Sun reporter paid more than £22,000 to police officer for stories, court hears

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/12/sun-reporter-police-officer-anthony-france

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A Sun crime reporter paid more than £22,000 to an anti-terrorism police officer for stories of air rage, drunk pilots, and security scares at Heathrow Airport, the Old Bailey has heard.

Anthony France, 41, bought 38 pieces of information from PC Timothy Edwards who acted as a the journalist’s “mole” for two-and-a-half years, it is said.

The officer, part of the Met’s counterterrorism command, received £22,340 for leaking the stories picked up while at work.

He told France, a crime reporter who joined the Sun in 2004, about a British Airways engineer caught in high heels and a bodice walking a makeshift catwalk, and leaked the name of a drunk pilot arrested at the airport, the court heard.

Edwards also passed on details of a model who caught her boyfriend being intimate next to her on a plane with another woman, it is said.

Prosecutor Zoe Johnson QC told the jury France’s “corrupt” relationship with Edwards, between March 2008 and July 2011, was damaging to the public interest.

“PC Edwards seriously abused his role as a serving police constable to sell information to Anthony France and we further suggest France encouraged PC Edwards to behave in this way so that he could fill the Sun’s papers with stories and with scoops,” she said.

“PC Edwards wouldn’t have been able seriously to abuse his role as a police officer without the encouragement and participation of a journalist such as France.

“It was a relationship that was beneficial both to PC Edwards and to France but seriously detrimental to you, the public.

“In this case it is, in the main, the corrupt relationship between these two men, a police officer on the one hand and a journalist on the other hand, rather than the content of the stories themselves, which makes Anthony France culpable or criminally liable.”

France has been charged under the Met’s Operation Eleveden probe into alleged corruption between the press and public officials.

Johnson said Edwards, 49, who joined the Met in 1988, was not “whistleblowing in a noble cause” while leaking information to the Sun.

“We suggest there is no public interest in the stories that France published,” she said.

“Public interest is a very different thing to what interests the public.

“PC Edwards was not authorised to pass information to the press.

“This is a case in which Edwards was motivated by greed and France was motivated by acquiring the next big, exclusive story.”

The court heard Edwards, who is not on trial, is accused of passing personal details of victims and witnesses to France, in breach of his responsibilities as a police officer.

“I am going to put the stories and the information that PC Edwards sold to France into various categories,” said Johnson.

“The most serious category is where PC Edwards abused the powers he has as a police officer to access police databases and crime reports to obtain information which he then sold on to France.

“He sold the personal details of victims of crime as well as perpetrators of crime.

“Without wishing to in anyway sound sanctimonious, we suggest a liberal democracy such as ours relies on the police not abusing their power.

“Just ask yourselves, would you expect a police constable to profit from his misuse of power?

“If you were a victim of crime would you expect a police officer to sell your name and address to the Sun?

“The second category is those stories where Edwards has sold information which he has picked up pieces of information because his job at Heathrow airport whether by witnessing events or talking to fellow colleagues.

“The third category is where PC Edwards has sold information to France, about what we will never know, and France has made sure Edwards was paid for the information that never made it into a story by ascribing Edwards as the source of another story when he was not.”

The court heard the first story France bought from Edwards was “Sexual heeling – BA man quits over squelchy stilettos fetish”.

Johnson said the 16 July 2008 story was a “salacious” account of a BA engineer caught on secret cameras in a British Airways building in Heathrow Airport wearing a bodice and parading up a makeshift catwalk in high heel shoes.

The Sun also the engineer had damaged ceiling tiles by using them as a makeshift catwalk.

“This was a grievous abuse of PC Edwards’ authority as a police officer,” said Johnson.

“He had arrested ... the British Airways engineer, in August 2007, almost a year before, in respect of an allegation of damaging the polystyrene ceiling tiles which were being used as the catwalk.

Because PC Edwards had arrested the engineer, as the arresting officer he had created a crime report about the fact of the arrest on the police computer.

“Subsequently the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute the man but Edwards looked up the details again on the police system on 21 June 2008, months after the arrest, in order to sell Anthony France what he no doubt remembered as a salacious story.

“There was no legitimate reason for Edwards to look up the crime report again, apart from making money.” Edwards was paid £850 for the story, the court heard, and got another £500 for looking up thefts at hospitals on police databases for France.

France wrote on 23 December 2008 a story about a drunk Jet Airways pilot, who had been arrested before a flight to Mumbai.

The day before, Edwards had searched the police computers for “Jet airways” and accessed the custody record, said Johnson.

“We suggest that PC Edwards provided France with the name of the pilot, information which wasn’t released by the Met press bureau at the time”, she said.

It is alleged France paid Edwards £750 for the story and took him to dinner at the Marquis of Granby pub in Esher, Surrey, which was their regular meeting place.

France, of Watford, Herts, denies one charge of misconduct in public office.

The trial continues.