Corruption spanned police and politicians according to former Deputy Police Chief

A former Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey Police alleges politicians had him "in their sights" after he tried to crack down on corruption and rid the island of unlicensed firearms.

Lenny Harper is today giving evidence to the inquiry into historical child abuse, something he was the senior investigating officer for in 2008.

Today, he's been explaining his role before taking on that task, including his efforts to tackle wrongdoing in the police force.

He said: "You have corrupt politicians who are very friendly with police officers and politicians who corrupt police officers, have connections with corrupt police officers. Politics is very often a feature and something we had to try and get over."

Mr Harper spoke of an attempt at an amnesty of unlicensed firearms and how he discovered one officer was allegedly selling on those weapons.He also said the list of people who held unlicensed firearms was a "Who's Who" of Jersey which included "a lot of prominent members of the community, including some police officers and Honorary a police officers."

Mr Harper said: "I had lots of insults and I was told I was trying to turn Jersey into Basingstoke and one person even told me this was not Dunblane and that I was trying to change the culture of Jersey."

He went on to claim, by the time the historic child abuse investigations started, the politicians already had him in their sights.

He told the inquiry: "There were a number of politicians who desperately wanted rid of me. As far back as the firearms incidents and the attempts to stamp out police corruption, we were being labelled as being the politically correct KGB stalking the corridors of police headquarters."

Mr Harper's evidence is expected to last two days.

Jersey Police say they have no comment to make while the inquiry continues.