A firearms whistleblower who warned poor police vetting could lead to dangerous people getting guns was bullied and unfairly dismissed by a force, a tribunal has found.
Tim Lumb was shocked by the poor standards he witnessed upon joining the firearms licensing unit at Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in a civilian role after 15 years as an officer with Derbyshire Police.
The unit was trying to overhaul its system for reviewing the backgrounds of gun licence applicants, as well as existing licence holders, after police inspectors found “inadequacies” in 2015.
However, over an 18-month period, Mr Lumb claimed he witnessed colleagues fail to carry out basic checks, including on names and addresses which would potentially unearth domestic violence reports or police intelligence linking individuals to organised crime.
He saw “important information being missed” through inadequate searches on telephone records, as well as GP letters, which could contain important mental health information, not being added to an individual’s file for vetting purposes.
Mr Lumb said one colleague was “spending time on his mobile phone running his own business”, a tribunal was told.
“When you first see it, you think, ‘Oh, it’s a mistake’ and then that mistake keeps getting repeated,” Mr Lumb told The Telegraph.
“Eventually, you get to the stage where the house is on fire, you’re shouting ‘fire!’ and nobody is listening.”
As his frustration and incredulity mounted,...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...