Lancashire police detective forced to resign

DS Jan Beasant was solely responsible for bugging the home of Blackburn man Iyad Albattikhi, the boss of Funny Boyz takeaway, Dickson Road, Blackpool, who was accused of the murder of Charlene Downes.

She disappeared in 2003.

Mohammed Reveshi was accused of assisting an offender and his conversations were secretly recorded in his car and home under DS Beasant’s operation.

A jury failed to reach a verdict on Albattikhi and Reveshi’s guilt and a re-trail collapsed amongst criticism of the police investigation.

A 2009 Independent Police Complaints Commission report identified a ‘series of failings’.

The investigating team were guilty of a ‘strategic and tactical failure’ in the management of the audio and video material they obtained, the IPCC concluded.

Proper records were not kept, material was not fully transcribed and the overall integrity of the material was not ensured, it said.

The use of untrained and inexperienced officers in the inquiry was also criticised as was the way a human intelligence source was handled, according to the IPCC.

DS Beasant told the original trial in May 2007 that police used a total of 52 digital audio tapes during round-the-clock covert surveillance.

She had responsibility for the recordings and later went through all of the tapes to ascertain the nature of the conversations.

She said the conversations - recorded between late February and late March 2005 - were a mixture of talk about business premises and the police inquiry.

The IPCC report recommended DS Beasant face a disciplinary hearing which ended this week.

She was found guilty of two counts of misconduct not guilty of a third. She was forced to resign by the independent senior panel.

Head of Professional Standards Supt Simon Giles said: “Lancashire Constabulary expects the highest professional standards from all our staff and the panel has found that this individual’s conduct has fallen well short of these standards.”