Zayna Iman’s memory of her 40 hours in police custody comes back in flashes. What she does remember has haunted her for nearly three years.
The 39-year-old believes she was drugged and raped in her cell before being left naked and distressed on the floor, cowering under a blanket and so disorientated she urinated on herself.
Her quest for answers over what happened at Pendleton police station is subject of an IOPC investigation that has so far raised only more questions.
This is despite Zayna being handed dozens of pages of documents and police CCTV containing hour upon hour of distressing film - but, crucially, two are still missing.
Greater Manchester Police had initially told her that all cell footage had been reviewed, and there was no evidence to support her rape allegations.
Then the force told her several hours had been ‘corrupted’ and were not recoverable.
The IOPC began investigating and soon discovered the film ‘was never downloaded’, that GMP gave her false information and denied she had been strip-searched. It is now examining why.
corruption of evidence controlled by the party alleged to have done the crime should always be taken as an admission of guilt. Don’t want to be assumed guilty? Get better data systems, especially if it seems to only happen at key moments.
They know what it looks like. They always know everybody knows what actually happened. It’s obvious they are just covering their rapist asses because nobody can technically prove it, which is the point. They can accept the social backlash, they can’t accept jail time.
No matter the country, no matter the time period, no matter the circumstances, never forget the universal truth: Blue Lives Don’t Matter. Fuck The Police.
ACAB!
The data systems are probably fine. Police departments use VMS, ACS and PSIM systems that have audit trails built in.
This is user error/ ignorance/ intentional ignorance.
Edit I guess I shouldn’t comment on backwater 3rd world counties. I live in an urban center and they are all kitted out here.
The oversight body, that acts outside the rapist precinct, says it cannot produce the 2 hours of video in question, even after sending drives off to forensics teams and scouring backups. They also have not provided answers as to why these specific 2 x 1 hour video blocks out of 40hrs, where the victim has clearly been recently drugged and was most likely raped, were not downloaded with the rest of the videos. They have also not given the victim any information about who opted not to download these videos, or who claimed they were “corrupted” initially.
They may have records, as they can clearly see that the videos in question were specifically excluded from from disclosure by the cops, but they won’t tell the victim who opted to let those very important hours be overwritten.
She has been trying to get justice for 43 months. The oversight commitee finally took the case on 13 months ago when she released her story to the press. They were aware of a complaint she filed in 2022, but took no action, claiming her latest complaint, I.E press coverage, “brought new issues to light.”
She still doesn’t have answers.
Yup I had a thought about this. If they have appliance based recorders, tampering is a much more simple thing. If they “sent the drives off” this is probably the case, it wouldn’t make sense to disassemble a server RAID to perform forensics.
They initially said that the had 4 discs, and one “corrupted,” which just so happened to lose the most important 2 hrs out of the 40. Any raid except 0 would survive a loss of one disc, and 0 would lose all data, not just 5% of it. This sounds more like a JBOD config than RAID, which would be very stupid setup for data retention.
The oversight committee found that the “corruption” excuse was a lie, and instead that the person who “complied” with the requirement to hand over video opted to not download the most important 2hrs that would prove definitely either way if she was drugged and raped.
After being stonewalled and lied to by the precient for 2.5 years, she went to the press and suddenly the oversight committee started to do its job. After all the time that has passed, the data has likely been overwritten normally for too long to recover it.
The cops got exactly what they wanted. Some of them drugged and raped her, then the others covered it up by intentionally failing to do their jobs, lying about it over and over again for years, and letting time take its course. The oversight committee helped out by ignoring her complaint until the government and press forced it to act, and now is slow rolling the investigation to make sure that nothing happens to the rapist cops and their enablers.
As always, even in the UK, ACAB.
“Mistakes” happen far to often not to be intentional.
Nonono, be more specific. If the cops do it, then yes. If other grand/mass surveillance things do this, then yes.
But this could just as easily be taken as “You had your phone with you and didn’t record during the time of the crime? Sucks to be you!”
Yes, this should be the law, not just a good idea. Cops should be presumed guilty until proven innocent in every case where their actions are supposed to be recorded.