Police attack public hearings plan

Police disciplinary hearings could become "pseudo show trials" if they are held in public, rank-and-file police leaders have warned.

The police watchdog revealed on Tuesday night that officers could face public hearings in "exceptional circumstances" where there were accusations of serious incompetence or neglect.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which has yet to use the power, said it had been consulting the police and other organisations about what these exceptional circumstances might be.

"This is not going to be a routine thing, only the most serious cases," a spokeswoman said.

However, police leaders warned that in highly charged, emotional cases there was a danger that public disciplinary hearings could act as a substitute for the criminal trials process.

Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said that, despite a common perception to the contrary, police discipline was actually "very harsh".

He said that in most workplaces in the country, disciplinary hearings were held in private and that public hearings for police officers would not provide any recompense to families in cases where they had lost a loved one.

"In these highly charged, emotional cases they could become the substitute criminal trials - not the trial of the person who committed the crime, but the trial of the officers involved in the investigation as if they themselves were the perpetrators of it," he said.

"In very emotional cases, they will be turned - as the Coroner's Court system has at times - into pseudo show trials which have no bearing on the actual crime or incident the officers were investigating.

"In tragic circumstances where somebody has lost a loved one, people look for some sort of recompense and they never feel they get it - no sort of disciplinary hearing will ever provide that. Officers can only deal with what they have before them - not after the event with the luxury of hindsight when there is all the time in the world to consider what might have been a better way of doing things."