Garda Board's ruling on complaint quashed

AN investigation by the Garda Complaints Board into allegations by a man that he was beaten by gardai in Co Waterford was not properly carried out, the High Court found yesterday.

Ms Justice Macken said that, because a report to the board regarding a complaint made by Mr Derek Carlton was furnished in circumstances that were flawed, the board's decision dismissing that complaint "cannot stand". She did not have to decide whether the decision was correct or otherwise.

The board was entitled to consider the report of any other investigating officer who might be appointed if another investigation was carried out, she said.

Mr Carlton, of Kyne Park, Abbeyside, Dungarvan, said that while he was in Downey's Bar, Main Street, Dungarvan, on the night of June 27th, 1997, there was a raid by plain-clothes Garda officers searching for drugs. He was not among those searched, he said.

During the evening, he got into an argument with a garda and he alleged that he was bundled down the stairs of the pub and thrown out. He claimed that he was severely beaten - both on the way down the stairs and outside the pub itself - was put into a Garda van, taken to the station and subsequently released without charge.

Mr Carlton lodged a formal complaint on July 7th, 1997 under the Garda Siochana (Complaints) Act, 1986 against a number of gardai.

He alleged that, in one incident, on the stairs in the pub, he was severely beaten by six gardai and held down for a number of minutes. In a second incident, on the pavement outside the pub, he was thrown to the ground and his face hit the kerb. He claimed that a named garda stood with his full weight on his back and another named garda had beaten him on the back, legs and ankles with a truncheon.

The board appointed an inspector to investigate the complaint who was from the same division - Waterford-Kilkenny - as the gardai under investigation. On December 23rd, 1997, Mr Carlton was informed that the board had dismissed his complaint.

In her reserved judgment in judicial review proceedings yesterday, Ms Justice Macken upheld Mr Carlton's claim that the board, in appointing an inspector rather than a superintendent to carry out the investigation, did not comply with the procedures of the 1986 Act.

Section 6.1 of that Act provided that a person who investigated complaints such as Mr Carlton's must be a person not below the rank of superintendent or, if the Garda Commissioner considered the circumstances warranted it, the investigation might be carried out by an inspector. There was no clarification of the decision to appoint an inspector, the judge said, and she found that no consideration had been given to the status of the appointee.

She also upheld Mr Carlton's complaint that the inspector appointed should not have been from the same division as the gardai under investigation. The judge said the importance of independence was borne out by internal memoranda of the complaints board, in particular a memorandum of July 1st, 1991 dealing with investigation of complaints.

Mr Carlton had claimed that no proper distance was maintained between the investigating officer and the officers under investigation because the investigating officer either gave the officers information or gave it to one of the officers who subsequently used it or who afterwards came together to construct statements to ground a subsequent District Court prosecution, dated December 22nd, 1997 against Mr Carlton. The judge said the summonses issued against Mr Carlton effectively charged him with unlawfully obstructing members of the Garda.

If the provisions of the 1986 Act were to have any meaning, it must be that statements made in the course of an investigation were confidential, the judge said.

In the light of her findings, the judge said she would make an order prohibiting any District Court judge having or dealing with summonses entitled DPP v Derek Carlton, dated December 22nd, 1997 in any way other than by strike-out, insofar as those summonses were based on statements made in breach of her findings on confidential information.

She also made an order quashing the appointment of a named inspector to investigate Mr Carlton's complaint.