Warden Elizabeth Fairbank battled for two years against charges of fraud from an elderly resident in her care at sheltered housing complex Alexander Hutchinson Court in north Hull.
She was in charge of handling one resident’s finances when almost £9,000 was left unaccounted for.
Miss Fairbank claims she used some of the savings to decorate the woman’s flat.
The police were handed bundles of receipts, which Miss Fairbank claims prove her innocence and show all the missing money went on refurbishing the lady’s flat.
Another carer from the complex gave evidence stating she countersigned one receipt for a carpet.
Well, that should be a short trial then, shouldn’t it?
However, the police’s property unit destroyed the evidence after the officer in the case failed to respond to an e-mail confirming the evidence was still needed.
Ah. Ummmm… OK.
Well, at least they didn’t waste the court’s time by…
It was not until the second day of Miss Fairbank’s trial that the police admitted the evidence in the form of receipts had existed but had been destroyed, although Miss Fairbank’s legal team had been asking for the documents for two years.
Did they hope they’d find them down the back of the staff room sofa?
A judge stopped the trial on the grounds she could not be fairly tried.
Well, indeed! And now, she can never be formally cleared, either.
Miss Fairbank, 35, said: ..”The police have admitted they made a mistake but I have received no apology.
“I don’t see how on earth we can trust the justice system and the police when something like this can happen to a normal person like me. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
“I was fortunate to have the barrister I did, who spent endless hours going through the information and who believed that these receipts existed.
“What the police did was slapdash and incompetent. This all been a complete nightmare.”
Who could disagree?
When the case collapsed, Detective Superintendent Scott Young said: “Unfortunately, despite great efforts made by Humberside Police to ensure all administrative processes are fail-safe, occasionally incidents such as this do happen.
“Sadly, on this occasion, evidence appears to have been destroyed because of a mistaken belief that it was no longer needed.”
Well, lessons will be learned, eh?
He said a “more robust” IT system would be introduced to prevent similar problems.
Really? I can’t see how that’ll help, since the point of failure here was on the other end of the keyboard.