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GUN ROUND-UP Pc GAVE AWAY PISTOL, COURT TOLD
051658 JUN 00
By Ashley Broadley, PA News
A police officer who collected firearms in the wake of the Dunblane school
massacre gave away one of the guns which had been handed in during the
amnesty, a court was told today.
Desmond Pearson, a police constable with South Yorkshire Police, was given a
400 .22 semi-automatic pistol in March 1997 by Arthur Barkhouse, a jury at
Hull Crown Court heard.
Pearson, 53, of Rossington, Doncaster, later contacted Mr Barkhouse asking
if he could sell the pistol to a gun club.
But the court heard that Pearson, who was the district firearms licensing
officer for the Doncaster area, gave the gun to a man called Ali Jaffery.
James Sampson, prosecuting, said: "It is the prosecution's case that Pc
Pearson stole the pistol, because it was the property of the police, and
disposed of it for his own purpose."
Pearson denies the theft of the .22 semi-automatic pistol.
He has also pleaded not guilty to the theft of two other guns, three charges
of possessing a firearm without a firearms certificate, five charges of theft
of cash between �25 and �56 and three charges of false accounting.
Mr Sampson told the court that Pearson stole money he had collected from
people renewing their firearms certificates and falsified receipts to "cover
his tracks".
The jury was told that when he was arrested and interviewed, Pearson
produced envelopes containing cash and claimed they had been in his briefcase.
"This was a desperate man trying to get out of his dishonesty, digging a
hole deeper as he lied more and more," said Mr Sampson.
Kenneth Pantling
Nock's Grim Truth - In proportion as you give the State power to do things
for you, you give it power to do things to you; and the State invariably
makes as little as it can of the one power and as much as it can of the
other.
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