South Yorkshire police's decision to send officers to the island of Kos is astonishing at a time when services are being cut
What could possibly explain why a squad of British police officers want to leave wet and windy Yorkshire in October and spend a week on the Aegean island of Kos?
While you puzzle that one out, let me say that I don't think it is the lure of the ouzo and calamari that draws a group of South Yorkshire police officers to take part in a dig for the remains of Ben Needham fully 21 years after the then toddler disappeared on Kos while on holiday with his family.
I think it is more likely to be a combination of genuine concern to close a long unsolved crime and the effects of family pressure and media interest which creates the impression in police minds that this is the sort of compassionate act which the force should undertake.
Whether the attraction of some easy sympathetic publicity at a time when the South Yorkshire force's reputation is under such a profound cloud following the Hillsborough report is something about which one can only speculate.
But at a time when police forces around the country are close to explosion from indignation over cuts in budgets and person power it is little short of astonishing that South Yorkshire police should think it is a priority to send a squad of officers to Greece in the hope of finding a lead in a case which has stayed obstinately cold for a generation.
What does the chief constable think he is doing in authorising such a deployment of his scarce and expensive publicly funded resources, which is sadly unlikely to turn up anything new, in a time of austerity? It looks very much as though South Yorkshire police can't see straight on this case. One's heart goes out to the parents in this case, today as in 1991. Any parent, myself included, finding themselves is such a horrific situation, would want no effort spared in searching for answers, no matter how many years had passed. But tough decisions have to be taken in public services and searching again for clues about Ben Needham is not the UK police's job. That responsibility, if it still exists at all, rests with the Greek police.
When the news of this misguided Aegean operation was announced, I briefly thought that perhaps a good, elected police commissioner might be expected to stop a force doing this sort of thing. But a moment's reflection makes one realise that the reverse would be more likely. Elected commissioners would be even more susceptible to campaigns for such misuse of police resources. That's part of what is dangerous about the new elected system.
The police are sometimes unfairly criticised. But in a case like this they are their own worst enemy.
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