The body that represents police officers today described the actions of two criminals who targeted one of its members as “appalling.”
William Handy, 54, of Errol, and Craig Guest, 32, of Dundee, were convicted this week of setting fire to a car parked in the driveway of PC David Farr’s Ballumbie home in June 2014.
Guest admitted setting the Volkswagen Golf alight using petrol and a lighter, while Handy was found guilty by majority of instigating the blaze.
While no one was hurt in the fire, David Hamilton, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, said the consequences of what Handy and Guest did at PC Farr’s home could have been far worse.
He explained: “This was an appalling and reckless criminal act targeted at a police officer and his young family.
“Constable Farr was just doing his job to uphold the law and protect the public of Tayside. The targeting of him by these criminals is an attack not just on him but on the society that he has been charged to protect.
“The consequences of this attack could have been truly appalling, a fact that still weighs heavily on officers across the country. Police officers are after all just ordinary people doing an extraordinary job.”
During the trial at the High Court in Aberdeen, the jury heard from Handy about how PC Farr and his colleague PC Ross Clark had been following him on a number of occasions in an unmarked silver Audi.
Handy had become known to them after he was seen mixing with another man Police Scotland had under surveillance as part of a programme called Operation Cartogram.
The court heard that after being pulled over for an alleged insurance offence in May 2014, Handy used the website 192.com and searched for the home addresses of PC Farr and PC Clark.
PC Farr told the court that, on the day of the fire, he tried to bring the flames under control using a hose, but the blaze was so fierce it could only be extinguished by the fire service.
Two days after the fire, Guest and Handy were seen on CCTV asking about wiping their phones at the O2 shop in the Overgate shopping centre.
Handy and Guest are due to be sentenced at the High Court in Livingston on July 27.
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