Bucks Advertiser: second complaint to police
Thames Valley Police has again come under fire from the local press for sitting on information about violent crimes.
In the latest incident, The Buckinghamshire Advertiser has complained that the force press office only released information about a sex attack on an 11-year-old girl 10 days after it took place.
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Advertiser community reporter Sarah Booker said the press office blamed staff shortages for the delay in releasing information on the attack in Denham Village. She was also told that it had taken time to produce an e-fit image of a man wanted by police for questioning.
Earlier this year the Buckinghamshire Examiner complained that Thames Valley Police failed to give information to the media about a teenager stabbed in Dellfield. The paper said it only picked up the story through local contacts.
Booker told Press Gazette: “I was amazed this could happen again after the stabbing. I was shocked that something so serious did not have an immediate witness appeal. Someone might have seen the attacker walking past. It did not need an e-fit to run an appeal for witnesses, we could have used it as a follow up.”
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Thames Valley Police press officer Tim Wiseman denied to Press Gazette that the delay in releasing the information had anything to do with staff shortages in the press office. “We put out the information as soon as it was issued to us by police officers. An e-fit is not something that anyone can knock up, we only have a certain number of e-fit operators,” he said.
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