OUT OF CONTROL
A 5-year vendetta against an innocent man . His loyal police officer wife hounded out of the job she loved. And a growing case file of complaints against a force its local MP – and even one of its ex-detectives – says is. . .
IT WAS a chilly winter’s night. Juan Gilly had picked up a takeaway curry and was driving back to his home. Frustratingly, he got stuck behind a police van crawling along at 15mph. At a junction it stopped. Mr Gilly waited ten seconds, then seeing the coast was clear, he edged past.
It was a big mistake. Moments later the van’s blue lights were flashing and a shocked Mr Gilly found that he was being chased.
He pulled over and was confronted by three burly officers, yelled at and handcuffed.
He didn’t fight back. A police body-cam shown in court would later reveal him insisting that he wanted to ‘come in peace’. But that didn’t stop one officer pepperspraying him in the face, temporarily blinding him.
It would be shocking enough to discover that Mr Gilly was charged in December 2015 with causing the policemen ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ under the Public Order Act. His ordeal only ended last week when Newcastle-under-Lyme magistrates found him not guilty and it emerged that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was investigating the use of the pepper spray.
But what makes this story truly alarming is that the case was the culmination of what would appear to be a five-year vendetta waged by Staffordshire Police against Mr Gilly, an entirely innocent man.
Such was the determination of a force that the Gillys’ MP has described as ‘out of control’ to get its man, that it even turned on the wife who stood by him.
More astonishing still, Julie Gilly was a serving Staffordshire officer. And after presenting evidence to her superiors that put her husband’s innocence beyond doubt, she was subjected to what colleagues say was a campaign of intimidation that forced her to resign.
It was no coincidence in Juan and Julie’s minds that the pepper spray incident occurred just five months after Mr Gilly was cleared of a much more serious charge pinned on him by Staffordshire Police.
Mr Gilly had spent three years on bail facing the terrifying prospect of 18 years in jail after being falsely accused of being at the centre of a vicious street battle that he had absolutely nothing to do with.
When he finally appeared in court on charges of wounding with intent and violent disorder, the judge said his alibi was the strongest he had ever seen. But despite being given full details of that alibi on the day he was arrested, the police refused to check it, prompting the judge to offer a heartfelt apology on behalf of the criminal justice system for ruining Mr Gilly’s life. Staffordshire Police have already paid a six-figure sum to settle his civil action for misfeasance in a public office, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.
The motives for the campaign against the Gillys remain unknown, but this newspaper can reveal it is by no means an isolated case involving questionable methods by Staffordshire Police. Stoke South Labour MP Rob Flello isn’t the only critic to say the force is ‘out of control’. One of its own officers, former Detective Inspector Joe Anderson, whose career was ruined after he blew the whistle on corruption inside an elite Staffordshire serious crime unit, used those exact words when talking to this newspaper.
He said senior officers had for years shown a systemic failure to tackle wrongdoing. Some were ‘more interested in protecting their brand than doing the right thing. This in turn has alienated the majority who do their jobs ethically’.
Mr Flello added: ‘I’ve been coming across cases that have caused me serious concern since I was elected 12 years ago, and others are still ongoing. To be aware of one incident seems unfortunate.
‘To have at least half a dozen in one constituency is very worrying. I certainly think it has been a force out of control. To restore and maintain trust, there must be thorough investigations. There are some fan
‘Names of good officers dragged through mud’
‘She was punished for challenging top officers’ Judge apologised on behalf of justice system
tastic officers in Staffordshire, but their good name has been dragged through the mud by the behaviour of some of their colleagues.’
Meanwhile it was announced last week that Staffordshire Chief Constable Jane Sawyers is t o be replaced by Avon and Somerset’s Deputy Chief Gareth Morgan after less than three years in the job.
In another case unearthed by this newspaper, a judge at Birmingham County Court took the highly unusual step of awarding £5,000 compensation in 2013 to a woman who had been drugged and raped because the investigation by Staffordshire Police was so incompetent. They failed to gather vital forensic evidence, so fatally damaging the prospects of bringing her attackers to justice.
Over the past three years the MoS has revealed:
Shocking allegations first made by former Det Insp Anderson to Ms Sawyers, when she was running the force’s internal affairs department, about corruption in the Sensitive Policing Unit, which he had been chosen to lead. This concerned several cases including the ‘body in a barrel’ murder of cocaine smuggler Floyd Dodson, whose decomposing remains were dumped on a country lane.
Mr Anderson said the key prosecution witness was paid an ‘upfront’ sum before the alleged killers’ trial, so tainting his evidence. Responding to his disclosures, Ms Sawyers o r der e d o nl y a management ‘review’, while Mr Anderson was t hreatened by another senior officer that if he went public he could be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.
Full details of the 2012 case when six men’s convictions for killing boxer Kevin Nunes were quashed after judges said the force’s behaviour was a ‘serious perversion of the course of justice’. Mr Anderson revealed that main prosecution witness Simeon Taylor was wined, dined and given drugs and set up with threesomes with prostitutes by officers while under their protection in a safe house.
A damning internal police report was withheld from the trial. After a four-year IPCC inquiry, a file on Ms Sawyers was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, although she was not charged.
Questions over the death of businessman John Merrick, whose body was found on a railway line near Tamworth. Police were convinced he jumped from a bridge, but a report by a Home Office pathologist said his injuries were not consistent with such a fall or by being hit by train. Inexplicably, Jon Arnold, the son of Staffordshire’s Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Arnold, was seen the next morning ‘looking for something’ on the track where Mr Merrick died, but refused to make a police statement.
The victim’s parents are convinced their son was murdered, and last week British Transport Police announced they were conducting a fresh review.
Juan and Julie Gilly’s nightmare began on August 23, 2012, when at about 10.50 pm two branches of the same Asian family started a violent fight in Park Terrace, in the Tunstall area of Stoke.
Weapons were used, a car window was smashed and the street was streaked with blood. One man suffered a fractured skull.
By chance, Mrs Gilly, now 51, was serving at the local police station. Armed with a degree in psychology and forensic science, she had joined the force four years earlier.
She was already trained in looking after sex assault victims and planned to specialise in tackling serious crime.
Mr Gilly, 43, an Argentinian who met his wife in Tenerife, was running a security business. The couple have two children, then both at primary school.
Juan knew some of those in the fight because he had provided security to local Indian restaurants. For reasons that have never been explained, someone fed his name to police and on August 24 he was arrested at 4.45am. As soon as he was interviewed, he told police he had been five miles from Tunstall when the brawl took place.
First, he said, he went to the home of a friend, Sian Kirby. Both she and another man later confirmed in court this was true. Then, at about 11 pm he went for a drink at a nearby pub – as the landlady would also confirm.
The pub had CCTV – but the police never asked to see the relevant footage. But the alibi did not rely on verbal accounts alone. While Mr Gilly was at Ms Kirby’s house, his phone rang with his distinctive Godfather film theme ringtone. She said she liked it, and so, using her wi-fi, he sent it to her as an email attachment. Electronic evidence proved all this was true.
When, after many delays, the case came before Judge Robin Onions at Stoke Crown Court three years later, he said it was a story ‘resonant with the truth’. In all his time as a judge, he went on, ‘I have never seen a more compelling alibi that was capable of proof by the police at an early stage’.
Yet the police never checked it at all. The consequences, the judge said, were devastating: ‘Mr Gilly and his family have been caused enormous pain, distress and financial loss and all I can do is express my regret on behalf of the criminal justice system that it’s taken so long for the truth to come out.’
Even before he was charged, Mr Gilly told the MoS, he learned that ‘the police were telling my clients I was in deep trouble and would be going to prison’. To stay in business he needed a licence from the Security Industry Association. With such a serious case hanging over him, this was withdrawn.
Meanwhile, his wife was also suffering. She made it clear to her bosses she was sure her husband was innocent and even sought – unsuccessfully – an audience with the Chief Constable. Instead of persuading the force to re-examine the case, she was told she was under investigation, accused of breaching police rules when she was at the very beginning of her service.
One charge was that she had been a director of a wine company while already in the force – although the firm never traded. Having taken weeks off work with stress, she returned in October 2013. To her relief she was told the charges against her had been dropped.
Then, on January 11, 2015, Mr Gilly made an official complaint about his treatment. The following day the investigation into his wife was reopened.
A few weeks later she left the force – ‘the job I’d wanted to do since I was at school’ – for good.
To friends and colleagues, looked like sheer vindictiveness.
Former PC Natalie Devaney, her Police Federation rep, said: ‘ Of course her treatment was connected to Juan’s case. She was challenging them, and that meant they had to get her.
‘She was a casualty of a culture in which senior officers were determined to protect themselves.’
A defiant Mrs Gilly was allowed
to defend her husband in court. ‘It was enjoyable, in a weird sort of way. It was personal. This was about my husband, the father of my kids, facing a lengthy prison term.’
When Judge Onions dismissed the case, she said: ‘We didn’t really celebrate. We just went home, made a cup of tea, said to each other, “Phew, that’s over.” ’
Except, of course, that it wasn’t. There was still the pepper spray incident to come. Mr Gilly said: ‘Apart from five months, I’ve spent the past five years on bail for things I didn’t do.’ Having received damages for the earlier case, he is now suing the police again. Acquitted of the public order charge, he was found guilty and fined £120 for driving without reasonable consideration because he overtook the police van on the wrong side of the road. He intends to appeal, pointing out that on a single carriageway it is impossible to overtake in any other way.
So why did the police go to such extraordinary lengths to victimise the couple? Mrs Gilly said: ‘We’ve racked our brains about this for years and we simply can’t believe it was just incompetence. There has to be a reason. The only one we’ve been able to come up with is that the person who first lied to officers about Juan had some kind of special relationship with someone senior in the force, and even after it was clear he was lying, was being protected.’
The couple’s solicitor, Carolyn Gallwey, a partner at police malpractice specialists Bhatt Murphy, said: ‘Staffordshire Police came close to destroying Juan and Julie Gilly’s lives by pursuing a prosecution based on a tissue of lies. The IPCC must get to the bottom of what is happening in this force.’
Deputy Chief Constable Nick Baker said last night: ‘We endeavour to deliver an exceptional service and where we receive complaints we investigate thoroughly, are robust in our actions and processes, and lessons are learnt. Between April 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, the force received 181 complaints per 1,000 employees. This is in the bottom quarter of all 43 forces.’
He refused to comment on any of the cases mentioned in this article because they were being investigated. He added: ‘Our Chief Constable Jane Sawyers i s retiring after serving the communities of Staffordshire proudly for the last 33 years. After a long career she is exploring new ventures.’
‘Police nearly destroyed the lives of this couple’