YESTERDAY was the most sensational day in the four-and-a-half turbulent years of Operation Lancet.

Never can a chief constable have used such strong, vitriolic language to condemn one of his own officers as Barry Shaw did yesterday. In carefully calculated phrases, he did his best to destroy Ray Mallon and his chances of becoming mayor of Middlesbrough. Saying that Mr Mallon was "at the centre of an empire of evil" immediately brings to mind US President George Bush's recent State of the Union speech in which he said Saddam Hussein was at the centre of an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world". This was strong, strong stuff.

And the charges that Mr Mallon admitted on Monday are strong, strong charges. They are disgraceful charges. They are charges that should ruin Mr Mallon. In fact, they are charges that should see Mr Mallon inside prison, not out on the streets campaigning to be mayor.

They are tantamount to perverting the course of justice. Nothing could be more damaging to a policeman, especially not one standing on a ticket of virtue in a local election.

And yet Mr Mallon is not in prison. In fact, when the evidence against him was presented to the Crown Prosecution Service, it was considered "insufficient" to press criminal charges against him. He was cleared of criminal wrong-doing.

When Mr Mallon admitted his guilt on Monday, he did so with his fingers crossed behind his back. He had run out of money and legal insurance, and he desperately needed a way out to pursue his dream of becoming mayor.

The ambiguity of the admission was reflected in his sentence. He was not sacked; he was "required to resign". He was not asked to repay the £40,000-plus wages he has received every year that he has been suspended; he did not forfeit his pension rights.

Now no one in Cleveland knows what to believe. They don't know if they can believe Mr Mallon because he has admitted his guilt; they don't know if they can believe in Mr Shaw's "empire of evil" because it was not evil enough to attract a criminal prosecution.

And they cannot believe, at a time when the Cleveland force faces a £6.6m shortfall, that £7m of tax-payers' money has been spent on creating this hate-filled, ambiguous inconclusiveness - an inconclusiveness which is becoming increasingly damaging as people tire of the sordid affair. Indeed, soundings on Teesside yesterday suggested a growing wish that the whole damn lot of them should just disappear. This is dangerous when we're talking about a community police force and a community that is facing an important local election.

But there must be some truth somewhere in Lancet. And there must be some better system of finding it than the current one. This is why The Northern Echo has been consistently calling for - and is still calling for - an independent inquiry into the whole, sorry, expensive mess.