OFFICERS SUSPENDED AFTER UNARMED MAN IS SHOT DEAD WIN PROMOTION

Two police officers who helped plan a drugs raid in which an unarmed and
naked man was shot dead have been promoted, even though they may be
disciplined for their involvement in the botched operation.

Inspectors Kevin French, 47, and Christopher Siggs, 42, will 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 James Ashley's flat in St Leonard's on Sea, near Hastings, on
January 15 1998.

During the operation - carried out as part of an investigation into drug
trafficking in the area, Mr Ashley, 39, was shot dead at point-blank range
in front of his 18-year-old girlfriend by a police marksman, PC Christopher
Sherwood.

Prosecutions against all the men were launched but abandoned.

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 the chief constable of Sussex, Paul 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, relatives of
the dead man 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 concluded 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".

The raid had been "a complete corporate failure in duty to society", it said.

PC Sherwood was briefed that Mr Ashley had a previous conviction for
murder, had used a gun, and had a large quantity of cocaine in his flat.
None of the information was true.

PC Sherwood claimed he fired because he thought Mr Ashley was aiming a gun
at him.

The four officers have been reinstated but are still under investigation by
the police complaints authority, which will decide whether they should be
disciplined.

Sussex police said yesterday that Insp Siggs and Insp French had learned
they had won promotion in the same month the raid took place. The officers
had been assessed and questioned by promotions boards in the usual way, the
force said.

"They have been acquitted in the criminal court. Now that they have been
reinstated they are entitled to take the new rank, and that is what they
have done," said a spokesman. The force refused to elaborate.

Relatives of the victim condemned the promotions, saying they were "another
slap in the face". Mr Ashley's brother, Tony, 32, said: "If this is what it
takes to get promoted within Sussex police then it is a disgrace."

The victim's girlfriend, Caroline Courtland Smith, intends to sue the force
for damages, saying her life has been destroyed by the trauma of watching
her lover die.