A police force was facing questions last night over why officers conducting a leak inquiry unlawfully tracked the phone of a journalist who was separately investigating the chief constable.
Cleveland police has already been criticised by senior judges for using surveillance powers to trawl through the phone records of local newspaper journalists, a solicitor and two police officers.
A hearing last week was told that the force grabbed the call and billing data of Mark Dias, an acting inspector, and Steve Matthews, the chairman of the local Police Federation, on the spurious ground that they were sources for journalists at the Northern Echo.
Jeremy Armstrong, the northeast correspondent of the Daily Mirror, revealed in 2010 that Sean Price, the chief constable at the time, had used taxpayers’ money to conduct an affair with a colleague, and was still investigating the story in 2012.
Mr Price was found guilty of gross misconduct and dismissed in October 2012 for lying about his role in the recruitment of the former police authority chairman’s daughter.
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Under the separate leaks inquiry in May 2012, the force seized Mr Armstrong’s records under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act [RIPA], which was replaced this year.
Mr Armstrong’s mobile number was placed on the RIPA application form and wrongly linked to the name of one of the journalists from the Northern Echo. It meant that all his calls between January 1 and May 1, 2012, were seized by the force, despite his rights as a journalist to protect sources.
The Mirror reported that Cleveland police said that the inclusion of Mr Armstrong’s mobile number was a mistake.
However, an email seen by The Times, which was circulated in May 2012 within the professional standards department, shows that officers were interested in the sources of Mirror journalists at the time they were investigating Mr Dias and Mr Matthews.
It mentions “some indication that the information to the Mirror came from a North Yorkshire source”, although it is not clear to which story it refers.
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There is no suggestion that Mr Price had any involvement or knowledge of the RIPA process or that the inclusion of Mr Armstrong’s number alongside the email is anything more than a coincidence. Cleveland police did not respond to requests for comment about its actions in relation to Mr Armstrong’s private phone data.
