The reputation of former Detective Chief Superintendent Phil Jones, 63, is in tatters. The former Head of South Wales Police’s CID began an eighteen month jail sentence yesterday. Jones pleaded guilty to wilful misconduct in public office and conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation in December 2008. He was sentenced yesterday because his partner in crime, former Detective Constable David Lloyd, insisted on a trial. Lloyd was jailed for four years after £200,000 was found in his attic. It belonged to his friend Robert Morgan – a known drugs dealer.

After his retirement in 2003 Lloyd was hired as a civilian casework director for the Investigative Support Unit. He had previously worked at Police Headquarters in Bridgend. Lloyd had access to information from police databases, which he passed on to Jones. Lloyd used the Police National Computer, Niche system and Quick Address Search system to give Jones information on addresses, criminal records and other material that Jones found useful in his investigations. The corrupt arrangement began in 2005 and continued until the Anti Corruption Police caught them out in a sting operation that included taped conversations in January 2008.

Jones retired on December 28th 1997. He set up an investigation agency and recruited Lloyd and Christopher Barnett to pose as a client to obtain information. Barnett was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment that was suspended for two years. His Honour Judge Darwall-Smith told Jones that the public would be justifiably outraged if he was not sent to prison.

The sixty-three year-old former Detective Chief Superintendent heard the judge lambast his corrupt practices and character. “This lack of moral fibre on your part goes to the root of the corrupt culture existing in parts of the force,” Darwall-Smith told Jones. Lloyd’s performance in the witness box was even more bizarre. He flaunted his friendship with Morgan.

“As a former police officer you told the jury that tax evasion was not a crime in your opinion,” Darwall-Smith told Lloyd. “It seems there was one law for Dai Lloyd and one for everybody else.” Lloyd received expensive gifts and lived beyond his means. “The number of arrests and searches that came to nothing because you had pre-warned the suspect through your friend Mr Morgan does not bear thinking.”

Legacy:

But what about Jones? He was the top-ranking officer in the Llanharry farmhouse murders that resulted in the wrongful convictions of Jonathan Jones. Cheryl Tooze never believed that her boyfriend – later husband – shot her parents dead in July 1993. Jones was freed by the Court of Appeal after almost three years in prison. His case was later reviewed and is still being investigated.

Phillip Jones also made a mess of the first reinvestigation of the Lynette White Inquiry. Despite accepting that the Cardiff Five were innocent, he failed to apologise to them or acknowledge it publicly. Jones saw nothing wrong in wasting public resources pursuing tests that experts predicted would fail given the condition of the samples. He wanted to continue testing the samples despite the limited quantity of poor quality DNA. It could have had dire consequences had it not been for the excellent work of forensic scientists and police officers in Operation Mistral.

Jones ordered an internal investigation of criticisms made in the case of Darren Hall, Michael O’Brien and Ellis Sherwood – the Newsagent’s Three. They were wrongfully convicted in 1988 of the October 1987 murder of newspaper vendor Phillip Saunders. The Newsagent’s Three served eleven years imprisonment, despite over a hundred breaches of the Police And Criminal Evidence Act. The investigation that Jones ordered failed to find any of these abuses and concluded that South Wales Police had done nothing wrong.

“Phillip Jones retired from South Wales Police on December 28 1997,” a statement from South Wales Police told us. “The offences related to corruption and the unlawful disclosure of sensitive information. They were not connected to legacy issues but referred to current information and intelligence. There are formal processes for when cases are reviewed and we have not been prompted to review any cases as a result of this court case.”

Why not? How can they possibly know whether legacy issues are affected by Jones’ lack of moral fibre without an investigation of his role in other cases. The corruption of Lloyd and Jones has been proved beyond reasonable doubt. Consequently, a thorough investigation of their roles in other cases using the methods developed in Operation Rubicon should begin without delay.