Prosecution dropped day before trial of Dimitris Legakis, who was arrested working at a crime scene in Swansea

The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted it was wrong to press on with a case against a news photographer arrested as he tried to lawfully take pictures at a crime scene.

Judge Walters at Swansea crown court described the case against Dimitris Legakis , which was dropped on the eve of his trial, as “disturbing” and said it seemed “the high point” of the prosecution was that a police officer “took offence” against someone whose job was to take photographs.

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Force facing calls to apologise and restart inquiry into attack that killed Asian woman and her three children

The Metropolitan police have been accused of “surrendering” to the killer behind an unsolved arson attack that took the lives of an Asian woman and her three children.

One former Met officer who reinvestigated the 1981 fire in east London said he feared prejudice and incompetence plagued the original murder investigation and that Britain’s biggest force had given up the hunt for the person responsible.

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Relatives of Kelly Faiers say police failed to properly inform them that a body had been found

The family of a woman found dead at a sex offender’s home have criticised the police’s “bodged” investigation after his body is believed to have been found in a caravan close to where he vanished six months ago.

Relatives of Kelly Faiers said they were upset at how the news about the possible discovery of Richard Scatchard’s body was broken, claiming they did not have time to alert others close to Faiers before the police went public.

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At least a dozen people sent suspicious messages, with senior figures suggesting foreign state could be culprit

A police investigation has been launched after MPs were apparently targeted in a “spear-phishing” attack, in what security experts believe could be an attempt to compromise parliament.

A police force said it had started an inquiry after receiving a complaint from an MP who was sent a number of unsolicited messages last month.

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Author’s comments on Monday relating to trans women were posted as new hate crime law came into force in Scotland

Comments by JK Rowling that described prominent transgender women activists as “men” will not be recorded as a non-crime hate incident, Police Scotland has said.

The Harry Potter author challenged police to arrest her in a series of posts on X on Monday as the Scottish government’s contentious hate crime law came into force, which she described as “wide open to abuse”. She listed sex offenders who had described themselves as transgender alongside well-known trans women activists, describing them as “men, every last one of them”.

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David Stansbury cleared of three counts of rape of a vulnerable woman in 2009 that were reported to police in 2020

A police sergeant has been found not guilty of raping a vulnerable woman after going to her home to take a statement after a domestic incident.

David Stansbury, 43, who was a Devon and Cornwall officer at the time, was accused of attacking the woman on three occasions in Plymouth 2009 and telling her: “I am the law.”

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Concerns grow over how new legislation will be policed and how it might affect freedom of speech

Enforcing Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act will “certainly” reduce public trust in the police, according to the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation.

David Kennedy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the law, which came into force on Monday and requires officers to assess “emotive” subjects such as online misgendering, “will cause havoc with trust in police in Scotland, it certainly will reduce that”,

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An investigation has revealed soaring numbers of unsolved vehicle crimes, with some inquiries into car thefts closed within 24 hours

Police failed to catch any criminals who stole a car in more than 100 neighbourhoods across England and Wales last year, analysis by the Observer has revealed.

A further 558 neighbourhoods with an average of at least one vehicle crime a week saw less than 2% solved, with a suspect caught and charged, according to figures published on data.police.uk , a site for open data on crime and policing.

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Sir John Mitting will rule on whether undercover officers broke the law by deceiving women like me. Yet he’s a member of a male-only club

Those of us involved in the so-called spy cops scandal have followed with interest the recent media coverage of the men-only Garrick Club and its membership list of high-profile individuals. It is not news to us that senior judges and powerful men in the security services have been members. Included among the elite was the chair of the public inquiry into undercover policing, John Mitting. Since his appointment as inquiry chair in 2017 we have been calling this out, as we believe it is an obvious conflict of interest – yet our concerns have predictably been ignored.

The inquiry had been established two years earlier by the then prime minister, Theresa May, as a direct result of investigations by women like me into the disappearances of our ex-partners , and the subsequent revelations of their true identities as Metropolitan police undercover officers. The abuse of women, and institutional sexism in the police, are fundamental to understanding the significance of this inquiry.

Alison is one of eight women who first took legal action against the Metropolitan police over the conduct of undercover officers and a founder member of Police Spies Out of Lives . A core participant in the public inquiry into undercover policing, she is one of the authors of Deep Deception – The Story of the Spycop Network by the Women who Uncovered the Shocking Truth

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