He rose through the ranks at a speed which astonished his peers, but his reputation came crashing down during two of GMP's most shaming episodes.
Steve Heywood was the senior police officer who came to symbolise the shocking GMP failures exposed by the fatal shooting of Anthony Grainger and the Rochdale sex grooming scandal.
Today he might be forgiven for not celebrating a hollow victory against his former employer which he claimed to have served with distinction for 28 years until March 7, 2017.
This was the day he had been forced to make a cringing apology to the judge in the Anthony Grainger public inquiry. The assistant chief constable had previously given two days of evidence in which the QC for the inquiry had teased from him that
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