BLUNKETT URGES SACK FOR CHIEF CONSTABLE

Home Secretary Demands Urgent Steps To Restore Confidence After Fatal
Shooting In Bungled Operation

The home secretary, David Blunkett, yesterday invited a police
authority to sack its chief constable after a bungled operation in
which a naked and unarmed man was shot dead during a drugs raid.

In an unusually pointed letter to Sussex police authority, Mr
Blunkett called for urgent steps to be taken to restore public
confidence in the force and ensure that lessons had been learned from
the death of James Ashley.

He urged the authority to use its full range of powers to this end,
including considering whether it should ask Chief Constable Paul
Whitehouse to step down "in the interests of efficiency and
effectiveness".

Mr Blunkett also confirmed that the family of Mr Ashley had been
invited to meet Home Office minister John Denham to express their
concerns and calls for a public inquiry into the affair.

Mr Ashley, 39, was shot dead at point-blank range in front of his
18-year-old girlfriend by a police marksman during a drugs raid on
his flat in St Leonard's on Sea, East Sussex, in January 1998.

Kent police and Hampshire police were called in to investigate the
shooting. Five officers who were charged in connection with death
were cleared last month of any criminal offence.

Since the collapse of their trial, two senior officers have been
promoted to the rank of chief inspector, prompting more anger from Mr
Ashley's family.

Inspectors Kevin French, 47, and Christopher Siggs, 42, are to return
to duty in Sussex as chief inspectors and their pay increase will be
backdated to January 1998, when they were suspended. They are
currently on leave.

The pair and Superintendent Christopher Burton were accused of
deliberately failing to make a true assessment of the intelligence
that led to the armed raid on Mr Ashley's flat.

During a hearing at Wolverhampton crown court last month, Nigel
Sweeney, QC, said it would be impossible to pursue cases against
individual officers because evidence was lacking that there had been
a deliberate intent to damage the public interest, and because there
had been a "corporate failure" in the Sussex force.

An independent report by Hampshire police on the shooting and its
aftermath accused Chief Constable Whitehouse of "wilfully failing to
tell the truth" about what he knew of the botched operation.

Soon after the shooting, Mr Whitehouse told a press conference his
men had acted properly before and during the raid.

After the report, Mr Ashley's relatives called for Mr Whitehouse's resignation.

The extent of the incompetence that led to the raid was exposed by
Kent police, who were instructed to conduct a separate investigation
into the death of Mr Ashley.

Kent police concluded that the raid had been authorised on
intelligence that was "not merely exaggerated, it was determinably
false there was a plan to deceive and the intelligence concocted".

Mr Blunkett said in his letter yesterday: "The shooting incident, the
issues which emerged during subsequent investigations and criminal
proceedings, the reasons for the discontinuance of the trial and the
promotion of two officers who may yet face disciplinary action have
given rise to grave public concern.

"I expect the police authority to take whatever steps are necessary
to restore public confidence and to ensure the force has learned
lessons from this incident."

Mr Ashley's brother Tony, 32, welcomed news of the home secretary's
intervention. He said: "We will be very interested to hear how the
Sussex police authority responds."

The family had been demanding an apology for three years. "It's about
time action was taken." Mr Ashley added.