It would seem from Radio Cayman’s “For the Record” Talk Show that there was NO Investigation into the conduct of Operation Tempura’s lead officer, Martin Bridger.

It was just an excuse given out by the Governor’s Office with help from RCIPS Commissioner Baines to stop or at least delay the FOI request.

On the aforementioned talk show John Kemp, one of the original Tempura investigators, called in and stated he had met in London with two RCIPS officers sent there and there was in fact no investigation of Bridger at all. The so called investigation was in fact a scoping exercise!

“Scoping exercises are “exploratory” and can be used in a wide range of studies. Besides building workouts, scoping exercises are used in making medical advances and discoveries in literature. They are performed by exploring the concepts and theories of a subject, as well as any evidence sources that are available. The gathered information is then used to determine what is left unknown.” – From Ask.

Kemp said the RCIPS officers appeared to know next to nothing about the original Tempura case and had not read any of the papers related to it!

The two officers spent over two weeks in London staying at The Kingbury by Thistle on Bloomsbury Way in Central London. The cost $200 per night! Unless they got a good deal…..

There are many cheaper hotels to be had.

So what will happen now?

We have a Bridger investigation that wasn’t.

Officers sent to talk to one of the original Tempura investigators.

Officers from here who were not given or read any of the documents readily available about Tempura and Bridger’s role.

Officers who did not ask Kemp any specific questions except to ask him if he thought Bridger had done anything wrong?

So what else did these officers do to take up the two weeks at $200 per day?

It is obvious why we were mislead by the Governor’s Office and I am being very kind using the word “mislead”.

Perhaps now Baines will make his final piece of work here to sign off on the Bridger “investigation” as closed and no criminal case found against him.

Or will that be left to someone else?

We do know, however, there was no such investigation and now perhaps the Acting Information Commissioner Jan Liebaers will now revisit the redactions, from the Tempura report….?

 

PS: Since I wrote and published this Editorial John Evans wrote to me and said he also met with the same two RCIPS officers in London on 19th April and said “it was clear” to him they had “come to the UK after extensive research into available documentation had failed to provide answers to some fairly serious outstanding questions. During my meeting it appeared they were well briefed and highly motivated.”

More from John Evans in answer to my questions:

“Kemp clearly got caught by the oldest investigation trick in the book. You sit down with someone and plead complete ignorance when in fact you know full well what went on. That way you encourage the subject to lie because he thinks you’re a complete dummy. It isn’t like you see on TV where they hit the suspect with all the evidence and demand a confession, you creep up on them.

“As for whether there was a full investigation? I had serious doubts about it myself but it’s quite clear RCIPS had done a lot of leg work and, probably because so much of the documentation from Tempura has gone missing, come up without any viable conclusion one way or the other. Baines then authorised the UK investigation and, although it risked turning into Tempura all over again, this time they, quite correctly, only gave it a couple of weeks and apparently (don’t quote me on that) admitted defeat. The two officers came to the UK well briefed and with an open mind. Their job was to try and make some sense out of nine years of accusations and counter-accusations about Bridger’s conduct and the only way they could that was face-to-face. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mistaken. Was it waste of time and money? The harsh reality is that about 80% of police work is exactly that, it’s the other 20% that gets the results and locks up bad guys. When I was a civil servant our success rate was about one in three and our conviction rate after that was about 60% – that’s the nature of the work. I’ve spent weeks on an investigation only to have it stopped because the probability of securing a conviction was less than 50/50. If you start trying to rationalise that and, as my former employers have done, cut the perceived waste all that happens is more bad guys go free. The other thing to remember is that the police have a duty to investigate complaints, they can’t just take a quick look then bin them because they look iffy and in this case the complaints against Bridger were potentially very serious – I know because I made some of them so in a way the blame is partly mine.

“As for whether or not Baines delayed the investigation to frustrate the FOI process? He’s the only one who can answer that but my opinion is that he did and that he did it on orders from the FCO.”