Second top UK cop resigns over telephone hacking scandal

Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer quit on Monday over his role in the telephone hacking scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, plunging London police into chaos a year before the city hosts the Olympic Games.

Amid a growing war of words between police and the politicians and a "feeding frenzy" for heads to roll, London's Metropolitan Police said Assistant Commissioner John Yates, one of the capital's most senior officers, intended to step down.

The decision came a day after Commissioner Paul Stephenson said he would resign. It leaves the leadership of Britain's oldest and largest police force of some 32,000 officers in turmoil just a year before the London Olympics, the biggest security operation in its history.

Yates's cardinal error was his decision not to re-open the criminal investigation into phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World newspaper which led to the paper's royal reporter and a private detective being jailed in 2007.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

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