Michael Lockwood has led Britain’s IOPC – a kind of police ombudsman – since the agency was established in 2018. But on Friday, an email to all employees in which he thanked them for their good work and announced that he was leaving his post “for personal reasons”, wrote The Times .
But over the weekend it emerged that Minister of the Interior Suella Braverman had urged him to stop on his own because he himself is being investigated for criminal acts.
“Otherwise, he would be suspended from his position with immediate effect,” Braverman writes in a statement in which she states that she herself learned at the end of the week that the investigation had found evidence against Lockwood.
According to The Times, the crime is said to have been committed in the 1980s, and which is being investigated by the Humberside police in the north-east of England without the knowledge of the investigating authority IOPC.
The incident is the latest in a series of high-profile cases in which British police officers are accused of crimes. Under Lockwood’s leadership, the IOPC has investigated a number of cases where police officers were suspected of racism, sexism, homophobia and abuse.
The most famous case concerns a police officer who last year kidnapped and murdered a young woman, Sarah Everard, which sparked international outrage. The policeman had then received many complaints but was still able to continue working. He is now sentenced to life in prison.