# Hamish Campbell

The investigative review Operation Grange commenced in May 2011 under the leadership of the then commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson. A murder team within the Homicide and Serious Crime Command was tasked to conduct the review and is led by Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood acting to Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell and Commander Simon Foy.

06 Apr. 2013 →The Mirror, Police chief Peter Spindler quits Operation Yewtree celebrity sex abuse inquiry for watchdog role: “Scotland Yard commander Peter Spindler has dramatically quit in the middle of the high-profile investigation into Jimmy Savile and other celebrities, the Sunday People reports. The decision has surprised insiders who expected Spindler to see Operation Yewtree through to the finish. He had overseen a string of high-profile arrests, including Freddie Starr, 70, Jim Davidson, 59, and Max Clifford, 70. But last week Spindler began a two-year secondment to the police watchdog Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the investigative website Exaro and the Sunday People have learned. Det Chief Supt Hamish Campbell, who led the Jill Dando murder inquiry, has temporarily been put in charge of Yewtree. Spindler, a politics graduate from Warwick university, was the public face of the Met’s investigation into Savile and famously said that the disgraced BBC presenter had “groomed the nation”. The Met’s report into Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84, revealed more than 200 criminal offences, including 34 rapes. But Spindler has faced criticism over the strategy of arresting people – 12 so far, including celebrities – when in some cases there appears to be insufficient evidence to bring charges. Spindler also had responsibility for Operations Fernbridge and Fairbank, investigating other high-profile figures allegedly linked to child abuse. A Met spokeswoman confirmed his departure, telling Exaro: “He has just decided to take up this new post,” adding, “That was his desire.”“

22 Jan. 2014 →DailyMail, Caribbean island gun police kill one civilian EVERY day: Calls for inquiry into claims of alleged 'death squads' on Jamaica: “A former Scotland Yard murder squad chief is already conducting an independent investigation into dozens of fatal police shootings in Jamaica – more than half of which are said to be suspicious. Ex Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell moved there six months ago, shortly after retiring from the Metropolitan Police. He describes the number of police killings on the island as ‘just incredible’. In response to claims of death squads in the Jamaica Constabulary Force he told the Mail there was a widespread belief that the police were killing people because they knew they wouldn’t get them into court….”

03 Feb. 2014, The Blacksmith Bureau →Manager Redwood, The Chosen One? “Why? Firstly, his appointment: you don't give a once-in-a-lifetime investigative review affecting the Yard's credibility to a nonentity but to someone with a track record. Secondly his performance: he effortlessly outshone Mr Campbell, his supposed superior, until the latter retired and began a well paid but doomed job in Jamaica, leaving Redwood apparently without a direct operational superior. Bad luck Hamish. Within a month of Campbell's departure the visits of the CPS to Portugal were announced followed by the transformation of the review into a full investigation and an increased budget. All talk from the head of the Yard about the need for the Grange squad “to justify itself” has ceased. In other words Redwood is in charge of his own strategy, complete with almost unprecedented freedom to manage the media his way. There has been not the slightest sign of unease in the home office or the Yard at the extraordinary Mirror/Mail led pseudo-leaks, his emasculation of BBC criticism and virtual takeover of Crimewatch and his apparent acceptance of the risks of such a forward policy, including the risk that his absence of reaction to the Mirror/Mail games might make the Yard look foolish. Mr Redwood has clearly convinced anyone who matters that his high-profile policy is going to bring results, not relegation, and that his absence of comment on the possible leaks is part of a plan….”

28 Apr. 2014 →Tony Bennett: “No doubt very much involved in these long drawn-out investigations was the current Director of Criminal Investigations at the Inland Revenue, one Roy Clark. He had previously and very controversially been appointed as the Director of Investigations for a 5-year-term on the setting up of the toothless Independent Police Complaints Commission on 1 April 2004. He had been the Deputy Director of the highly controverisal Met's Ghost Squad in the 1990s; it was riddled with corruption. By the time that Jill Dando was murdered, 15 years ago today, Roy Clark had got himself quietly but rapidly appointed to the dizzy heights of Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met - just two steps away from the then Commissioner, the ineffective Paul Condon. In November 1999, 7 months after Dando's killing, with the police not getting anywhere, Clark removed the existing S.I.O. and I.O. and put Brian Moore and Hamish Campbell in charge as S.I.O. and I.O. respectively. It was in May 2011 that Hamish Campbell was made the S.I.O. of Operation Grange - with Redwood as the I.O., beneath him. Why did Roy Clark make Brian Moore the S.I.O. in the Dando case? Could it have been because back in 1989, Moore was a central character at the corruption-infested Stoke Newington Police Station, where Ira Thomas was fitted up for the non-fatal shooting of Freddy Brett? - by specks of firearms residue being put in a coat pocket - the very same technique that appears to have been used to wrongly put Barry Bulsara in prison for 7 years for allegedly killing Jill Dando? a murder, incidentally, regularly covered by one Clarence Mitchell, then of the BBC, who regularly told BBC viewers that this was 'probably the work of a Serbian hit-man'. Hamish Campbell may also have been made the I.O. on the Dando investigation because of his work on the unprovoked assault by a riot police officer on John Wilson in Trafalgar Square in 1996, which left him brain-damaged. Despite CCTV footage clearly showing a stocky riot officer bashing Wilson over the head wih a baton, then standing over his apparently lifeless, bleeding body (he had suffered two fractures of the skull) before smartly running off, Campbell, with all the resources of the Met at his disposal, couldn't identify the officer. One Ian Horrocks was Hamish Campbell's assistant on this inquiry. Horrocks was later to write two substandard, indeed, woeful, reports on the Madeleine McCann case for Rupert Murdoch's the Sun in July 2012 and again on 14 October 2013, timed to coincide with the BBC CrimeWatch 'McCann Special'.”