‘This is mendacity of the highest order’: Northants chief constable accused of being a ‘dodgy police officer’ at disciplinary hearing
The gross misconduct hearing of chief constable Nick Adderley continued today, although the suspended officer did not turn up
By Sarah Ward
“What happened here and what happened in Macbeth is, if you start to tell lies it eventually unravels. He told too many lies.” John Beggs KC
Suspended Northants chief constable Nick Adderley was accused of being a ‘dodgy police officer’ at his re-continued gross misconduct hearing this morning.
During the closing statements of the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commisioner’s case against the county’s top cop, John Beggs KC put forward a series of accusations against Adderley, 57, who faces the end of his police career if he is found to have lied on his CV and misrepresented his naval career.
Adderley, who took charge of the force in 2018, denied through his defence counsel the allegations made against him at the first three days of the hearing (which took place last month), but did not attend today’s hearing at the Marriott hotel in Northampton.
Chair of the panel Callum Cowx, who will make the final decision about Adderley’s fate, said he had excused the chief constable from attending today, but had told him he expects him to be at tomorrow’s hearing when a ruling is expected.
In his closing statement John Beggs argued why Adderley, who has been suspended on full pay since October, should not be believed, saying he had a ‘flawed personality’ and that during earlier attempts to justify his actions ‘lies are falling from his mouth’.
Adderley is facing charges that he falsified his CV when applying to become Northants chief constable in the summer of 2018 and instead of serving for ten years in the navy as he had claimed, he served two. His CV had boasted he had reached the rank of naval Commander and had also been educated at the world renowned Dartmouth College, but fact checking by investigators proved both these claims to be false. Instead he held the lowest rank of able seaman.
In a blistering and withering take down of Adderley’s defence, which was given in interview to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, John Beggs accused Adderley of ‘sustained mendacity over a lengthy period and for personal aggrandisement’ and of ‘distributing lies’.
He said he had been the one who had created a ‘false legend’ and to suggest as Adderley has done that others had mistakenly attributed naval success to him was ‘unedifying’ from a chief constable
Central to the case against Adderley is his repeated wearing of the South Atlantic medal - an honour awarded to those who served in the Falklands War. Adderley would have been 15 at the time of the conflict and could not have served.
When he was first challenged about the medal in July last year by Paul Fell, a director in the OFPCC office, he said he was deployed to the war zone straight after his basic training, but then in an email days later he said the medal belonged to his older brother Rick. However during the hearing it has become clear that Rick did not serve in the conflict but went to the island months later. He also did not become eligible for a Falklands medal until 2015, and did not apply for one until October last year - days after Nick Adderley was served with gross misconduct papers.
John Beggs told the hearing that Adderley started to wear a South Atlantic medal in 2009, when he was a superintendent at Cheshire Police.
“Why start wearing a South Atlantic medal? We suggest that what he was doing was putting a toe in the water. ‘Can I get away with a little bit of deceit, ingenuity, a charade?”
He said from 2011 Adderley was ‘distributing lies’.
During his one hour submission the KC, referenced the various newspaper articles since that time that mentioned Adderley’s naval career, as well as books he had contributed to. Northants Police’s own communications had also mentioned his Falklands service.
The newspaper articles had referenced the senior police officer’s apparent long term, illustrious naval career, but Adderley’s defence had been that the articles were wrong and he had not corrected them because he had not seen them.
John Beggs dismissed this as implausible and said it was ‘utterly preposterous’ that the newspaper journalist at the Manchester Evening News who wrote one of the articles would have concocted the story and promoted Adderley.
He said:
“All too easy to say it must be dodgy journalists, but the sad truth is it is a dodgy police officer, not dodgy journalists.”
Illustrating Adderley’s interest in his own public image, John Beggs referred the chair to an email sent to the OFPCC’s chief executive days before he took up post in 2018, in which he asked for his photograph on his biography to be changed. In the email he wrote:
“I get that I am no George Clooney, but I hate that picture in my bio. That’s what four hours sleep gets you.”
In the same email he said that Adderley had falsely stated that his naval service was ten years and a few months.
Boiling down the case against Adderley he said:
“What happened here and what happened in Macbeth is, if you start to tell lies it eventually unravels. He told too many lies.”
The hearing heard for the first time that Rick Adderley had given evidence to say the medal, which he then apparently gave to his brother, had been given to him in the mess hall when he was in the South Atlantic.
John Beggs said:
“This is utterly preposterous. It is a pack of lies in which unfortunately a chief constable has engaged.”
He added:
“This is a complete confection.”
(In the earlier days of the hearing, a medals expert had said the medal worn by Adderley was a fake. Due to a mix up the medal has since been disposed of).
Adderley has refused to give evidence in person at the hearing, claiming that this is due to possible criminal charges being considered by crown prosecutors.
But John Beggs dismissed this suggestion, instead claiming that he did not want to be questioned on his evidence because ‘it is full of preposterous submissions’. He said some of Adderley’s explanations for errors in his CV - such as that he had included attending Dartmouth College because it was an ambition rather than the truth- ‘borders on satire.’
He continued:
“He realised it would have been a car crash.”
In contrast to John Beggs lengthy closing statements, Adderley’s lawyer Matthew Holdcroft kept it short and did not go through the various reasons the senior officer had given in interview.
He said the OFPCC’s legal counsel had the burden of proving the case against Adderley and evidence against the senior officer was lacking.
“Suggesting that it’s a clever contrived lie is demonstrably untrue because no clever liar would be setting themselves up to fail so spectacularly.”
He also said it would be entirely wrong for the chair to draw inferences from the police officer’s refusal to give evidence in person.
The panel retired before midday and is due to make a decision tomorrow. If Adderley is found guilty of gross misconduct he will be sanctioned.
I concur with all comments made by Simon Tilley. However, the cost of this hearing and the recruitment of Adderley and the new Chief Fire Officer Nicci Watson is down to Stephen Mold. He needs to be called to account by the present Commissioner. Both Confirmation Hearing which I attended, Mold repeatedly said that their were his choice. This despite Adderley CV and Watson being under investigation.
While Beggs KC was right this is bordering on satire, listening to it makes you want to laugh for how gullible Adderley thinks people are to fall for these lies upon lies.
The whole family just make it up as they go along but lack the wits to remember what they have lied about.
The deeper issue is that someone this profoundly stupid uttering and relying on such preposterous lies, can only have approached his police work in much the same way, bending rules and evidence with no regard to if this was credible or not.
If and when Adderley is sacked tomorrow, I fear this will not be the end of matters, it will just be the start of a much bigger can of worms.