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Cop escapes jail over data breach
Neal Keeling and Paul R Taylor

June 12, 2009

A POLICEMAN'S 27-year career is in ruins after he was convicted of passing confidential police information to two businessmen.

PC Andrew Redman, 48, who was due to retire from Greater Manchester Police next year, has lost his pension and reputation after he became involved in a scam which charged the public "exorbitant" fees for the recovery of their stolen vehicles.

But he was spared a prison sentence and allowed to walk free from court after a judge heard Redman had not been paid for helping the businessmen, and he is suffering from mental health problems.

Redman was sentenced to a nine month prison term, suspended for two years and was ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work.

The officer worked for Operation Cheetah - a campaign to stop motorists lying in a bid to avoid speeding tickets, Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

He would access the Police National Computer (PNC) and a GMP internal system to give one of the businessmen information about stolen and abandoned vehicles, their owners and insurance details.

The businessmen would then go and recover the abandoned vehicles and put them in storage before charging owners up to £800 for their recovery and return.

Their fees were several times more than a similar police-approved scheme which charges £105 for recovery plus £12-a-day storage at local garages.

However, the court heard that Redman was not motivated by financial gain and was not paid for the information he passed on.

Judge Jonathan Geake said: "This is an unusual case to say the least.

"Your motives are unclear. Maybe you were eager to please men more dominant than yourself, maybe you were genuinely trying to aid the recovery of vehicles, as has been suggested, to help police statistics.

"Clearly this was not the right way to go about it."

Depression

He accepted Redman has serious mental health issues, suffering from severe depression and anxiety for almost 10 years, and decided not to impose a jail sentence.

Redman had 27 years service with the force before he was suspended in 2007.

He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and four counts of obtaining personal data.

Dean Jones, aged 36, whose firm Manchester Specialist Recovery Services was based in Swinton, and the other businessman, Richard Hayward, 58, had pleaded guilty to eight substantive offences of obtaining personal data at an earlier hearing.

Both were given a conditional discharge for two years. Jones had a further 22 offences taken into consideration and Hayward 51. Both were also charged with one count of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office, however both charges were ordered to lie on the file.

Between March 2006 and up to his arrest on October 17th 2007 Redman abused his job working in the Central Ticket Office by passing on information about vehicles to Jones and Hayward.

As well as passing information about stolen and abandoned vehicles to Jones,

Redman also passed information to Hayward, a private investigator who worked for a German-based company, regarding owners who had defaulted on the payments of their vehicles.
This helped in the recovery of these vehicles and the eventual return of them to finance companies.

Detective Inspector Martin Reddington, from GMP's Internal Investigation Unit, said: "The public and Greater Manchester Police expect the highest standards of professionalism from its officers, and it is extremely disappointing to see that PC Redman let himself and the Force down in such a way.

"As a consequence of his actions members of the public faced significant financial hardship as they were forced to pay exorbitant costs to recover their vehicles, much more than they would have had to pay if the vehicles had been recovered by the police.

"We believe he did this not for financial gain, but simply to impress Jones and Hayward and maintain relationships he had allowed to develop.

Maybe you were eager to please men more dominant than yourself, maybe you were genuinely trying to aid the recovery of vehicles.

Judge Jonathan Geake
"When our internal checks uncovered what PC Redman was doing, robust action was taken immediately and he was suspended. It became clear that he was acting purely of his own volition and no other officers were involved.

"I hope this case shows that GMP will not tolerate any misconduct by its officers and if they are suspected of a crime they will be dealt with like anyone else. However, I would again stress that PC Redman's criminality was the actions of one man and I would not want any aspersions cast against other hard-working GMP officers who do a similar job.

"All our officers are given extensive training about breaching the Data Protection Act and are warned from day one about the seriousness of committing such an offence. Since these offences came to light, we have enhanced our system of checking officer's usage of such systems and we will continue to be vigilant so that members of the public receive the best possible service from GMP officers."

Andrew Nuttal, defending Redman, said his client heard voices and hadn't been properly supervised by his superiors who knew about his condition.

On one occasion four years ago, when given an office in GMP headquarters and told to make himself comfortable, he ordered a skip, threw all the furniture in it and stripped the walls of wallpaper. He had a significant amount of time off work with his mental health problems.

Mr Nuttal said: "This defendant has acted unlawfully but he is not an evil man, he is not a bad man, he is a man that is ill.

"His actions cannot be divorced from the deterioration of his mental health over the last few years."