[vitty]

There are lots of things we would never include on police request. Things which could provoke crime that never appear in the papers. Local reports can't afford to get on the wrong side of them too often else they lose crime stories.

But on stories like this, police can only ultimately give guidance - which we ask for in advance - and then it is down to us reporters to pass on such guidance to the editor, who makes a judgement call and lives by it.

You may not think it, but in my experience, newspaper editors are much more knowledgable on the law regarding what a paper can and cannot say about subjects.

e.g. officers are quite happy to give details of incidents even after offenders have been charged and sometimes question why we don't use them.

The reality is that, in this situation, if we did use those details, we'd be guilty of contempt of court because revealing incident details could prejudice resulting court cases.