back to article Kent Police fined £100k for leaving interview vids of informants in old cop shop

Kent Police have been fined £100,000 after interview tapes and other confidential information were found abandoned at a former police station. The highly sensitive information, including records going back to the 1980s, was left in the basement of a former police station when it was vacated in July 2009. The cock-up was …

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  1. Oliver Mayes

    Police screw up, taxpayer pays the fine. Business as usual.

    1. BillG
      Flame

      Someone or someones needs to get fired.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yeah, I think they should be arrested. Oh, wait ..

      2. Crazy Operations Guy

        Yes, they should be fired

        ...preferably out of a canon.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Yes, they should be fired

          "...preferably out of a canon."

          Lets leave the church out of this.

        2. Crisp

          Re: ...preferably out of a canon.

          ...Into the Sun.

  2. Greg D

    erm...

    I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of a fine here....

    Police force funded 100% by taxpayer money and government

    Police force gets fined, by the government

    It's like an infinite loop of cash from then on.

    1. BongoJoe

      Re: erm...

      It's like an infinite loop of cash from then on.

      And as any good economist* will tell you that is a good thing for the economy and, thus, we're all the richer for it!

      * Oxymoron alert!

    2. Christian Berger

      It's the same as with companies

      ...but with companies it's the customer who pays.

      It's very hard to punish organisations, and money is typically a very inefficient way of doing it.

      1. billse10

        Re: It's the same as with companies

        so don't fine the organisation, fine the individuals - and if a specific named individual cannot be identified for a given *-up, levy the fine on the salary bill for the entire organisation, and then apply the same fine again (on the same basis) on the political overseers who were asleep on the job ...

    3. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: erm...

      You forgot the entropy of all the bureaucrats taking their cuts.

    4. Crisp
      Trollface

      Re: infinite loop of cash

      Problem?

  3. ukgnome

    is it criminal watching criminals?

    The business owner confirmed that he had found the tapes in the basement of the old police station, after purchasing the site two months before, and was planning on watching them for entertainment.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: is it criminal watching criminals?

      You can't be charged for an intent to commit a crime unless you actually go forth and do so. (Or threaten someone.) Unless your nation has embraced authoritarianism so fervently that thoughts are now actually a crime there. (Wouldn't surprise me.)

    2. nsld
      Paris Hilton

      Re: is it criminal watching criminals?

      Having purchased the site and all its contents he was the owner of the material left behind as he had purchased it with the building.

  4. PacketPusher

    A fine is normally a punishment to discourage behavior, but the police are taxpayer funded. How does fining the taxpayer discourage bad behavior by the police? They need to punish the individuals who screwed up.

    1. Chris Miller

      They will be punished by being suspended on full pay while an investigation takes place and then, if found at fault, be required to take early retirement on enhanced terms.

    2. All names Taken
      Paris Hilton

      "How does fining the taxpayer discourage bad behavior by the police?"

      You got it in one dude!

      That is precisely how civil servants work - they take no responsibility, lots of money, excellent pensions (better than most if not all of private sector), early retirement built in to the job (who wouldn't want paid retirement from age 55?), and if something goes wrong it is always someone else's responsibility and if anytyhing has to get paid for it will always be the taxpayer who picks up the bill?

      1. Corinne
        FAIL

        Please try to get just a FEW facts right before generalising and laying into the entire body of public servants.

        Police, armed forces, health workers, local government and central government employees all have different packages and T&Cs, you can't assume that because one type gets a particular benefit then all the others will.

        Police may retire at 55, normal retirement age for most civil servants is 67 and likely to increase soon.

        Lots of money? Typical central government clerical pay in central London is about £15k - £17.5k, outside London it ranges from £14k - £16.5k.

        "Gold plated" final salary type pensions are fine - provided the final salary is half decent. 40% of £17k isn't exactly what I would call excellent.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When I was in my first year at university we used to wander about the abandoned sister building, a derelict Victorian asylum. The NHS had sold it to developers years before, and the developers were hoping the massive building would decay enough that they'd be allowed pull it down despite its heritage status. During our wandering we came across loads of patient records dating from the 1950s up until the early 1980s, complete with photographs. I assume the records were finally destroyed when the building was redeveloped into apartments for the extremely wealthy.

    1. Spoonsinger

      Re :- " I assume the records were finally destroyed when the building was redeveloped"

      Developers seem quite efficient at that. Look at the old Coulsdon Cane Hill looney bin site. C) says "Nope you can't knock down that listed bit", D) says "Ahhhh! sad face", then big fire on listed bit, C) says "ok do what you want".

      (In no way am I implying that C & D had anything to do with it - just a time lined observation).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re :- " I assume the records were finally destroyed when the building was redeveloped"

        Just as the fire in the old Gibbons stores buildings in Hackney, the undestroyed bits suffered "landslip" just as the box-room hotel being built next to it dug down three storeys,

        wonder who will buy the soon to be vacant corner plot they didnt own before due to listing status

  6. Anonymous John

    Guidance.

    "A subsequent ICO investigation faulted Kent Police for the absence of any guidance or procedures in place to make sure personal information was securely removed from former police premises."

    1) Take everything.

    2) Leave nothing behind.

    Sorted.

    It could have been worse. The new owner might have found a skeleton in one of the cells.

    1. BongoJoe

      Re: Guidance.

      ...with a truncheon up its arse.

      Anyway, there will be a good number of people walking around Kent this week pleased that they still have their kneecaps so that they can walk around.

      1. Stevie

        Re: Guidance (4 BongoJoe)

        er...skeletons don't have arses...

  7. Mark York 3 Silver badge
    Joke

    Missed Opportunity

    Police Cough Up After Screw Up in Lock Up Cock Up!

  8. cd

    The information fell into the wrong hands when the police got it.

  9. Stevie

    Bah!

    "These tapes and files included extremely sensitive and confidential information"

    Apparently not.

    But I applaud the award to H.M. Govt. of One hundred kiloquid from the bottomless British taxpayer bucket o' funds in order to punish whoever was to blame.

    1. All names Taken
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Bah!

      But I applaud the award to H.M. Govt. of One hundred kiloquid from the bottomless British taxpayer bucket o' funds in order to punish whoever was to blame.

      Who am I to question why?

      But there is a difference between UK Government (as in elected members) and UK Government (as in non-elected civil servants).

      I'd guess it is the latter Whitehall governed civil servants authorising payment of the fne as a means to transfer a number on one Treasury account to another Treasury account and by so doing denying morality and justice to all?

      Can you imagine a Tory Guvmint minister authorising such a payment?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Under the counter interviews

    Are these the "under the counter interview" tapes where crims get questioned with a rolled up telephone directory and a rubber cosh ?

  11. 1Rafayal

    Yay the Police!

  12. Anonymous Coward 101

    I'm guessing these videos had never been looked at by anyone for years, and had been abandoned in places nobody cared to visit for ages. In your office, there will be similar places and similar files full of crap. This isn't acceptable, but I totally understand how it happens.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No no no!

      "I'm guessing these videos ........ had been abandoned in places nobody cared to visit for ages."

      If you are leaving a property, or even planning to, the * first * thing you do is go through it and decide what to move, what to destroy, what to put in a skip. (And even what to sell, if only for scrap).

      I spent the last few weeks of my gainful employment as a local authority education manager doing just that, at the start of the period between the powers that be scrapping my team and scrapping the building we'd worked in.

      Someone, probably not a plod, was responsible for managing the move and the decommissioning of this cop shop.

      Somebody just didn't do their job.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No no no!

        "Someone, probably not a plod, was responsible for managing the move and the decommissioning of this cop shop"

        Using information from my past employment at that time period i'd point the finger at SERCO

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Been there, done that

    Funny thing is, I used to do the double check to prevent this exact senario (different county), and the number of times people queried why bother, we know we have cleared it out but I completed the work, happy in the knowledge that I was doing the right thing. Something always turned up every now and again.

    Most of the old cop shops are rabbit warrens having changed from multiple houses to converted offices or custom built with some very strange internal architecture and storage locations.

    Other issue is cabinets going to be sent for disposal without clearing them out.......again, part of the standard double check.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wigan police station

    When I was into urbex a few years back we found riot gear, video and cassette tapes and even blank fixed penalty notice books in the old Wigan police station. The fire door at the back was wide open but some of the stuff was just dumped in the bins in the car park.

    As usual the media portrayed the urbexers as "breaking in". All lies, as were the claims of breaking into locked rooms to get to the items.

    Photo of newspaper:

    http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=28749&sid=a3f56e26e982c67dab13553a0c2a1aa4

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