Chief constable denies giving Chris Jefferies name to press

27 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry

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.

Testifying at the Leveson Inquiry this morning, Colin Port said to behave in a collusive manner was “abhorrent”.

“We don’t 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.

In his second witness statement to the Inquiry in January, Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace claimed he had been informed off the record that “the police were saying that they were confident Mr Jefferies was their man.”

Port said Wallace’s claim was “absolutely outrageous”.

Jefferies, a retired English teacher, successfully sued eight newspapers for libel last year, with the Mirror being charged £50,000 for contempt of court. Dutch national Vincent Tabak was later convicted of Yeates’s murder.

Wallace called the episode a “black mark” on his editing record and expressed “sincere regret” to Jefferies and his friends and family.

Port said the force did not name Jefferies either on or off the record. He 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.”

Also testifying this morning was Assistant Chief Constable Jerry Kirkby of Surrey Police. He described the press interest around the abduction and subsequent murder of teenager Milly Dowler in 2002 as “unprecedented” and “immense”, with some senior officers involved deeming elements of the media “extremely demanding, and in some respects, mischievous”.

He said the force’s Media Relations Team was “unprepared” for such heavy press attention and that there were not enough resources to deal with the “overwhelming” interest in the case.

He added that the senior investigating officer in the Dowler case initially declined offers from the News of the World and the Sun for rewards relating to information of Milly’s whereabouts, “fearing that it would generate large numbers of spurious calls that would distract from the core police investigation.” Yet the officer eventually felt that he “had little choice but to cooperate with them”, after the papers indicated they would offer a reward with or without Surrey Police’s cooperation.

“Rewards can be really useful in investigations in generating interest. In this case I’m not sure that a reward was necessary,” Kirkby added later.

Kirkby told the Inquiry he was conducting an internal investigation into the information obtained by the News of the World in 2002 regarding the hacking of Dowler’s voicemail. The findings, due to be completed by May, will be made public and submitted to the Inquiry.

Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson

Stevens "had to get out" of News of the World

06 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry

Lord Stevens, former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, has told the Leveson Inquiry that he “had to get out” of a contract involving writing columns for the News of the World.

“The whole thing just didn’t seem right to me,” Stevens said. He noted that he decided to terminate his contract with the paper — which involved his writing several pieces over a two-year period following his autobiography being serialised in the tabloid — some months after the convictions of royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire of phone hacking.

He said he was paid £5,000 for the two articles he penned for the paper.

He told Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC he had also heard further information about “unethical behaviour” at the now-defunct tabloid, which he later clarified as “general behaviour”.

Elsewhere in his testimony, he said that as commissioner he would have been “quite ruthless” in pursuing issues related to phone hacking later raised by the Guardian. “I’d have gone on and done it,” he said. “That’s what police officers are paid to do, to enforce the law.”

Also appearing today was chief constable of Surrey police and former Met office Lynne Owens. Quizzed over whether her approach of only meeting journalists at New Scotland Yard rather than in a social setting was “austere”, Owens said she felt it was “entirely appropriate”.

She also told the Inquiry she found it “abhorrent” that a police officer could leak information about celebrities when they appear at police stations. “I don’t think people who behave like that should be in the police service,” she said.

The Inquiry continues tomorrow with further evidence from former Metropolitan police staff, including former commissioner Lord Blair.

Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson