By Quentin Langley
The News of the World scandal has seriously damaged faith in the police. It is always worth recalling that Trinity Mirror and Associated Newspapers both seem to have worse records of illegal behaviour than News International, but News crossed a very serious line when it hacked the phone of Milly Dowler. The public was never going to show the same equanimity to this that they have done to hacking the phones of celebrities and politicians. And now, the celebrities and politicians get to have their revenge.
But police corruption is a different issue, and a dangerous one. Who is to investigate corrupt police officers, especially in London's Metropolitan police, a force many times larger than any of the county and regional forces across the rest of the UK?
Police corruption has, of course, been around a very long time. In the main, corruption by journalists has not been considered the most serious aspect. Corruption by organised crime has always been considered far more so. Corruption by journalists has usually been seen as something on a much smaller, and largely inconsequential scale.
The law seems to be clear – we are still waiting for a clever barrister to dispute this – that it is illegal for a police officer to accept payment for any information acquired during his or her duties. This has long been ignored. As long as this consisted of a local constable alerting the local paper to a fight outside a pub – and getting a pint or a tenner for his trouble – no-one much cared. But when it rises to a different scale, we have a problem.
For instance, English law – ie the law of England and Wales, Wales being generally ignored in these matters – has very strict rules on contempt of court and prejudicing juries. Prosecutions have, on occasion, been abandoned because of information revealed in the media. Where did the media get that information? Did anyone get paid for it?
We should probably ask if it is sensible to have such strict – and consequently unenforceable – rules on corruption. Perhaps it should not be illegal for police officers to accept a tenner for advising a journalist to make his way to a fight outside a pub. When the 'gateway' to corruption is set so low, people are inevitably tempted to walk through.
My father – a district auditor, who later became Inspector or Audit – once told me the story of a local government official whose gateway to corruption was something very small. The man dealt regularly with a supplier to the Council. He began to think of the supplier as a friend, so was not surprised to get a bottle of whisky from the man at Christmas. The local government official probably knew he should not have kept it, or at the very least should have declared it, but it seemed inconsequential. Until, that is, it came time to renew the contract. Then his 'friend', the contractor, reminded him of the whisky. "If you don't renew our contract, I shall tell your boss that I gave you a bottle of whisky, and you will be fired". From then on the contractor could always blackmail the official, and each new act of corruption gave the contractor new leverage. This went on for years until the auditor – my father – finally put a stop to it.
Perhaps we should read into this story that every act of corruption, no matter how seemingly small, is wrong and should be resisted. Do not ever cross the line into illegal behaviour, and you will never be vulnerable to such blackmail. While this is true, drawing the line in such a place is also a source of the problem. If people see the law as being silly, they will not feel bad when they breach it.
Does it have to be illegal for a police officer to tip off a journalist with information that is already in the public domain, just because the officer came across it in the course of duty? If there is a fight or a riot going on, this is already known to the people who are there. Why is it wrong for a journalist to find out? Why is it wrong for the police officer to provide a tip and recieve a pint in return?
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