JOURNALIST ARRESTED OVER DRUGS BOUGHT IN 'STING'

The police are usually grateful to journalists who expose crime. They are
less keen when the crime is selling cannabis and it is a Cabinet minister's
son who is exposed. Paul McCann, Media Correspondent, on a crime that dare
not speak a name.

The Metropolitan Police has taken the highly unusual step of arresting the
journalist who alleges she bought cannabis from a Cabinet minister's
17-year-old son. Dawn Alford, a reporter on the Mirror, was arrested on
suspicion of possessing a controlled substance after she went voluntarily
to Vauxhall police station in south London yesterday. Ms Alford was
arrested but not charged and released on police bail.

It is usual in newspaper "sting" operations for the police to ignore
journalists' temporary possession of drugs when they are exposing a crime.
However, a police source said yesterday that in this case, because they had
not been informed in advance of the "sting", and because the journalist
held on to the drugs for over a week, the case had been muddied.

By charging the journalist the Met also hopes to wash its hands of the case
and let the Crown Prosecution Service decide whether to proceed against
either the minister's son or the journalist.

Ms Alford was unavailable for comment yesterday, but has told friends that
she feared she has been followed since the story broke on Christmas Eve.

Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, said last night: "This is an outrageous
decision which is, in my opinion, specifically designed to deflect
attention from the criminal activities of a Cabinet minister's son to the
entirely justifiable methods deployed by a newspaper to uncover them," he
said.

"Police have not to my knowledge ever questioned this procedure in the past
... and we will today be appealing directly to the Home Secretary, Jack
Straw, to immediately launch an inquiry into how this farcical situation
arose."

Despite the 1933 Children and Young Person's Act which forbids the
identification of anyone under 18 who is charged with a crime, the identity
of the minister at the heart of the story was spreading in media and
political circles yesterday as people returned to work after the Christmas
break.

It is now only a matter of time before the minister's identity becomes
widely, if unofficially, known.