By Richard Evans, reporter
ETHICS... every day at work, whether you're a taxi driver, mechanic, brain surgeon, journalist or police officer, we all have decisions to make and responsibilities to others.
Indeed the choices we make may affect our careers, our colleagues and the people who rely on the work we do, the information we provide.
But when a member of the public provided us with pictures of a police officer parking illegally and in front of a drop-kerb designed to help the disabled so he could "amble" into Llandudno’s Kentucky Fried Chicken - it was harder to resist than the takeaway's own Wicked Meal!
The Llandudno bobby had been snapped some time ago by a shocked shopper who couldn’t believe he had the audacity to park illegally (before parking was decriminalised) in order to get his dinner.
The picture, captured on a mobile phone, was according to North Wales Police taken in August or September 2005, although the photographer swears blind it was around 12 months ago.
And so this was North Wales Police’s argument - the picture was not contemporaneous and so was unfair and irrelevant to both North Wales Police and the copper concerned. But they did verify the story.
Of course, we viewed the situation differently and while I feel slightly sorry for the police officer concerned, the question we had to ask ourselves is would we be letting our readers down had we not published the pictures? If a policeman can park in this inconsiderate way in 2006, or even 2005, what's to say he's not still doing it now?
In an entirely unrelated incident this week, a shop worker informed us that a civilian vehicle had obstructed the path of a wheelchair bound shopper who became stranded on the kerbside at exactly the same point where the policeman had parked his patrol car. It seems the spot is a common one for those popping into the fast-food restaurant.
We don’t want to be too hard on the policeman in question. After all, how many of us haven’t been caught in a compromising situation without it being plastered all over the local paper? But shouldn’t an on-duty police officer be setting a better example?
And let me add that it wasn’t without some humour we published the story, and I’m sure many of the policeman’s colleagues may well view it the same way!
See the original story on our website here.
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