Police involvement in RAF Air Accidents
 

I've been out of the air force for 15 years, now, but you never lose your interest in it, do you? (That's not the question I want answered!)

During my time I was, like most pilots, occasionally involved in BoIs into accidents and incidents, both as board member and as witness. We never had any involvement by the civilian police. Now it seems SOP. My question is: Why do they now routinely get involved? What changed and when? It seems a waste of police resources when the RAF BoI is running concurrently with the police investigation. I can't imagine they have sufficient technical knowledge (although if they are to investigate LIBOR fixing, I acknowledge they must have some clever people) and it doubles the burden on the witnesses and can delay the BoI getting their hands on the physical evidence.

I have no agenda, please let's have no rants for or against. I just want to know why a good system was changed.

It's probably down to the AP .....................Arse Protection :eek:

Well from one of these emergency exercises as a civi. Unless you have been on one of these exercises and have had the brief by plod its not routeinly briefed to civi pilots what the process is.

Most pilot unions brief that in the event of an accident keep you mouth well and truely shut until you have legal representation this goes for both company and police questioning.

They reckon all aircraft crashes are the scene of a crime until proven otherwise. Be it external ie terroist or semi external ie negligence by an external agency ie F16 crash cairngorms.

So they have to treat the whole thing as a crime with evidence being documented and processed and also witness statements etc. All have a trail incase of a prosecution. Then when its decided that there is no criminal case they stop. If there are deaths involved they have to continue to have a finger in the pie until the coroner/fiscal resolves any issues.

Its to note though that the process in Scotland is quite a bit different to england and wales.

If you look else where on the board you will see the fall out from the Helios crash.

To add it was not my intention to imply that the cairngorm accident was actually due to negligence more that the police had to inform the fiscal of there investigation which they did, in case of criminal proccedings. I apologise for any offense taken by anyone. I have always maintained that the pilot is always responsable for terrain seperation what ever service you are under and whatever class of airspace you are in.

What good system would that be, keith? If you are thinking of that of the BoI, whereby the operator, RAF or whoever, investigates its own accidents after a Board President has been "briefed" by his/her superiors, all of which was under the auspices of the Regulator, ie the MOD, then "good" would be the last adjective I would reach for. I will be swiftly reminded that the Military Investigation system is now under the auspices of the "independent" MAAIB, to which I would respond, "pull the other one, mate".
This forum is littered with threads based on Military Aircraft Accidents, most fatal, which were never thoroughly investigated because their respective BoI's were not free to do so. Unless and until they are free, ie the MAAIB is free and independent of the MOD, this forum will continue to be so littered as accidents are doomed to repetition having been subject of a compromised investigation system.
The Police? No idea, other than they are as disinterested in past suborning of Regulations as is the RAF Provost Marshal. Move along now, nothing happening here, we've all got homes to go to...

Just a word of advice - don't trust the civilian police when they are investigating an incident

They are quite capable of holding a press conference and making all sorts of statements before the facts are in and they leak like a sieve to the media.

Essentially no-one has any control over them

As one ex policeman pilot I flew with said

"tell them f**k all, they get payed to investigate, you don't get payed to help them do there job"

"they can and will turn you over if it suits them for either personel or political reasons. Your words will be used against you even if its obvious that they were said at a time of high stress when you won't be thinking straight"

"I just want to know why a good system was changed."

In my view the old system was “good” , i.e better than the present-day, for two reasons:

Firstly, because there was no corrosive Compensation Culture and its associated lust for vindictive penalties against any individual or any organisation which could possibly have influenced the accident. When you see the sums paid out by MoD for relatively trivial incidents these days, it makes you wonder how there is any money left for actual defence.

Secondly, and most importantly, deaths in service in peacetime training were generally accepted as the norm and would barely make the headlines – a natural consequence of operating high-performance military hardware in Cold War training scenarios. The Wittering village churchyard contains the graves of at least 10 Harrier pilots whom I knew personally. Other Wittering pilots’ graves are located elsewhere.

As another example, 1BR Corps in Germany normally expected at least half a dozen fatalities (and scores of serious injuries) per major summer exercise. Compare that attitude with the hysterical breast-beating that goes on nowadays with the loss of any service person in an accident.

I’m not saying that attitude was good or bad – it’s just a fact.

I accept that the old BoI system was vulnerable to pressure from very senior officers hoping to avoid blame. As to how often that occurred, then I am not so sure. In my experience of old-style BoIs, they came up with the right answers more often than not. We changed procedures/equipment where possible and got on with the job.

In the old system, to avoid pressure of rank on the President, as soon as it was suspected that a relatively senior officer (Wing Commander or Group Captain) was likely to be blamed, then the authorities sent in a new President who outranked the suspected officer.

All of this was done relatively quickly, the Post-Accident 48 hour signal giving a best guess into what had happened (without prejudice to the eventual findings), thus forestalling immediate repeats of the same accident. Nowadays this does not seem to happen. There is an information blackout and aircrews are left waiting for months before there is a hint of what actually happened and who was to blame. Rumour takes over, with predictable effects on morale.

eMM:
Well that works up to those relatively junior levels. What has emerged in this Forum however is that the "rot" went much higher, ie VSOs who issued illegal orders to suborn the Airworthiness Regulations were of 2* rank and above. No-one wants to look at that, here or elsewhere, it seems. While we all tut tut and talk of honour the UK Military Accident Investigation system remains compromised and dysfunctional. That means that more lives will be needlessly lost. You may put that down to the price of preparedness, I put it down to the price of corruption.
I am old enough to remember the "old system". It worked because good men (invariably men in those days) did their duty and put it above personal ambition. In retrospect I now see that was the only bulwark that made it work. I do not think we can rely on that happening in future as it has certainly failed to since the 1980s. Banking, Journalism, Medicine, Policing, Aviation, etc; all face a common fact:
Self Regulation Does Not Work, and in Aviation it Kills!

Chuggers and Ex Mudder - both very good summaries which I think accurately represent the current situation. I also remember the 'old days' and believed that the 'good men' were generally doing their best to learn lessons and prevent a recurrence - it never crossed my mind that anyone would act otherwise.

In many ways it would be nice to reset many facets of our 'modern and progressive' society and restore those sort of values. It ain't going to happen while corruption and deception is endemic in public institutions and commercial organisations. The buck stops right at the top - Palace of Westminster.

However, in answer to Keith L, no-one has really addressed what I think he's asking:

a. Who has primacy in law concerning military aviation accidents in the UK?
b. Does the law differ in Scotland?
c. Does it matter whether the accident is over the sea (topical), over common land, or confined to the MoD estate?
d. Has the investigatory primacy issue changed in the last 20 years, if so, when and why?

Sorry Keith if I'm misrepresenting your query, feel free to correct me. I don't pretend to know the accurate answers so I'm not going to BS you.

Also interested in the replies of those experts on here who will have the correct answers from the Post-Crash Management document! I failed to obtain a copy of same when I walked out the gates for the last time. :rolleyes:

TS

Another factor which has changed the face of accident investigation must be the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). It was this which enabled the families of deceased, for the first time, to see the BOI reports. In most, if not all, of the bad accidents since then, starting with the Chinook MOK accident, it has been the families who have created to pressure for a thorough and fair investigation. In most cases, this has been in the face of lies and smokescreens by senior officers and ministers of the crown which have led to justice for the families being delayed. Usually it has taken immense courage and bloodymindedness from a few family members to get to the truth and, if having an independent input from the Police helps in that process, I am all for it.

Thanks, TS, for pulling the conversation back to my query. You've even broken it down into specific questions, which are indeed what I'm wondering about.

But really, its WHY? Does it go back to mishandled military investigations (perhaps in the army) in the past?

I'll add that in my experience, the old system WAS good, but I won't go into that as I hope everyone will stick to the subject, including me!

I used to feel the same way but for me, that all changed with what I saw as a gross miscarriage of justice over the Mull of Kintyre Chinook accident. As soon as I read the abridged BOI report it was very obvious what had occurred; i.e. "the system" was protecting "the system" at the expense of the deceased. The slurs put on the crew were outrageous in view of the debacle of the Mk2 Chinook's lack of airworthiness when it was forced into service. Thank goodness it was eventually all put right.

Since then I've seen "the system" fail to mention the full training history of the captain of another high profile RAF accident. Having done so might well have attracted criticism of the RAF's ability to properly manage and monitor personnel throughout their flying career. The pilot in question was put in a position where he needed skills that he had previously shown to have had fundamental difficulties with during his basic training. Not only that, but he was allowed to push the envelope of the aircraft too far and another tragic accident occurred.

Just two examples I can recall (I remember them because I was involved in earlier training of pilots in both those accidents). I think it's a very good thing that accident investigation is done independently. After all, we would be horrified if airlines were allowed to do their own accident investigations. For obvious reasons.

Keith, I take your point and feel suitably chastised, but your OP stated that the "old" system was good, and you have repeated that claim above. That is why I challenged it, for it was never "good" as it could be subverted from within and from above and then not be able to resist. It was only ever "good" when it was served by good men. As soon as bad men set out to distort its process it became unreliable and suspect. The Police had nothing to do with it, and as pulse1 says, any independent objective input is to be welcome.
That I'm afraid is the answer to your query, though it may not be the one that you are looking for, as independent objective output is a sine qua non in Aviation Accident Investigation. That means an independent MAAIB, both of the MOD and of the MAA, which must also be independent. The Police may well feel the same, hence their increased interest in UK Military Air Accident Investigations until reform happens.

Sorry if it's been answered already, I think plod are involved in Fatal accident or incidents as they are the Coronors' representative or something like that

A crash scene is a crime scene. I am sure that the military cannot go near an aircraft wreckage until the police clear them to do so. That includes a crash on a military airfield. This was drummed into us on some crash scene officers course I did years ago. When the plod turn up at the gate, THEY have juristiction, however we were also told that they usually can't wait to hand it over as it is way to difficult to administer.
At a fatal crash overseas on ops that I was supervisor for, I tried to get to the aircraft to remove very sensitive comms documents. The redcaps would not let any of us near the scene for 3 days.

I recently got the answer from a 'senior' within the MAA. It is, as fabs states, all to do with fatal or non-fatal and, I believe secondary, whether the accident/incident happened on or off Crown Property.

Foldie:bored:

Chug2, let's admit your suggestion, for the sake of argument, that the old system was flawed. If it was biased in favour of "their airships", they would be unlikely to invite the plods in. So it must have come from politicians. So what event, or process, gave them the ammunition they needed to get the hierarchy to let in the police. And remember, their participation did not do away with BoIs, it was additional.

Just briefly, hoping not to drift my own thread, in my experience BoIs were good, carried out by those who knew the nut & bolts of what they were investigating. They only got corrupted when complete, signed off, and handed to higher authority. All right, they aren't really complete until they have the CinCs remarks, but when I talk about "The Board", I mean the originators of the report.

leithl,

Another possible reason is that, these days, many of the aircraft operated by the RAF are civilian registered.

Out of interest if the civilian police were involved, which in a lot of military items would be well over their heads, what happens when classified items become involved?

Keith, the BoI system was not biased in favour of anybody or anything, other than to discover the reasons why an accident happened and what should be done to avoid a recurrence. It was the Airships of which you speak, or at least a number of them, that ensured bias by directly subverting them when they thought it necessary for whatever reasons.
As to the BoIs themselves they were only as good as the information to hand. Mull is an excellent example of this, as has been pointed out already. Although the BoI did not produce the finding required of it (some moral courage at work there I would surmise) it still did not investigate what is now generally regarded as a major factor in, and possibly cause of the crash of Chinook HC2 ZD576, ie its Gross Unairworthiness. It did not do so, probably because it was ordered not to, and certainly the man best qualified to inform the Board of the UFCMs and FADEC u/c runups, rundowns, and shutdowns, Sqn Ldr Burke (the Odiham TP), was not called and was ordered not to approach the Board when he expressed his wish to give evidence.
The problem about BoIs is that the system can shut down on them, and they become the proverbial mushroom farm. No matter how sincerely they try to do their duty (and I'm sure that they invariably do), if the RAF/MOD wants/ doesn't want a particular outcome then it, and not the BoI, will prevail. That's no way to run Air Accident Investigation, civilian or military, because more people die.

I wonder if a civilian police involvement has contributed to the apparent delay in the announcement or release of findings of the two regrettable Red Arrows incidents last year?

See here for JSP 832 - Guide to Service Inquiries

http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E46A9...2/0/jsp832.pdf

See 1.19 and 1.20 c

Now that IS helpful, flipster, thanks very much!

However, while it clarifies the current rules (which answers a large part of my question) it doesn't tell us what prompted the "police primacy" policy. I'm fairly sure that in my day the police would be called in if there was a need, but not as SOP. Did it come from politicians? The police? Surely not the RAF itself. Can anyone help with that? Is there a History-of-Air Force-Legal-Procedures scholar out there?

Any accident scene is a potential crime scene and therefore the police have primacy, even on-base. As far as I know they always have done. They also retain primacy even after the site has been handed over to the military. An earlier poster said that the police are quick to try to hand over a crash site to the military once they are satisfied that it was just an accident. I have experienced that, at one of the 2 crashes for which I have been the MOD Incident Officer, but the police still retained overal control. My experiences are getting a bit dated now, 1994 and 2003, but although the site had been handed over to me, local plod still made regular visits to the site, and I had to touch base with the police when the military vacated the site.

I can't comment on concurrent police investigations as that never figured as part of my job.

I recall an fatal accident at a Norfolk radar station in about 1985, and the civil police never came near, and Aunty Joan asked me to go to the gate and invite the Health and Safety Exec guy who turned up to take up sex and travel. ISTR a short MOD Plod investigation and a BoI. I often wonder if Cpl M L H's ashes were ever disinterred from Scottow Cemetery (where the padre parked them when he got fed up with the urn on his bookshelf) and scattered where either the former Mrs H, or the to-be Mrs H wanted them. The two ladies could not agree on a final resting place.

The Mull Chinook crash is a good case study around which to discuss these points.
Firstly, “TheSmiter” ‘s question ‘b’ (does the law differ in Scotland?):
In Scotland at the time, any such fatal accident could be subject to a FAI and the Procurator Fiscal (of the time) rigorously pursued this;
However, in England it was such that a purely military flight would not be subject to such “civvy” authority investigation – and all sorts of pressure was applied to the Proc Fisc to stop his inquiry;
Eventually, that there was one civilian passenger on board removed the MOD obstacle – but one has to ponder that if not for this, for the first couple of years at least, all that the public would have had would have been the demonstrably inadequate BOI.

From the Summary in my submission to Lord Philip’s Review last year:
<< Further to the analysis aspect, an important deficiency became apparent in the processes of investigation used by the authorities for a politically sensitive crash – that was that civil authorities were overly dependent upon the RAF for information on the aircraft's systems and pertinent operational procedures such that it was apparently easy for the RAF to obfuscate where it wanted equipment and procedures to remain out of the public domain.>>

So I would further say that not only must an independent authority be involved but they must have at their disposal independent pilots and avionics/nav experts to do the analysis and advise them re pertinent questions in any inquiry.

That the RUC didn’t wade in somehow at the time astounded me.

Incident officer course! That was the one. Many military people have tried to 'outrank' the plod and claim a scene. They soon learn.......

I stand to be corrected here but in the UK at least I was always of the opinion that the Civil Authorities had to be called in to investigate:

Murder
Manslaughter
Treason
Treason Felony
Rape

This has always been and no date always will be even if this is a suspicious death at a Top Secret Radar Station...

It is no good waiting a few weeks to decide if an offence may or may not have been committed, The forensic evidence needs to be preserved right from the 'get go!'

A crashed aircraft may or may not fall into that category and until the facts are established then is it not better to err on the side of caution? ...

Just to put that one to rest we need to define "Always". Let me provide two data points. One: In April 1983, I was part of a BoI investigating a JP crash at Elvington. We never saw a policeman from beginning to end. Had we suspected a crime, e.g. sabotage, we would have asked for an RAFP investigation. If that sabotage looked like attempted murder, we'd have passed that aspect of it to the civil police. Neither was the case, and there was NO police involvement.

Data Point 2. Last year's Red Arrows ground ejection investigation was, I understand, delayed while the BoI waited for the Civ Police to release the seat to them. What the police would have made of an ejection seat I cannot imagine, but that's when I first learnt about "Police Primacy".

Now, between those two dates something changed. The organisation of the RAF has changed out of all recognition in that time, I know. So I repeat my original question. When and Why did this "Police Primacy" phenomenon occur?

Walter Kennedy's helpful contribution indicates it was subsequent to the MoK Chinook, which sounds right. Was that accident the catalyst for the change, or was there something else?

Nothing has changed and your imagination is being very blinkered regarding any unexplained death.

I can assure you that the RAFP in the UK have NEVER been authorised to investigate fully the above offences. Not in your time nor at any time of the RAF in the UK.....

I am NOT repeat NOT.... going to speculate why the civil police may have been called in for that last example you cited and hopefully nor will anyone else.

At this moment in time I believe a Royal Navy Petty officer is appearing in a British Civil Court charged with offences against the Official Secrets Act. The secrets were no doubt obtained on UK military property but no way will they be dealt with by the military and the same applies for any soldier of RAF personnel... It would have been the same if it had been a suspicious death... Note the word suspicious.. these things have to be investigated.

Going off on a tangent do the RAF have the forensic capability to comply with all the very latest collection and preservation of evidence? I would be VERY surprised if they have but that is me going off on my tangent.

Easy answer to the OP is that "It's the law, innit?"

The Civil Aviation (Investigation of Air Accidents and Incidents) Regulations 1996 (Civil ac)

or

The Civil Aviation (Investigation of Military Air Accidents at Civil Aerodromes) Regulations 2005 (Mil ac)

So, since at least 1996, there has been a requirement in UK law to inform the Police at the earliest opportunity.

glojo, I must respond to your "nothing has changed". The JP crash I referred to was not fatal, perhaps I should have made that clear. Your list of offences it was mandatory for the Civil Authorities to investigate was true in my time, also. That is why I chose my hypothetical crimes as I did. Sabotage is not on your list, murder is.

Your 3rd para "not going to speculate on why the civ police were "called in" is missing the point. They weren't "called in" they were acting in accordance with "police primacy", which is what this discussion is about.

To narrow the window for the change, I was involved in 3 BoIs as a Station Flight Safety Officer 1992/3. The Police were not involved in the slightest.

Pulse1


" Another factor which has changed the face of accident investigation must be the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). It was this which enabled the families of deceased, for the first time, to see the BOI reports. In most, if not all, of the bad accidents since then, starting with the Chinook MOK accident, it has been the families who have created to pressure for a thorough and fair investigation."

I fear that merely passing on the raw details of BoI findings to bereaved families will not always help – unless those families are given access to experts (in the MOK case, non-interested Chinook aircrew and engineers), with a brief to translate the findings into lay person’s terms and answer questions as to how flying operations are carried out in practice.

I have seen how families react to BoI findings and in my view it is too much to expect the lay person to understand the finer points of Airmanship, for example. It would need to be explained that aircrew, like the captains of ships, are always ultimately responsible for the safe navigation of their aircraft – to avoid flying into high ground in cloud for example.

If the aircrew concerned are having to deal with a major emergency at the same time then in my view that does not absolve them from the duty of safe navigation. ( I leave aside the tricky question of being flown into the ground under close Radar Control – it nearly happened to me once.)

Each aircraft type has a different procedure for encountering unsuitable weather at low level, depending on aircraft performance – specifically, the angle of climb which can be achieved and maintained to clear any perceived obstacle ahead. If there is any doubt that a safe flight path cannot be maintained all the way to Safety Altitude then the only option is to turn away from the high ground and climb on a known safe track. In the MOK incident that heading would presumably have been a westerly one.

Hi Keithl,
Are we in violent agreement here as to me I

Sabotage can be dealt with by the military.. Sabotage in the UK which results in a suspicious death cannot, UNTIL the cause of death is established.

Whether they were acting in accordance with "police primacy" might be splitting hairs?? How did the Police find out about any incident? The instant they are informed, the chances are they will be committed to investigate? The only people aware of the incident are the military, they then are the informing authority.

Clearly when we hear about a Board of Investigation being held in the UK without Police involvement, then a decision has been made that no criminal act was involved.. I am certainly NOT suggesting no criminal act was committed but I am suggesting the decision was probably made at 'Flag' level that no criminal act was responsible for the death.

I am in the same room as Chugalug regarding this issue.

Hallo glojo.

Well I wouldn't go as far as that;), but I'm quite willing for you to substitute another hypothetical crime which the Board might ask the RAFP to investigate.

My main aim in discussion with you is to establish that automatic police investigation, as opposed to response has not "always been". Other posters appear to confirm that. There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that "police primacy" is a relatively new thing. For example when I did the UFSO course on dealing with air accidents, police involvement was covered, but without mention of investigative "primacy" which would surely have been stressed.

I have a private view on whether or not it is a good thing, but take no position here on that. Indeed, it is to calibrate my private opinion that I am trying to establish what drove the change. For example, "a climate of opinion following the Mull of Kintyre investigation". That would help me understand the current position.

Hi Keith,
Are you suggesting that there have been examples of a suspicious death in a military base in the UK where the civil power has not been informed? Or indeed treason,treason felony, manslaughter or rape.

I am simply saying that as far as I am aware these offences have always been dealt with in exactly the same manner, the civil authority has to be informed which in turn will result in the local constabulary being the investigative authority.

Regards
John

No, John, I'm not saying that at all. Perhaps we even agree and have been at cross-purposes. Everything you say about those major crimes is true. If we can package that up and put it to one side, we can go on to talk about military aircraft crashes.

My 1983 example was intended to illustrate how things used to work. We, the Board, turned up to find a pile of wreckage on MoD property, and two pilots in hospital. The police knew it had happened, but merely logged it. Now, at that moment, it is non-fatal and we go about our investigation. A crash scene is NOT, back then, a crime scene. We find a defective component. Has a crime been committed? We think "No", so we don't inform any police RAF or Civvy. We could, in theory have missed evidence of sabotage.

Now, the crew. In fact the crew recovered, but suppose after a week, one of them had died. We now have a fatal accident, or do we have a crime? The board will come to a conclusion, probably pass it up the line, and the decision re. the police will be made. The evidence has now been removed, so if we want the police to investigate, that may be a problem.

I don't want to drag this out, glojo, but can you see what I'm driving at? The difference is nowadays, the police DO assume the crash scene is the crime scene and so their investigation starts immediately.

Does that clarify things?

Keith

Edited to add: If we go back to the '60s, there were so many Hunters, Meteors, Swifts, etc dropping out of the sky that the police would have been overwhelmed if they'd had to assume a crime every time. That is one reason why the assumption used to be "Accident. Leave it to the RAF."

I am surprised that no one so far has mentioned two significant factors that may have a bearing on post accident procedures:

A. The loss of Crown Immunity
b. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

Investigation of any suspected cases under the latter are the responsibility of the police. Therefore it would seem appropriate for the civilian police to keep at least a watching brief on any investigation into a fatal accident or even assume a more active role in seeking to preserve evidence.

YS

:DHi Keith,
We certainly do agree and yes I agree with you.