As someone spotted in the comments section, the person in charge of the dreamfund (which we have received numerous complaints about – regarding money promised never turning up) has been caught trying to steal donuts from a Tesco Extra in Wisbech. This was in a police uniform, on his day job as a Cambridgeshire PC. This is just the latest case of a cop being less than above board whilst working for LR. We can think of at least 3 others right now – dishonesty, misrepresentation, fraud and ignoring illegality for conveniences’ sake. Anyone who has served with integrity in any organisation should be thoroughly disgusted by this kind of behaviour.
The worst news for all of us is that he appears in Lowland Rescue uniform on the pages of most of the national papers, and all of the local ones. The BBC also covers the story and shows The Pieman in LR hiviz, over his special ops covert tactical black. This picture appears in The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Times and The Mirror. There is a professional standards hearing this week, with Cambridgeshire Police stating that this “brings discredit upon the police service and undermines confidence in it because a reasonable member of the public, aware of all the facts, would be justifiably appalled that a police officer had acted dishonestly and without integrity”.
The questions remaining are:-
- Will LR consider this to be bringing the charity into disrepute? It should beggar belief that the police can sanction someone for dishonesty and LR would turn a blind eye. However, there are sadly numerous cases of people doing the wrong thing in and out of LR uniform and being actually rewarded, so maybe don’t hold your breath.
- Does this explain where some or all the dreamfund money went? Or was that spent on legal fees, trying to stitch up the previous chairman? Or a bit of both? A report was commissioned and promised when Dr Piers Page & James Rossell were booted out into what they did with all the cash, but so far this has been quietly buried. Some transparency would certainly put all the rumours / remaining questions to bed here…