In November 2018 I sent an enquiry to Hodge Jones & Allen LLP. They are a leading London legal firm, and just like GT Stewart Solicitors, one of their specialities is claims against the police. I outlined my case as succinctly as possible, and this is the reply I received – almost identical to the reply from GT Stewart a couple of months before.
Dear Mr….
Thank you for your recent enquiry and the information you kindly provided.
A member of the civil liberties team has considered your case and the information you have helpfully provided in detail, and liaised with the rest of the team to see if anyone has capacity to take your case on.
Unfortunately we are unable to assist you at this time as we don’t have any capacity available. We encourage you to consult the Law Society website www.lawsociety.org.uk or 020 7320 5650 (Monday to Friday from 09:00 to 17:30) for other firms doing this work.
We wish you all the best moving forward finding legal representation.
Kind Regards,
Zahrah Diwan | New Client Adviser | For Hodge Jones & Allen LLP
I was obviously disheartened by this to say the least, although it wasn’t exactly a surprise after the reply from GT Stewart solicitors. So a specialist in civil liberties had considered my situation, and decided that the firm did not have the ‘capacity’ to assist me. Presumably in both of these appeals for help from legal firms, they simply thought I was nuts and were being as polite as they could be. The alternative, that they considered what I was alleging was true, but they were genuinely scratching their heads wondering just what kind of case I thought I had against the police…well it’s just too horrifying a thought to take seriously. However, it could actually be that, as the only request for help that I made in a European country was replied to by the lawyer stating directly that he did not see how I had any case. Such responses and utter failure to get any help or even sympathy in nearly fifteen years of this has led me to seriously consider whether I am actually in some kind of literal solipsist hell.
In my exasperation at the response by Hodge Jones & Allen, I sent back the following reply – which they did not reply back to.
Thanks for your reply, which is almost identical to that which I received from another law firm that specializes in complaints against the police.
In this age where one can get arrested by the police for saying something offensive on Twitter, when websites are required by law to have intrusive GDR policy messages, it’s fully legal it seems for the Metropolitan police to pursue a personal vendetta against a mentally disabled member of the public through deliberately causing distress on the basis of his mental illness. It’s legal for the police for ten years to show the photograph of a paranoid schizophrenic to thousands of security guards, as well as members of the public, and request the same to their colleagues in 13 different European countries, with encouragement and incitement to mock my complaints and intimidate me from making further complaints or legal action (not they need to), whilst deliberately trying to leave me in a state where I’m unsure as to whether I’m simply insane, and there’s nothing I can ever do about this? They can follow me into a Starbucks with Heckler and Koch submachine guns in order to intimidate me from making further private requests for help from anti-torture charities (again, not they had anything to worry about), and there’s just nothing to see here of any concern to anybody?
This is all somehow consistent with the United Nations Convention Against Torture** which explicitly forbids the causing severe pain or suffering, either physical or mental, whether to ‘punish’ or ‘intimidate’? I would have gladly swapped what I’ve gone through over the last ten years, and the thought that this will continue for further decades, with just a couple of beatings down the station and even having my fingernails torn out or such.
“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”
Cheers
**Update – when I sent these requests for help, and in fact for most of the nearly 15 years of this, I was unsure as to whether the psychological torture I’ve been subjected to by the police was illegal, or was ‘merely’ contrary to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). As I recently posted, that treaty, and its explicit prohibition against psychological torture, has been clearly written into UK law under the Criminal Justice Act of 1988. The offence by a public official (such as a police officer) carries a life term.