Secretive detectives ended up bungling hunt and losing our respect...

WHEN news of the disappearance of Nicola Bulley broke and TV showed us the scenes, I was surprised no cordons had been set up around the bench where Nicola’s phone had been found.

And I was surprised there were no experts in forensic suits and masks, and that plod could not be spotted on sentry duty, dictating who could access the area where Nicola had last been seen.

We didn’t have to wait long before realising why all of these were absent. After a few days, Superintendent Sally Riley held a media conference.

She explained they were treating Nicola’s disappearance as a missing person inquiry and had a “working hypothesis”.

Nicola had entered the River Wyre, she said, and there was no evidence of any third-party involvement or criminality. Last Wednesday, Lancashire Police held their third press conference.

Media and public interest was huge and, much to the irritation of the police, so was speculation. It was time for a big-hitter. Step forward Assistant Chief Constable Peter Lawson.to his left sat Detective Superintendent Rebecca Smith.

Ms Smith said she had become the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) on day four of the search for Nicola.this rang a very loud alarm bell for me. If there was a need to allocate the investigation

to a SIO, then that officer should have been appointed on day one.

Ms Smith said the National Crime Agency had provided tactical and strategic advice, that they had engaged specialists who were “the best in their field”, and she repeated the lines

Ms Riley had spouted – “no evidence of crime, no evidence of third-party involvement”. Nicola had gone in the water. But if she hasn’t gone in the water they will have lost that opportunity for ever, as forensics is how so many cases are solved.

Also, have they checked all phone traffic passing through local cell towers, to see if there’s an unidentified device in or around the area about the time that Nicola disappeared?

During the last press conference it all went horribly, irretrievably,

wrong for the police. Ms Smith let it slip that Nicola had “specific vulnerabilities”. Lawson chipped in and corroborated these vulnerabilities, and added they were “personal and private”.

He declined to expand upon them.this genie was now well and truly out of the lamp, and there was no way of getting it back in, even though Smith and Lawson scuttled off leaving the media with more questions than answers.

Within a few short hours, the police performed a U-turn, by making it public that Nicola’s vulnerabilities were around alcohol and the menopause.

A storm of monumental proportions followed – and the police only have themselves to blame.their control freakery around the release of information

has backfired spectacularly. All this could have been avoided if they had been transparent from the start.

If they had told us all on day one that Nicola was vulnerable, in that she had mental health issues, so much of the trouble that they now find themselves in could easily have been avoided.

There was more trouble brewing for this constabulary...

It was revealed that police and health workers had attended Nicola’s house on January 10 and that the matter remained “under investigation”.what could have occurred in the house that still required investigating?

Don’t answer that, or else the police will come after you for speculating. Don’t worry, they can’t, because speculating is not a crime – yet! Lancashire Police have now referred themselves to the Independent Office for

Police Conduct.the police have clearly tried to suppress the truth, a stupidly naive thing to do when you are operating under the gaze of the nation’s media.

If their messaging cannot be trusted, then it is no surprise so many people are not trusting their investigation either.

But remember, Lancashire Police say she’s gone in the water, although they refuse to tell us why they’re so convinced of that.

I appreciate rivers and seas can sometimes be slow to give up their secrets and the police’s hypothesis may be proved right.

However, the damage they have caused to their reputation, for which they only have themselves to blame, may well be irretrievable.