Jill Lawless
tulsaworld.com
British call for an inquiry into police-media relations.Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner resigned Monday, a day after his boss also had quit, and fresh investigations of possible police wrongdoing were launched in the phone hacking scandal that has spread from Rupert Murdoch's media empire to the British Prime Minister's Office.
Prime Minister David Cameron called an emergency session of Parliament on the scandal and cut short his visit to Africa to try to contain the widening crisis. Lawmakers on Tuesday are to question Murdoch, his son James, and Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch's U.K. newspaper arm.
In a further twist, a former News of the World reporter who helped blow the whistle on the scandal was found dead Monday in his home, but police said it was not believed to be suspicious.
Former News of the World journalist Sean Hoare was found dead Monday in Watford, about 25 miles northwest of London. Police said the death was being treated as unexplained but was not considered suspicious, according to Britain's Press Association.
Hoare was quoted by The New York Times saying that phone hacking was widely used and even encouraged at the News of the World under Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor whom Cameron later hired as his communications chief. Coulson resigned that post in January and was arrested earlier this month in the scandal.
Murdoch shut down the News of the World tabloid after it was accused of hacking into the voice mail of celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims.
The crisis has roiled the upper ranks of Britain's police, with Monday's resignation of Assistant Commissioner John Yates - Scotland Yard's top anti-terrorist officer - following that on Sunday of police chief Paul Stephenson over their links to Neil Wallis, an arrested former executive from Murdoch's shuttered News of the World tabloid whom police had employed as a media consultant.
The government quickly announced an inquiry into police-media relations and possible corruption.
Home Secretary Theresa May said that people were naturally asking "who polices the police," and announced an inquiry into "instances of undue influence, inappropriate contractual arrangements and other abuses of power in police relationships with the media and other parties."
The Independent Police Complaints Commission also said it was looking into the claims, including one that Yates inappropriately helped get a job for Wallis' daughter. Wallis, former executive editor of News of the World, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.
Yates said he had done nothing wrong.