Articles, Law Enforcement
From The Times, 24 January 2009
What have they got to hide?
By Heather Brooke
Investigation is a little like psychiatry where the most telling details are often those kept hidden. When only one police force is willing to tell the public what it pays its Chief Constable in bonuses curiosity is piqued. What do they have to [...]
Article: Watching the Police
Jan 18, 2009 Articles, FOI in Parliament, Law Enforcement
Secret Policemen are having a ball at our expense
The Big Issue, December 2008
By Heather Brooke
Once upon a time people complained of rarely seeing a bobby on the beat. Now they’re lucky to get a full glimpse of a policeman’s face.
Watching the video footage of police searching the office of MP Damian Green I noticed [...]
Home Office Shredders
Nov 28, 2008 Campaigns, Central Government, FOI in Parliament, Freedom of Information, Law Enforcement
What’s really amazing about the arrest of Opposition Immigration Minister Damian Green isn’t simply that such a thing has happened in a supposed democracy (though I’ve long maintained that the UK isn’t a democracy) but the simple existence of any Home Office documents available for him to leak in the first place! Green is accused [...]
More backward than Mississippi?
Sep 29, 2008 Campaigns, Law Enforcement
When I worked as a crime reporter in South Carolina, I was used to reading through ALL police incident reports. Some information was redacted (such as witness names in sensitive investigations) but not much. The default was always on openness as it was the public who paid for the police and in whose name they [...]
Tags: policereports
