THE chief constable of West Yorkshire Police is embroiled in a ‘Wikipedia war’.
It is believed that Sir Norman Bettison took exception to being described as a “greedy, vain moron” on the information site Wikipedia.
So he has instructed staff to monitor the online encyclopedia and stop its users posting rude comments about him, according to Police Review magazine.
The offending comments have since been removed from the site and yesterday a message said editing of the article by unregistered or newly-registered users was disabled due to vandalism.
Wikipedia entries can usually be edited by anyone who has an internet connection.
But the comments, posted by unknown users, have led to an edit war between West Yorkshire police staff and the users.
Comments were repeatedly changed and the page edited to include offensive comments about the West Yorkshire chief constable.
One Wikipedia user had inserted comments under the headline “controversy” which referred to a vote Sir Norman initiated to change police shift patterns.
This was removed by his staff, according to Police Review, who then added information taken from his official biography which can be seen on the West Yorkshire Police website.
Ironically, the section on “Controversy” now makes reference to the editing by police staff to remove any criticism.
Another user deleted references to Sir Norman calling him “a pioneer of neighbourhood policing”.
The users added that the page had become nothing more than a “PR piece written by the chief”.
It is believed the entry had been changed 100 times in the past few months alone, forcing Wikipedia to temporarily block users access to the editing page.
Sir Norman joined the police aged 16 and left West Yorkshire in 1998 to become chief constable of Merseyside Police.
He later retired from the police in 2005 but rejoined the service in 2007 when he was appointed the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police.
It is reported that at the time he attempted to secure a package simultaneously to receive retirement pension from Merseyside and salary from the new post. He threatened legal action, but the claim was settled out of court.
