Nicholas Pedro: the backstory
A senior detective was sacked after a 30-year career because of his involvement in a criminal investigation into a leaked document concerning the marriage breakdown of former police commissioner Stephen Corbishley.
Details of the case against former detective superintendent Nicholas Pedro can be revealed by The Royal Gazette after disciplinary proceedings against him finished on December 13.
Mr Pedro did not tell a magistrate in December 2020 that an application for a warrant to search the homes of two police officers accused of circulating the affidavit sworn by Mr Corbishley’s estranged wife contained information about him.
A disciplinary panel that heard the misconduct case against him this month concluded that it was an “honest omission”, according to a statement by Mr Pedro.
However, the panel recommended that he be dismissed because it was behaviour “incompatible with the high standards of integrity required for continued service within the BPS,” according to Darrin Simons, the Commissioner of Police.
Mr Pedro said allegations against him of dishonesty and bias were rejected by the panel, which comprised Derrick Binns, the former Head of the Civil Service, British lawyer Peter Cadman and retired British chief superintendent David Cutler.
The prosecutor hired by the Bermuda Police Service was high-profile King’s Counsel John Beggs, who is involved in the continuing Novichok poisoning public inquiry in Britain.
Mr Pedro’s sacking came the same week that Sergeant Mark Monk, who was one of the officers whose home was searched and who with his wife won a $200,000 settlement from the BPS this year, returned to work after four years of suspension on full pay.
The other officer, Pc Robert Butterfield, recently reached an out-of-court settlement after also suing the Commissioner of Police for unlawfully obtaining the warrant.
Pc Butterfield told the Gazette that he could not share any details about the settlement after signing a non-disclosure agreement. However, it is understood that he received $160,000.
Mr Pedro, who joined the BPS in 1993 and rose through the ranks to become head of the crime division, was dismissed without notice after the two-week hearing.
He said in a statement afterwards: “I was found against by the panel following an honest mistake when a fellow officer was swearing the information for the search warrant.”
The background to that mistake goes back to the pandemic in early 2020, when the senior detective was stopped by Pc Butterfield while running on the Railway Trail during lockdown.
Mr Pedro received a criminal caution for breaching Covid rules, according to an internal police report obtained by the Gazette, which was written by Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Glasford when he was head of the police’s professional standards department.
On December 1, 2020, according to a statement made to police by Mr Pedro the next year, he received an e-mail from Mr Corbishley requesting that a criminal investigation be launched to find out who was leaking details about his divorce.
Pc Butterfield and Sergeant Monk were suspected of being responsible.
Although Mr Pedro flagged up the need to recuse himself, to avoid suggestions of perceived or actual bias, he added information to a warrant application initially drafted by Detective Superintendent Gillian Murray, then in charge of PSD, and signed by the investigating officer, Acting Detective Inspector Paul Ridley.
The Gazette has seen the warrant application, which said Sergeant Monk and Pc Butterfield were suspected of sharing information, including confidential material, with “requisite intent to destabilise the BPS”. The criminal inquiry into the pair was eventually dropped and they faced no charges.
A paragraph in the warrant application referred to a Facebook profile under a pseudonym believed to belong to Pc Butterfield.
The application stated that Pc Butterfield was suspected of using the same profile in April 2020 to “make comments on a serving superintendent who was found committing a breach of Covid regulations”.
The swearing of the warrant before senior magistrate Juan Wolffe was done by Mr Ridley, now retired, but Mr Pedro attended and did not flag up that the superintendent mentioned in that paragraph was him.
The disciplinary case against him included an allegation that he acted dishonestly, motivated by animosity towards Pc Butterfield, but that allegation was rejected by the panel on the balance of probabilities, the Gazette understands.
It is believed that part of Mr Pedro’s defence was that he was under pressure from Mr Corbishley to help prepare the case justifying why the warrant was necessary to search the homes of Pc Butterfield and Sergeant Monk and seize electronic equipment.
It is understood that his position was that he accompanied Mr Ridley to the swearing of the warrant only because officers from the professional standards department were unable to attend owing to a coronavirus quarantine.
Mr Pedro flagged up his potential conflict of interest before the warrant was obtained, according to his 2021 police statement. He was later accused by Pc Butterfield and Sergeant Monk of inserting himself into the case in a retaliatory way because the former stopped him during lockdown.
Mr Pedro’s defence was that he helped with the warrant application because he had been given what he believed was a lawful instruction from Mr Corbishley, who, although he was conflicted as the complainant in the criminal matter, also had a duty to maintain order in the police service.
Mr Simons will be hoping now to draw a line under events that have dogged the BPS since October 2020, when Mr Corbishley came under attack on social media and the affidavit was e-mailed to the entire police service.
However, questions remain about the cost to the public purse of handling the fallout from the unlawful obtaining of the warrant, as well as about the former commissioner’s sudden resignation in October 2021 while an investigation into gross misconduct allegations made by Pc Butterfield about him was under way.
Government House has repeatedly refused to disclose any information about why Mr Corbishley quit with two years left to run on his contract. Mr Glasford’s report found that Mr Corbishley became involved in efforts to get the warrant, but should not have.
Mr Pedro declined to comment for this article, beyond his statement. Pc Butterfield said: “While the decision made to dismiss him surely was difficult for the commissioner … I am now confident that was the right decision …
“The higher in rank an officer is, the more they are supposed to be held to account.”
Mr Pedro has the right to appeal his dismissal. A police spokesman said there would be no comment until the appeals period concluded, but that Mr Simons was likely to comment further after that.
Two reports into the obtaining of the warrant to search the homes of two officers suspected of destabilising the Bermuda Police Service came to different conclusions about whether any wrongdoing occurred.
The first, by Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Glasford when he was head of the professional standards department, was damning of former police commissioner Stephen Corbishley and contained criticism of former detective superintendent Nicholas Pedro.
However, a report written in response by Assistant Commissioner Antoine Daniels found that the information put forward to obtain the warrant complied with the Police and Evidence Act 2006.
The Commissioner of Police has refused to share the reports under public access to information, but the Gazette has seen them both.
Mr Glasford accused Mr Pedro of “adding allegations of race” about Pc Robert Butterfield to the information put forward to obtain a warrant to search the constable’s home and the home of Sergeant Mark Monk.
It is understood the disciplinary panel hearing the misconduct case against Mr Pedro found no evidence of wrongdoing in relation to that.
The warrant application included a paragraph containing background information about Pc Butterfield, which stated that he was “most seriously … [the] subject of a misconduct matter in relation to irrefutable racial language (captured on video while on duty) indicating a clear and embedded position towards persons of the opposite ethnicity to him.
“This behaviour is not acceptable for the police service or the community and it is believed further evidence of such racial behaviours will be discovered on electronic devices.”
Mr Glasford alleged in his report: “The Commissioner of Police previously expressed [via e-mail] that he had concerns over whether Superintendent Pedro had put a member of the public up to making allegations against Pc Butterfield.
“Despite this, and the well-documented history, Superintendent Pedro was allowed to participate in the drafting of the warrant information and was chosen to lead investigations involving Pc Butterfield and Ps Monk.
“Further, Superintendent Pedro, having himself acknowledged that he was conflicted in the matter, attended the swearing of the warrant information — highly unusual for a superintendent of police.
“Of note, it was never disclosed that he attended until the accused officers themselves made this known to the PSD investigators.”
Mr Daniels wrote that Pc Butterfield was recorded on a police body camera in February 2020 saying about a White colleague: “I don’t know who these White guys think they are talking to” and “I don’t know who these f***ing White guys think they are”.
Mr Daniels wrote that those remarks, as well as comments that appeared on social media about sending Mr Corbishley and another White British officer, Gillian Murray, back to Britain “can be interpreted in a racially biased context”.
He wrote that the Director of Public Prosecutions was not convinced the social-media remarks were racially motivated. However, Mr Daniels quoted her as saying that it was Mr Pedro’s opinion that they were and it “could not be considered that he made a statement which … is to his knowledge false or which he does not believe to be true”.
The warrant application referred to Pc Butterfield being the subject of “extensive and serious misconduct investigations going back several years and months …”
Mr Glasford’s report took issue with that, saying the constable’s record was expunged of all disciplinary matters in 2015.
Mr Daniels’s report detailed how Pc Butterfield had been the subject of 99 complaints — 75 public and 24 internal — during his 26-year police career.
“Notwithstanding he has no convictions for gross misconduct, he is a serial offender, which demonstrates a pattern of adverse behaviour that would be defined as disproportionate in any career field, thus the use of the word ‘extensive’ in the warrant application appears appropriate,” he wrote.
Mr Butterfield told the Gazette that his remarks about the White officer were made after he was allegedly assaulted at a crime scene by the officer. “[Mr] Daniels and whomever never put those words into context.”
He described the complaints made about him throughout his career as trivial, with none amounting to gross misconduct. He claimed that some were filed maliciously for personal reasons.
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