Guardian News and Media/London
A former police sergeant has been jailed for 10 months for selling information to the Sun newspaper and attempting to sell a story to the now defunct News of the World about celebrity Katie Price.
Justice Fulford told former Sussex police officer James Bowes during sentencing at the Old Bailey central criminal court in London yesterday that he had “corroded public confidence in the police force” and “abused his position for what are essentially corrupt purposes”.
Bowes, who worked in Brighton, had pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office last month after admitting contacting the News of the World and the Sun between April and July 2010.
The court heard he was paid for just one story, but Fulford said his decision to put private details of incidents into the public domain in relation to two children - the celebrity Katie Price’s daughter Princess Tiana and a three-year-boy who had been bitten by a fox in a Brighton school - was “a particular notable aspect of this offence”.
The first incident took place in April 2010, when Bowes e-mailed a story to the Sunday tabloid about Katie Price just after she had separated from her ex-husband the singer Peter Andre.
The court heard how the child protection team had been asked to intervene after Price and Andre’s daughter had been injured. No crime had taken place and the girl’s injuries were consistent with those normally associated with childhood, but Bowes had discovered the intervention from checking the police log and tried to sell the story to the News of the World.
The paper had its own sources about Price and Andre’s separation and did not pay him.
Two months later, in April 2010, Bowes contacted the Sun and received £500 for passing on details of a three-year-old boy who had been bitten by a fox at a birthday party in a school premises in Brighton.
He also passed on the details of the man who had hired the venue for the party.
On a third occasion he tipped off the Sun about a search the police were about to mount in the home of convicted serial murderer Peter Tobin after a clairvoyant had phoned investigators to say she had dreamed of more bodies beneath the floor.
Bowes was charged by officers from Operation Elveden, the London Metropolitan police investigation into police corruption. He is the fourth police officer to be convicted of passing information to a newspaper.
Bowes has no previous convictions and had been dismissed on September 14, 2012, for gross misconduct following his arrest.
Mark Bryant Heron, for the prosecution, told how Bowes had “panicked” when the clairvoyant, who had contacted the police regarding Tobin, complained that someone had leaked information about her call to the Sun and he then stopped contact with the paper.
Although Bowes was only paid for one story, he had requested anonymity in his e-mails to the Sun and the News of the World amid fears he could lose his job.
The ex-police officer’s barrister, Steve Wedd, urged Fulford to consider the three incidents to be lesser crimes than those committed by other officers already convicted of misconduct in public office for selling stories to the Sun.
“These were silly offences which were motivated by a small desire for money and a secondhand desire for notoriety (to be associated with Katie Price),” he said.
