Raids on paedophile porn suspects net 50 police officers
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Scotland Yard detectives raided homes across London yesterday as part of an investigation into child pornography internet sites that has led to the arrest of 1,300 suspected paedophiles, including 50 police officers.
The raids were the largest single operation in a nation-wide police trawl and led to 34 further arrests. British police are investigating up to 7,000 suspected child pornography users identified by the American authorities as having accessed "pay-per-view" sites.
Senior officers said the investigation, named Operation Ore, was under-resourced but was concentrating on the suspects believed to represent the greatest threat to children.
Jim Gamble, an Assistant Chief Constable at the National Crime Squad, said: "Fifty police officers have been identified and we are not hiding that fact. We want you to know about that to reassure you. Police officers are members of the communities that they serve and there will be good people and bad people in the police."
Mr Gamble said eight of the police officers had been charged and the remainder had been given bail pending further inquiries.
Among the police officers who have been arrested are two Cambridgeshire officers who were involved in the inquiry into the murders of the Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Detective Constable Brian Stevens, 41, a family liaison officer to Jessica's parents, and PC Anthony Goodridge, 34, an exhibits officer on the inquiry, were arrested in September.
Others arrested in the Operation Ore investigation include a senior Customs and Excise official, a PE teacher and an Army cadets officer.
In London alone, 28 children identified as being at risk of being abused have been placed with care agencies.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Carole Howlett, of the Metropolitan Police, said yesterday's raids, which involved 250 officers, represented the single largest operation of its kind mounted by the force.
Ms Howlett said the Home Office had agreed to allocate an extra £500,000 to support further action as part of Operation Ore. She said the money would be used to provide extra training in computer forensics for officers across the country and to buy equipment to assist in analysing the computers already seized. The first arrests under Operation Ore were made in May this year.
Ms Howlett said the forensic analysis of computer equipment was an extremely lengthy process and some forces, lacking resources, faced a backlog of up to nine months.
"The Home Office funding is going to go a significant way in terms of training and building up the expertise across the forces," she added.
Operation Ore is the UK response to a huge FBI investigation which traced 250,000 paedophiles worldwide last year through credit card details used to pay for downloading child porn.
The names of British suspects were passed on by investigators in the United States. Suspects were traced through the Landslide website – a gateway to an international collection of child pornography sites.
Thomas Reedy, who ran the website and earned millions of dollars from it, is now serving several life sentences in the United States.
The children's charity NSPCC said it had been assisting the Met by responding to any emerging child protection matters. Colin Turner, head of NSPCC's specialist investigation service, said: "The arrests send out a strong warning to those that think they can remain anonymous and escape the law by using the internet to trade in child abuse images. Behind these indecent, abusive images are real children who will have suffered immense damage and trauma."