Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

It's nice to know that the Boys in Blue are so "flexible" when it comes to matters of outright media criminality.

After all they wouldn't want to inhibit the comfy tax-free river of "folding readies" destined for the concealed truncheon pocket courtesy of the Fleet-Street-Inspector-Knacker-of-the-Yard tip-off machine now would they...

Yup. I posted the below earlier in this thread from the NYT article.

Scotland Yard also had a symbiotic relationship with News of the World. The police sometimes built high-profile cases out of the paper’s exclusives, and News of the World reciprocated with fawning stories of arrests.

Within days of the raids, several senior detectives said they began feeling internal pressure. One senior investigator said he was approached by Chris Webb, from the department’s press office, who was “waving his arms up in the air, saying, ‘Wait a minute — let’s talk about this.’ ” The investigator, who has since left Scotland Yard, added that Webb stressed the department’s “long-term relationship with News International.” The investigator recalled becoming furious at the suggestion, responding, “There’s illegality here, and we’ll pursue it like we do any other case.” In a statement, Webb said: ‘‘I cannot recall these events. Police officers make operational decisions, not press officers. That is the policy of the Metropolitan Police Service and the policy that I and all police press officers follow.’’

At the footsoldier level, it's about "nice little earners", most often likely in cash or freebies such as, ahem, hospitality.

At the supervisory level, there's the potential for "fitting up" - both by police off the record briefings and by News International "undercover investigations" which have frequently been exposed as evidentially flimsy.

At the strategic level, this is institutional corruption, and leads into the claims by several MPs that they were, in essence, warned off pursuing News International.