Downfall of the high f lier once tipped to be Britain’s top officer
ONLY a decade ago and while in his second role as a chief constable, Sir Norman Bettison was tipped to become Britain’s top police officer.
But he was forced to resign in the aftermath of the Hillsborough Independent Panel report in 2012, and could have faced a jail sentence had he been found guilty of the misconduct in public office charges hanging over his head until yesterday.
The 62-year-old steelworker’s son, born in Rotherham, first joined the police as a 16-year-old cadet and became a constable aged 19, in 1975. By 15 April 1989, when the tragedy struck, he was already a chief inspector and was off duty as a spectator.
But it was his alleged role in an internal inquiry unit set up by South Yorkshire Police in the immediate aftermath which later came back to haunt him.
In the meantime, Sir Norman was promoted to superintendent, then moved to West Yorkshire as an assistant chief constable in 1993, before his first chief constable’s role at Merseyside in 1998. The appointment was vehemently opposed by bereaved Hillsborough families.
He received the Queen’s Policing Medal in 2000, then left the force five years later with a £328,000 pay-off to take up a role as chief executive of Centrex, a branch of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. After receiving a knighthood in 2006, he re-joined the police as West Yorkshire Police’s chief constable in 2007. Talk of a future role as Metropolitan Police Commissioner surfaced the following year – but it emerged that Sir Norman was ordering staff to monitor his Wikipedia entry to stop users posting rude comments.
He faced calls to resign after the Independent Hillsborough Panel Report was published in 2012. Sir Norman inflamed the situation, saying: ‘Fans’ behaviour, to the extent that it was relevant at all, made the job of the police, in the crush ... harder than it needed to be.’ He apologised a day later and resigned a month on.