Bent Copper

The news that one bent copper has been sent to jail for trying to sell confidential information on to a newspaper - doesn't mean they are all 'at it', as they say.

But it does raise some challenging questions for the police and public.

Because the police investigation was only launched by Scotland Yard - after an unholy row in the press and elsewhere - about how such sensitive information ever got into the public  domain in the first place. 

Now Detective Chief Inspector April Cashburn (53) has become the person to be prosecuted following the phone hacking investigation - Operation Elveden - and has now been sentenced to 15 months in prison.

A relatively light sentence you might think - for such a serious breach of public trust.

The trial heard that CI Cashburn called the News of the World newspaper offering to sell information to the paper -  after the inquiry into phone hacking by the tabloid was reopened in 2010 - and the trial judge described her behaviour as "a corrupt attempt to make money".

The judge went on:

"If the News of the World had accepted her offer, it's clear, in my view, that Ms Casburn would have taken the money and, as a result, she posed a significant threat to the integrity of this important police investigation.

It is, in my judgment, a very serious matter indeed when men or women who have all the benefits, privileges and responsibilities of public office use their position for corrupt purposes."

So there we have it - corrupt behaviour within the highest ranks of the police force - by a person who was in a position of considerable public trust.

And that's before we get the results of the 'Plebgate Inquiry' - in which no money changed hands although serving police officers face allegations of abusing their positions - in order to settle 'political' scores.