Police chiefs’ catalogue of failings

Sadly, the reports on Mr Power’s conduct which have been published today show beyond all doubt that his claims to have been vindicated and to be free of all blame are utterly without foundation.

In the States last week Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand warned Members who were willing to take Mr Power’s protestations at face value that they might have to think again when they were able to read the Wiltshire Constabulary verdict on his supervision of the Haut de la Garenne affair. Now that this is in the public domain, it is abundantly clear that Senator Le Marquand was sure of his ground.

The Senator has also issued a series of unprecedented apologies to the entire Island, for the reputational

damage that it has suffered, to the victims of abuse, for the way in which their hopes of justice were unrealistically raised and then dashed, to States Members, for the misleading information that they were fed, and for the failure of his predecessor, former Senator Wendy Kinnard, to exercise adequate ministerial supervision.

The Wiltshire reports, meanwhile, paint an unambiguous picture of a chief officer who was content to let Lenny Harper, his deputy, run an inquiry entirely according to his own rules and instincts – even though he has now been adjudged to have been unqualified and, through his dogmatic, arrogant attitude, admitting of no

contradiction, unsuitable to handle it. Indeed, the report deals specifically with Mr Power’s oversight of Mr Harper, saying that the more junior officer’s conduct – which seemed to have raised no alarms with his superior – was so unacceptable that, were he still in the force, he could have faced disciplinary action.

But the catalogue of failings that can be laid at the door of Mr Power goes beyond the way in which he was mesmerised by and swept away with his deputy’s misguided and at times farcical mishandling of what expanded into the biggest, most expensive and least fruitful police investigation that the Island has ever seen. Everything about the inquiry, from the exercise of financial control to the bizarre notions about what constituted appropriate media relations, are roundly condemned in the Wiltshire force’s findings.

To cap the whole affair in the most undignified manner imaginable, it transpires that while there was still a suspicion that bodies were buried at Haut de la Garenne, the chief was sending out joke e-mails about dead orphans.

If Mr Power – or Mr Harper, for that matter – are at all inclined to cling to the idea that there was nothing reprehensible in their management of an episode which brought this Island so much grief, it will be clear to everyone else that the blind arrogance that they so obviously displayed in dealing with the child abuse

inquiry remains with them.