The chief constable of Avon and Somerset police has denied that the force leaked information or guided the press about Chris Jefferies after the Bristol landlord was wrongly arrested for the 2010 murder of Joanna Yeates.<\/p>\n
Testifying at the Leveson Inquiry<\/a> this morning, Colin Port said to behave in a collusive manner was “abhorrent”.<\/p>\n “We don\u2019t give off the record briefings,” Port said, stressing it was “not normal practice”. His colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Philip Jones, who was the sneior investigating officer in the Yeates inquiry, also testified that there were no off the record briefings on Jefferies. “If there were, they were unauthorised,” Jones said.<\/p>\n In his second witness statement<\/a>\u00a0to the Inquiry in January, Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace claimed he had been informed off the record that “the police were\u00a0saying that they were confident Mr Jefferies was their man.”<\/p>\n Port said Wallace’s claim was “absolutely outrageous”.<\/p>\n Jefferies, a retired English teacher, successfully sued eight newspapers for libel last year, with the Mirror being charged \u00a350,000\u00a0for contempt of court. Dutch national Vincent Tabak was later convicted of Yeates’s murder.<\/p>\n Wallace called the episode a \u201cblack mark\u201d on his editing record and\u00a0expressed \u201csincere regret\u201d to Jefferies and his friends and family.<\/p>\n Port said the force did not name Jefferies either on or off the record.\u00a0He said there had been an “inadvertent” leak, but stressed this was a “genuine error”. He noted that leaks in the force were rare, and if they did occur, it would be due to “malice, spite or money.”<\/p>\n