Hindley officer disciplined

A police officer who helped the dying mother of moors' murder victim Lesley Ann Downey when she attended Myra Hindley's High Court appeal has been disciplined for his actions.

Wheelchair user Ann West, 68, who has liver cancer and has just weeks to live, telephoned Detective Constable Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, to ask for his help in arranging transport and accommodation for the hearing in London earlier this month.

Hindley was appealing against the Home Secretary's decision that she must spend the rest of her life in jail.

DC Brennan, 38, who has become a family friend of the Wests, took time off from his duties to collect Mrs West and her husband Alan in a CID car and take her to the court. Press photographers snapped him helping Mrs West into court and he was subsequently disciplined for his conduct. Last Thursday he was transferred to uniformed duties and reprimanded for taking a police car without consent, being absent from duty and making a false entry in his diary.