Have just noticed this on the news http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8528878.stm

Interesting story thats emerged regarding his health still not sure what the right result should be

Sounds like he shouldn't even have been working if his judgement was so impaired. 

I agree shame no one picked that up before the poor dogs died. 

I don't buy it for one minute.

IMO he's got his head screwed on and depression is an easy card to play these days to get out of sticky situations!
I do however recognise the illness and a lot of people even friends of mine have suffered with it , if he was so depressed he wouldn't of been at work.

Poor dogs , I don't think justice has been done!

If he did have OCD then why didn't he keep going back to the car every two minutes.  What a load of bull.  Why did I think that they were actually in a police vehicle, sure they said they were at the beginning?  SEVEN hours he left them in there.

And he hasn't even been banned from keeping dogs.  I can't believe it.

I thought they were in a police vehicle in the beginning and it was said he he had popped into the station to see someone not for 7 hours

> If he did have OCD

would have been checking obsessivley he would not have forgotten..... he should have put his hands up and accepted he did a terrible awful thing... even if he did get way laid there is no situation where he could not have got to his "dearly loved" dogs...

7 hours left in car is (quoting judge) 'a dreadful error of judgement'?????????????????????

Good grief.

Would he have forgotten if his kids were in the car?

I can't think of anything that would make me forget my dogs were in the car.

http://www.rspca.org.uk/media/news/story/-/article/EM_Life_ban_and_prison_for_dog_handler_Jan10

Same crime very different outcome - did I miss something? 

er mmm different jobs !

I am so mad about this, there are those of us who have recently lost dogs through illness and we are going through pure hell with all the if's, but's & maybe's. This idiot killed his healthy dogs himself and because of all the garbage he is now spouting about mental illness he has got away with it. What a great message that sends out.

I thought they were in a police vehicle in the beginning and it was said he he had popped into the station to see someone not for 7 hours

My impression too, I didn't realise the dogs had been in the car for 7 hours. How did I miss such a thing? **scratching head** I thought it was for 30 mins tops whilst he had popped into the police station, the dogs were said to be dead within 20 mins, part of me as horrible as it was thought the silly man had just made a terrible judgement of error in not taking into account the heat of the day, which had devastated him as much as everyone else he would have to live with what happend and I thought a fine and some re-training would be sufficient.

But 7 hours that is totally different, he should certainly be banned from caring for police dogs ever again, that's not an error of judgment, how can it be? I also think this health situation is a cop out used to his advantage by his legal team.

He 'forgot' to check them??!! Sorry, that doesn't cut it with me. In 7 hours there must have been several times he 'remembered' !!

Whitewash
It's not who you are it's who you know!!!
This story is absolute Bullsh*T. He should have been sacked and banned for life.
Aileen

> Interesting story thats emerged regarding his health

I think he is lying to save his own skin.

I have suffered from depression twice now, it's a nasty, horrible thing that you can hide from others, but never, for one minute did it effect my ability to look after my children or dog. It changes your perspective on life, not makes you forget that you have dependants roasting to death in a car!

If he could not remember he had dogs to look after, how on earth was he competant enough to resond to a missing person call or to dive a car? He never forgot any of his other police duties did he?
I don't believe, for one minute that a person with depression, (to the point of forgetting for 7 hours that they had dogs in a car on a hot day), would actually be of sound enough mind to get 'distracted' by a police briefing.

Well said Mastifflover.

well said mastiflover I too have had depression and been off work because of it, at no time would I have been able to "forget" my charges.

"He arrived just before 0700 BST and had planned to transfer the dogs to a police car but it was off the road as the air conditioning system was being fixed"

Do they not have kennels at the police stations?

The air condition in the police car would have been useless unless the engine was left on anyway.  It said in my paper today that they were in the boot of the car.  I wondered why no-one spotted them in the car park - after all there must have been some coming and goings.  A police dog handler surely has a proper vehicle to transport his dogs in - at all times.  Other police seem to park their cars outside their homes so surely he would have had a proper cage etc, fans etc.  He also had a sniffer dog which luckily was in kennels.   It's most odd - unless he was in such a state he wanted people to sit up and take notice of him - the judge apparently mentioned his employers not doing anything for him.  It is not a straight forward case of negligence - I assume he lost his job - didn't read that anywhere.

It was reported in the Express today that he had transferred his drug dog into police kennels and so if that is the case why didn't he transfer the GSD's. Total whitewash and lies. At the very least he should be banned from keeping dogs and then he would not be able to work with dogs again. Gives me little faith in the justice system.

>he had transferred his drug dog into police kennels and so if that is the case why didn't he transfer the GSD's.

I read that in the Sun too, they also printed photos of the dead dogs

This is horrendous, I too saw it on the news!

Latest reports allege he was angry his own police vehicle was not fixed so went into the station to find keys to another vehicle for the dogs to be transferred to, apparently they both suffered kennel stress which was why he didn't take them to the kennels with Dash the lab drugs dog that is still with him!

He got distracted once in the station had a 3 hr meeting with his Sgt about his mental health issues - you have to wonder why his Sgt didn't ask if he'd moved ALL the dogs from the boot of his private vehicle to a safer environment.  As others have said what was going on around the station car park for NO ONE to have noticed two highly trained dogs dying a horrific death, Nott's police have a lot to answer to?

In the Sun, it said that he went out and looked into his police van expecting the dogs to be there, it was then that he realised he had left them in his car ........ whatever !

> In the Sun, it said that he went out and looked into his police van expecting the dogs to be there, it was then that he realised he had left them in his car

Hmmm another lie that doesn't even fit his own story!
Points below taken from here
He arrived at 7am, couldn't transfer dogs to police car as AC wasn't working.
Found another car, it had no mats, so he went to look for some - got distracted.
At 10:30 am planned to let dogs out of car (no mention of police van) but got distracted.

That is 3 & half hours after his arival he planned on letting the dogs out of the car (CAR, not police van)- they would have allready been dead. DISGUSTING behaviour and I find it very sad he's using depression as an excuse.