CFO should have held back after court case

I was astonished by the naivety of Chief Fire Officer Graeme Smith’s ill-tempered outburst against his colleagues in Warwickshire Police, after members of Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service were found not guilty at their trials this week. Like CFO Smith I am very pleased with the outcome, but unlike him I am glad that the matter went to trial, to be heard by a jury in open court, not swept quietly aside after some opaque process behind closed doors at Shire Hall, as he and the county council would apparently prefer.

Whenever a member of the emergency services dies on duty, the circumstances must be thoroughly investigated, for the sake of their families and to ensure lessons are learned for other members of the service who may be placed in a similar position in the future. This is even more important when so many men die making such a pointless sacrifice. And if, after a prolonged and thorough investigation like that conducted by Warwickshire Police, the Crown Prosecution Service believes the evidence is sufficient to require fire service personnel to be charged and put on trial, that is what exactly should happen, no matter how difficult this may make life for the men concerned and for CFO Smith. If they are innocent, as in this case, they will come through it, and if they are guilty they will be dealt with appropriately. And I note that the jury took no less than seven hours to reach their verdict.

We were glad enough when managers at Railtrack and Network Rail faced prosecution for manslaughter after fatal accidents, and there are many similarities here. Furthermore the public, who both pay for the fire service and depend daily for our safety on its effectiveness, now know far more about the circumstances of the fire and the fatal decisions that day than we otherwise would, and for that we should all be grateful to the police and the CPS.

The Chief Fire Officer should have been advised to draw breath and count to ten before responding to the acquittal as he did. - J.E.S Bradshaw, Nightingale Court, Southam.