Police Reform Act 2002
Bichard's report severely criticised the Chief Constable of Humberside Police, David Westwood, for ordering the destruction of criminal records of child abusers. Though supported by the Humberside Police Authority, he was suspended by then Home Secretary David Blunkett using powers granted under the Police Reform Act 2002 to order suspension as "necessary for the maintenance of public confidence in the force in question". The suspension was later lifted, with Westwood agreeing to retire a year early in March 2005.
The Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Tom Lloyd, was also criticised as his force had failed to contact Humberside Police during the vetting procedure. Lloyd was criticised by the police inspectorate for being slow to cut short a holiday after the investigation had become the largest in the force's history. The inspectorate also criticised a "lack of grip" on the investigation, which included nationally televised appeals by footballer David Beckham, and Detective Superintendent David Beck who announced that he had left a message for abductors on Jessica's mobile phone before the case was taken from him.
Another complication was that two Cambridgeshire police officers involved with the families of the murdered girls had become Operation Ore suspects a month before the murders. Antony Goodridge, one of the exhibits officers, later pleaded guilty to child pornography offences and was sentenced to six months imprisonment. Detective Constable Brian Stevens, who had spoken at the memorial service, was acquitted of charges of indecent assault and child pornography offences when no evidence was offered by the prosecution.
Read more about this topic: Soham Murders
Famous quotes containing the words police, reform and/or act:
“Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened to them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.”
—A. Alvarez (b. 1929)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)