F.A.O. The Chief Constable
Cheshire Constabulary

Dear Sir,

Your Police Authority were involved in Operation Recoil, an operation centred on the downloading of illegal indecent images of children. I am not familiar with the entire operation, but I do know that one of the Internet sites targeted, claimed to have images of 16 year olds on the home page. Apparently once inside, there were images of younger children. I know that some of the people, who accessed those sites, did so in late 2002.  At that time, it would not have been illegal to look at images of 16 year olds, which apparently the site was claiming to display.
The law was changed in May 2004 and outlawed looking at indecent images of anyone under the age of 18. Operation Recoil did not make arrests until July 2004, literally a few weeks after the not very well publicised law changed. The police had an almost two-year-old list of people who were interested in looking at images of 16 year olds and for some reason, chose that moment to make arrests. That list also included people who had been misled into looking at images of children younger than 16, and on the ‘unallocated clusters rule’ these people will still be deemed to be guilty even if they have tried to cover their tracks.
Someone that I know who works in the probation service used the word ‘entrapment’ to describe these actions. I would appreciate your comments to this and also an explanation as to how you can defend the timing of the operation.
I would also appreciate answers to the following:

• Where would members of the public have found out about these changes in the law? I have already been told by someone from Cheshire Constabulary that ‘. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and we must make ourselves aware of changes in legislation’.  However when asking that same person what constitutes breaking the law on this topic, I am getting very evasive and woolly answers, even though I have asked a very direct question.
• What proportion of convictions for downloading indecent images from the Internet relate to boys and then girls. I only ever read in the press about people looking at boys. Your statistics may convince me that this is not a ‘gay’ issue.

This enquiry does not relate to any specific case. It is a general question relating to the operation as a whole.

Yours faithfully