New police chief facing challenges of tackling complex investigations

“It is not going to be realistic for us to read, line by line, all of that material,” said Mr Jukes.

“But we have to be working with the criminal justice system and prosecutors and defence solicitors and the tech and app companies to work out how we’re going to manage that information. We have to deliver justice for victims.”

He said: “I absolutely believe our officers are going out and are determined to deliver their best in an investigation but that is only with the resources available to us and the CPS only have what is available to them too,” he said.

He says that it is crucial when going through those thousands of messages, the “most crucial” are found and he says investigators are being “vigilant”.

“We have experience here from other investigations in complex disclosures. The work that arose after the discontinuance of the Lynette White murder trial and the investigation that followed led to real scrutiny here about disclosure.

“In that sense we have already committed to that change.

“That was a very difficult experience for the force and all the people associated with it, but it has put us on the front foot in terms of the disclosure challenge. I think the challenge now is still about evidence but it’s the complexity of the digital age.”

South Wales Police was the first to trial facial recognition in a pilot, something that is now being used on a daily basis.

“We are creating opportunities for ourselves through technology,” he said.

He says that in years gone by police would have retrieved an image of a suspect and either printed it off and handed it round or in more recent years emailed it out. But the facial recognition software means that within seconds, officers can copy a CCTV or other images into the system and cross-reference it with existing images.

It has shown real results in seconds, he says. He recounts a recent incident where