this is only for the staff forum as its very personal, but I was quite surprised to get a completely clear CRB when I had been cautioned for class B and class A in two different constabulary areas, there was an active local intelligence file on me, and it had taken ages for the result to come back (hinting that it definitely had gone to TVP and possibly Metpol via Suffolk).
but checking back to various incidents in my life, it appears that the whole lot was struck out as “unreliable” by chance – the first officer who opened up my intel file was invalided out of TVP on mental health grounds
it may also have been the case (I cannot prove it 100% though traffic I heard on my scanner radio in the late 90s/2000s hints at this being a possibility) that an ex-girlfriends older brother joined TVP (shortly after she had died at age 19 in 1992 from an MDMA overdose). He was also in our circle of friends and when he disappeared we just assumed that was understandably due to the trauma of losing his sister, and didn’t think he would have joined the cops!
Around 2002 (10th anniversary of this incident), a rather amateurish attempt was made to get info on me by either TVP South / West Berks division or Hantspol (both worked together), by using the identity of a high school friend (who had in fact been murdered in Hampshire) to contact my younger sister (by then in her 20s) using the Friends Reunited website.
I sussed it out straight away (TBH my sister thought it was dodgy too) and laughed it off, though was a bit annoyed as to why feds would bring my sister (who did not and does not commit crime) into things, when they knew where to find me and that if I had done anything really bad I would rather hand myself in than bring more shame on my family.
whoever did this would have had to know I had a younger sister in the first place, her approximate age, and my circle of friends in the 1980s, for most cops wouldn’t have been able to easily get (the intelligence files are rarely that detailed, and I never pushed things far enough at high school age to get a joint TVP/Social Services file). it wouldn’t have been the mad bobby as he was long gone by then and in any case a lot older than me. Nor the current local uniformed ones as they knew me and my family and did watch me but never gave me any real hassle (very occasionally one would stop me and check my bicycle was in good order but he himself was a keen cyclist and had been doing this since our high school days, and if I wasn’t breaking any traffic laws I’d be left alone).
To be fair if it was my ex’s brother, I hold absolutely no malice against him, it came across more as a mild attempt to shake me up a bit and say “this is what drugs lead to”, perhaps even knowing it would be unlikely to succeed as an intelligence gathering exercise. The cops whose voice/callsign I heard on the scanner which could have been him was otherwise a good, hardworking officer, and if the positions had been changed, I would have done a lot worse TBH. (I think the family was a bit religious though and believed in forgiveness).
However TVP would certainly not want to admit to doing this, especially in the wake of Metpol being caught out for all sorts of dodgy surveillance info
Also employers know the Suffolk Police Commissioner (Tim Passmore) on a personal level, I’ve met the guy face to face, and he knows I “do something very important with computers and telecoms” and by making things difficult for me and my employers it could put 200 peoples jobs at risk, which a Tory politician isn’t going to want to do. I get the impression he had taken legal advice and they had decided to strike out my record on “the balance of probabilities” rather than it actually being clear (which would have meant it came back quicker).
I’m conflicted about how I feel about this – a clear CRB is of course a good thing for both me and my employers, but this only applies to my current job (for instance if I worked more closely with teens at ICR-FM I would need another one, and Tim Passmore or his position might not exist that time round!), and its still unclear whether I can go to certain countries (as thats a different check).
Also it calls the safety of the whole CRB thing into question. if this can happen for my non violent crimes, what about someone at my work who has been done for violent crime and comes back clear for the same reason?
