U.K. Police Corruption May Exceed ‘Small Number,’ Jones Says
U.K. Police Corruption May Exceed ‘Small Number,’
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
A lamp hangs outside a Metropolitan police station in London.
A lamp hangs outside a Metropolitan police station in London. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Corruption in the U.K. police may extend beyond a handful of officers, a member of the watchdog that scrutinizes the London force said in the wake of the phone- hacking scandal at News Corp.’s News of the World.
A “drip-drip” of news, including reports that a royal bodyguard may have sold phone numbers to the press and that officers may have been paid to provide journalists with the location of celebrities from phone records suggest corruption extends beyond a handful of officers, said Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Assembly.
“You start to think this cannot be a dozen officers all doing these things for all these journalists,” Jones said in an interview. She will put questions on police corruption to Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin today at a monthly meeting of the MPA. “It’s got to be 50, hasn’t it? And perhaps even 100.”
Jones says she has “no proof” of broad corruption. Police began an investigation this month into whether journalists at the News of the World, News Corp.’s shuttered U.K. Sunday tabloid, paid officers for information. The probe, which is running parallel to an investigation into whether reporters at the paper illegally accessed mobile-phone voice-mail messages, is looking into “inappropriate payments to a small number” of officers, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said on July 6, 11 days before he resigned over links between the force and a former editor at the paper.
‘Taken Extremely Seriously’
The Metropolitan Police said in an e-mailed statement that allegations of corruption are “taken extremely seriously” and that the service will seek to “prosecute and bring disciplinary proceedings against anyone found to have acted corruptly.”
“As Jenny Jones says she has no proof supporting her speculation in relation to numbers of corrupt officers,” the police said. “The vast majority of the 55,000 MPS police officers and staff find corruption abhorrent.”
A spokesperson for News Corp.’s Management and Standards Committee, which is conducting an internal review of the allegations, declined to comment.
The investigation began after Ken Macdonald, a lawyer for News Corp.’s board and the former U.K. Director of Public Prosecutions, provided police on June 20 with what he described as “evidence of serious criminal offenses.”
Operation Elveden
“The file was handed to the police and, as a result, the police opened Operation Elveden, the investigation into corruption at the News of the World and the Metropolitan Police Service,” Macdonald told lawmakers in a July 19 hearing of the Home Affairs Committee. “I cannot imagine anyone looking at the file and not seeing evidence of crime on its face.”
Lawmakers have described the file as “an enormous pile of documents” that sat at the London-based law firm Harbottle & Lewis LLP since 2007. Macdonald, who was asked to review nine or 10 e-mails from the file, said the board, which includes Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch and his son James, was “stunned and shocked” when he told them what he had found. On his advice, the file was handed to police.
Police working on the case have made four arrests. The operation is overseen by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, who is also in charge of the separate probe into phone- hacking at the News of the World, which printed its last edition on July 10.
Coulson, Brooks
Three of the four arrests made in the corruption probe so far are of former News of the World journalists. They are Clive Goodman, the paper’s former royal reporter, who was imprisoned for phone-hacking in January 2007, Andy Coulson, editor of the paper from 2003 to 2007, and Rebekah Brooks, who resigned as chief executive officer of News International, News Corp.’s U.K. publishing unit, two days before her July 17 arrest. The fourth arrest is of an unidentified 63-year-old man. No one has been charged in the investigation.
Brooks told lawmakers at a 2003 hearing that “we have paid the police for information in the past.” Speaking to lawmakers on July 19 this year, Brooks said her 2003 comment was referring to a “wide-held belief, not a widespread practice.”
“I have never paid a policeman myself; I have never knowingly sanctioned a payment to a police officer,” Brooks said July 19. “In my experience of dealing with the police, the information they give to newspapers comes free of charge.”
Stephenson, Yates
Stephenson and the force’s anti-terrorism chief, John Yates, stepped down earlier this month, over links between the force and the shuttered newspaper. Neil Wallis, a former News of the World journalist who had also worked as a paid consultant for the police, was arrested July 14 in connection with the probe into phone-hacking at the tabloid.
“I confidently predict that, as a result of News International disclosures, a very small number of police officers will go to prison for corruption,” Yates told lawmakers on July 19 in a hearing of Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee. “That does not taint the whole organization.”
Jones a Green Party member of the Metropolitan Police Authority since its formation 11 years ago, said that this sort of corruption doesn’t happen “in isolation.”
“This whole phrase about bad apples -- what happens is they rot and then they rot the ones next to that,” Jones said. “If we only have half a dozen or so arrests in a year’s time, something has gone badly wrong in my view. There has got to be a real clearing-out.”
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.
To contact the reporters for this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net; Lindsay Fortado in London at lfortado@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net.
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