(Image: T&A)
A police community support officer from Bradford has denied being corrupt despite admitting sharing confidential information with members of the public.
Alice Dobson is on trial at Bradford Court in connection with a brutal machete attack on two men, one of whom had his hand hacked off.
Dobson, 30, of Nether Hall Road, Baildon, is charged with perverting the course of justice by obtaining and disseminating confidential information held by West Yorkshire Police.
She is alleged to have shared information about the machete attack with a man later accused, with others, of carrying it out.
Five men – Rahees Khan, Mohammed Waqqas Khan, Hanzalah Saladin, Adam Takolia, and another man who cannot be named for legal reasons – are on trial charged with conspiracy to murder.
Dobson’s actions were previously described as “a flagrant breach of her role within West Yorkshire Police” and that for some criminals in the BD3 postcode “she was the inside guy”.
In court on Monday, Dobson described being towards the end of her shift on May 11 last year when she was ordered to go to Seymour Street in Bradford.
Minutes earlier a group armed with bladed weapons such as machetes had attacked Zayad Khan and his nephew Usamah Khan.
Questioned by defence barrister Dapinder Singh KC, Dobson said: “I got to the scene, and it was chaos.
“Nobody really knew exactly what was going on at this time.
“At first there was a belief that it might have been some kind of terror attack, and we didn’t know if there were going to be more casualties popping up.”
Dobson said she spent between 45 and 50 minutes at the bloody attack scene, which left her “very disturbed”.
She exchanged text messages with her then-boyfriend, Fazal Mohammed, with whom she communicated “extensively”, and later called him saying that she “felt sick”.
She described the machete incident as “a horrible stabbing”.
She also discussed the “barbaric” incident with relatives in a family WhatsApp group with one member describing the people involved as “terrible”.
Dobson replied: “Yes, they all are. It’s like stuff you see in these gangster films. It’s bonkers that it happens in real life.”
The next day, May 12, Dobson accessed a police computer report of a car on fire, which was connected to the machete incident, as well as “live logs” for the attack itself.
Dobson told the court she wanted to see if anyone had been arrested and to update herself as the attack had occurred in her BD3 area.
She also searched for and viewed the police log for the attack on Zayad Khan.
She denied that anyone had asked her to look at the logs or that she was invited to pass on information she had gleaned from them.
She also denied telling her boyfriend what she had seen in the logs or that he had asked her to access the logs to find information.
Dobson did admit to receiving a call from her boyfriend’s associate Rahees Khan, and that she revealed that Khan’s uncle Mohammed “Rizzy” Rizwan was wanted for the attempted murder of Zayad Khan and should hand himself in.
There were other messages and calls between Rahees Khan and Dobson, including whilst she was viewing a police log.
She also looked at logs for Mohammed Rizwan’s home address to access his personal record.
Asked why she did that, Dobson said: “It’s a massive event [the machete attack] that has happened in BD3. He [Rizwan] was one of the suspects. I wanted to know if he had been charged with it or released.”
She said she looked at the attempt murder log for Zayad Khan to be aware of any suspects or use community intelligence to drive lines of inquiry.
Over the following days there were further calls from Rahees Khan, which prompted Mr Singh to ask: “Did you believe or suspect that Rahees Khan had been involved in the [machete] incident on May 11?”
Dobson replied: “No.”
Mr Singh said: “Did you tell him what you had been seeing or reading in the logs?”
Dobson said: “No, I didn’t.”
Mr Singh: “Did he ask you for information contained within the police logs?”
Dobson: “No, he didn’t.”
Mr Singh: “Were you looking at these [computer records] to gain information to pass to anyone?”
Dobson: “Absolutely not.”
The court heard that Dobson was arrested on October 13 last year and quizzed over an alleged assault by a female for which she had accessed police systems and shared information.
She was later charged with perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office.
During lengthy cross-examination, prosecution barrister Stephen Wood KC reminded Dobson that she had previously told the court that she had not looked to pass information on, that no one had asked her to look at logs, she had not passed on information, and she had not wanted to affect or influence the police investigation.
Dobson replied: “Yes.”
Mr Wood added: “Miss Dobson, was it already a well-known fact in the community that you were corrupt, and had been corrupted?”
Dobson replied: “No.”
The trial continues.