CONSPIRACY TRIAL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28512, 15 February 1958, Page 18

CONSPIRACY TRIAL

I Brighton Police Distrusted

(N,Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, February 13. A London police (superintendent distrusted Brighton police so much that he sent one of his own detectives to the seaside town to work “under cover,” a Court trying five Brighton men, including the suspended police chief, was told today. Superintendent Edwin Moody, of the British Transport Commission Police, was giving evidence at the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court in the trial of the five men, who are accused of conspiring to obstruct the course of justice.

They are Charles Ridge, aged 58. suspended police chief; Detec-tive-Inspector John Hammersley, aged 40; Detective-Sergeant Trevor Heath, aged 36; Anthony Lyons, aged 59, a bar owner; and Samuel Bellson, aged 42, a bookmaker. All have pleaded not guilty. Superintendent Moody said he spoke to Hammersley over the theft of 159 cases of cigarettes from a London depot. Hammersley kept “stalling,” and he had lost confidence in the Brighton C.I.D. and sent one of his own men to work in Brighton without telling the local force, he said.

Hammersley had told him the cigarettes were for sale at £6 10s a thousand. He had replied: “What, buy stolen property back?” A convict brought from prison to give evidence said he had “known for years that certain members of the Brighton police are what we call bent.”