A CORRUPT police officer has been jailed for two years after he admitted selling stories to a newspaper, one of which caused a woman so much distress that she tried to kill herself.
Former Pc Timothy Edwards was paid £22,000 over three years for up to 30 stories involving celebrities, drug smuggling and airline crew antics, the Old Bailey heard. The Metropolitan Police officer, who was based at Heathrow Airport, took evidence from the police computer system, including crime reports and custody records.
Prosecutor Stuart Biggs said one woman named in a story suffered such "severe emotional stress" that she had tried to commit suicide. Her story had been turned into a "smutty sex-laden scandal", defence barrister Bill Emlyn Jones told the court.
In mitigation, Emlyn Jones said Edwards was an "intelligent man" who understood the harm the stories had done and was sorry for his insensitive and appalling misconduct. The 48-year-old, from Lingfield, Surrey, who was sacked last year, pleaded guilty to committing misconduct in a public office between March 31 2008 and July 1 2011.
Sentencing him, judge Richard Marks QC told him his conduct would cause a "betrayal of trust" in the police from the public.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article