BNP London Election Campaign hit by conviction of police infiltrator on weapons charges

At the turn of the year officers from the Post Office Security Team based at London's main sorting office at Mount Pleasant intercepted a package from the USA which contained a Tazer gun, known as a stun gun, now in widening use by the Metropolitan Police Service. The addressee was a 23-year-old man, Ellis Hammond. The PO security team passed on the address and details of the contents of the package to the police in southeast London. It took them only minutes to realise that Hammond was a serving officer in the Police Community Safety unit based in their command area.

In no time they were at his family home detaining him and carrying out what was said to be a very thorough search.

They found the following:

• 1 CS tear gas canister.
• 1 police-style ASP retractable baton.
• 1 pair of Metropolitan Police issue Handcuffs.
• 1 knuckle duster.
• 8 combat knives.
• DVDs containing hate material.
• Various items of British National Party literature.
• Some obscene material.
• 25-30 mainly imported T-shirts from the USA bearing nazi and white power group symbols and hardline racist and nazi slogans.
• 4 BB guns.
• 1 replica AK47 assault rifle.
• 1 copy of The Turner Diaries, the US publication that has served as a blueprint for nazi terrorism in the USA, written by the late William Pearce, a close friend of the BNP who has played host to them at his National Alliance HQ in the USA and was guest of honour at a BNP annual meeting in east London some years ago.
• And finally, to top it off, a BNP membership card.

By sheer coincidence Hammond had left his mobile phone on a table in the canteen at the police station where he was stationed. A police officer turned it on hoping to find the identity of the owner but instead found a message from the BNP to Hammond. The officer acted with haste and sensibly reported it to one of his senior officers who were already in the picture about the Tazer gun.

So what do we and the police know about Hammond? In recent years he applied to join the Metropolitan Police Service. All applicants have to fill in a lengthy application form which includes the questions, have you ever been a member of the British National Party, are you currently a member of the British National Party or are you likely to join at any future date. Hammond answered no to all three questions. A positive answer to any of them would have debarred him from being a police or a prison officer. He failed the interview in any case and a while later decided to take the other route into the Police Service by first becoming a Police Community Support Officer for a year or so and then reapplying for the MPS. He was accepted as a PCSO after lying on his application form about his BNP membership.

It would appear that he was not active in any of the three local BNP branches in Greenwich, Bexley or Croydon, although members of Croydon branch had hinted for several years that they had connections with people serving in the emergency services and possibly the police.

We think that Hammond had been talent spotted by one or more senior BNP officers who were either ex-police or military and groomed to join up and play the long game, acting in spy parlance as a sleeper or deep mole.

When his Borough Commander had his staff search through Hammond's work record as a PCSO patrolling a beat that included the spot where Stephen Lawrence had been brutally killed by a white racist gang, they saw he had made a large number of stops and searches but only two were on black people, one being a truanting school child, and nobody ever complained about the way he treated them. He was seen by those who managed him to be an exemplary young officer, whose good record would ease the way for him to become a full police officer.

So far his arrest and the way the police were dealing with him was fine. They had even sent one of the replica weapons away for tests to see if it could be converted into a useable firearm. As he was not charged over that gun, we hope that it was deemed to be safe.

Then we felt some discomfort when informed that he was being allowed to resign before going to court rather than be sacked first.

We also discovered that last summer he had bought a lethal crossbow from the USA, a silent killing weapon and one of choice for many nazis across the world. This had not been found during the initial search of his home. We are now very eager to know if this was because it was missed or, as we believed, he had another cache of illegal weapons and material elsewhere. We were assured that a surveillance of his movements while he was on police bail before being charged was being stepped up as a result of our information about the crossbow.

We also heard that there were some differences between the Crown Prosecution Service and the officers dealing with the case over what form the charges against Hammond should take.

Last week he appeared at Bexley Magistrates' Court and pleaded guilty to two charges under the Firearms Act for possession and purchase of prohibited weapons relating to the Tazer gun and the CS gas spray, both of which carry prison sentences. One would have expected the magistrates to send him to the Crown Court with a view to custody of longer than six months, the limit of magistrates' powers, particularly as he had lied to join the Police Service and was a member of a banned organisation as far as the police and prison service go.

We were astonished to hear that the case had been dealt with there and then and that he got a conditional discharge for 12 months.

At the time of writing his name still appears on a police service website as a community beat officer.

By allowing him to resign from the police and advising him and his family that he should take that course, the CPS did not have reveal his background or his membership of the BNP to the magistrates. So it was unlikely the press would pick up the story and there would be no publicity. This is not the first time that serving police officers with far-right connections have been let down gently.

Inquiries to a BNP spokesperson about members illicitly joining the police service produced the response: "We have dozens of police members and that is just the ones who tell us what they do. Some of our members are quite senior, above inspector level".

Hammond's father was very grateful for how the officers were dealing with his son's case.

When spoken to, Ellis Hammond was a very different kettle of fish. He appeared to think he was someone important and said that he did not want any publicity as it would ruin his life. When the journalist tried to take the conversation further, Hammond responded: "I'm going to go now because I am getting really annoyed".

So what we have here is a nazi liar who has armed himself to the teeth and infiltrated one of the pillars of the criminal justice system, who says he cannot control his temper. Both the police and the CPS have gone down a strange path with this case that has allowed a potential terrorist to be turned loose on our streets. We wonder what the Director of Public Prosecutions thinks about this case. Was it dealt with by the local CPS office or the Special Case Unit that deals with all types of terrorist cases across the board, and what does Sir Ian Blair, the MPS Commissioner, think about letting people like Hammond off the hook? So much for confronting terrorism from wherever it comes.

When the criminal justice system screws up, it's the public that pays the price.

Searchlight