A first responder has accused Andy Burnham’s government of “spitting in the faces of police officers” after Downing Street claimed it cannot stop the early release of two of PC Andrew Harper’s killers.
Former officer Chris Bushnell, who met with PC Harper on the day he died while responding to a quad bike theft in Berkshire in 2019, said he finds the possibility of Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers being released early “absolutely outrageous”.
Downing Street faces immense backlash over the situation, with more than 880,000 people signing a petition calling for the pair to remain in jail, while Thames Valley Police Federation is weighing legal action to prevent their release.
On Monday night, PC Harper’s “really angry” mother Debbie Adlam told ITV News she had not heard from the prime minister: “My message is that you want to tour the country, you want to meet the people. You haven’t even got in touch with me. How about coming to see me?”
Newlywed PC Harper, 28, was caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and dragged down a country road as three teenage suspects fled the scene of the burglary. Mr Bushnell, then a police constable, was waiting in a lay-by for the suspects’ vehicle when he saw it dragging his colleague’s body behind.
The officer pursued but was ordered to stop through the radio. Minutes later, he was told PC Harper had been killed.
In a statement issued through the Thames Valley Police Federation (TVPF), Mr Bushnell said: “I will never get over it. The guilt. That feeling of ‘what if?’ Today, I feel pretty much how I felt the day after it happened.
“This news about the sentencing – and the offenders being released early – has brought it all back again.”
Cole and Bowers were convicted of manslaughter in 2020. But under current early release plans, they remain eligible to be freed in January – halfway through their 13-year sentences. The driver of the vehicle, Henry Long, received a 16-year sentence and would not be eligible for early release.
Some 5,000 inmates are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after the exemptions announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme.
Despite growing pressure, Downing Street said yesterday it is “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from early release.
No 10 insisted Mr Burnham is “far from accepting the situation” but played down the prospect of a carve-out to keep Cole and Bowers behind bars.
“He understands the public wants him to go further, and he wanted to go further, but on the wider issue that prisons would have run out of space, police would stop making arrests, it would be impossible to lock up convicted offenders and that would put public safety at untold risk,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said.
But late on Monday night Sky News reported, via a spokesperson at No 10, that Mr Burnham has asked justice secretary Alex Norris to “work through further options to keep a greater number of the most serious offenders in prison, including the killers of PC Harper”, conflicting with Downing Street’s position throughout the day.
Mr Bushnell, who was serving in the West Berkshire dog unit when PC Harper was killed, said: “I’ve seen people die before. I’ve seen suicides. This was beyond brutal. It was awful.”
Recounting the court hearings he had to attend, Mr Bushnell said: “They were mocking it. The second time they were in the cells, but we heard they weren’t even paying attention.
“There was no remorse at all. It was almost a joke to them. Nothing serious. If you have an accident, if you kill someone, you show remorse. I just can’t comprehend it.
“And for all this to be coming up again now is unbelievable. It stirs up all those emotions once more.”
Mr Bushnell, who retired from Thames Valley Police in 2022, added: “We can’t change the verdict. They got their sentences, which were pretty pitiful, to be fair.
“When I first heard a couple of weeks ago there was a chance they could be let out early, I was shaking. It brought everything back.
“To think they could be released early is absolutely outrageous. I’m angry with them, but I’m also angry with the government. They’re spitting in the face of police officers.”
“They have got to serve their full sentence. Andy did his duty that night. The least they can do is show him some respect.”
The national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, Mark Fairhurst, said he is “positive we could free up additional space and block anybody convicted of manslaughter from early release”.
He added: “You only have to look at the remand population. We’re knocking on to some 17,000 people on remand. I’m sure we could get a couple of thousands of them bailed or tagged with the GPS tag to monitor them electronically. That’s an easy win for this government and I can’t understand why they don’t consider it.”
It comes despite Mr Burnham earlier this week saying he had “pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing” by excluding sentences for “rape, serious child sex offences and other grooming offences” from eligibility.
Reforms in the Sentencing Act came after prisons came close to running out of space entirely last year, risking the “total breakdown of law and order”, which would leave police unable to make arrests and courts unable to send offenders to custody, the then justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The death of PC Andrew Harper was a horrific crime. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and we share the anger from the police community that we are in this position.
“Thanks to tireless campaigning by Andrew’s family, Harper’s Law means that anyone convicted of killing an emergency worker whilst committing a crime now gets a mandatory life sentence. This government has gone further by introducing a presumption that anyone convicted of murdering a police, prison or probation officer is handed a whole-life order.
“We have been clear that we wanted to go further and block more offenders from getting out sooner into their sentence but could not do so without risking prisons reaching capacity and collapsing.
“If that happened, police could not make arrests, courts could not remand offenders and there would be unchecked criminality on our streets.”
