Meredydd Hughes, the chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, agreed to an interview to discuss a problem family in Doncaster who had a total of four ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders) and were the subject of more than 100 complaints.
His comments were initially broadcast in a programme in December 2009 and repeated a month later in a news report about the issue.
The later report quoted him as saying: "Let's keep it in perspective, no one's being murdered, no one's being assaulted, no one's being robbed. In this case, we have neighbours who have to get along and we'll do our best to sort it out."
Hughes complained to the broadcasting regulator that the edited clip had been taken out of context and wrongly portrayed him as shrugging off the problem.
His comments were also mentioned by the presenter during an interview with then-prime minister Gordon Brown, which was included in the report. The presenter said the remarks were an example of "a chief constable who doesn't get it".
Hughes said the presenter wrongly and unfairly characterised him and his views, alleged that he was incompetent and, in specifically naming him, this amounted to a personal attack.
ITV said it did not accept that the interview was unfairly edited in the report nor that he was unfairly characterised by the presenter. It said his views were fairly summarised and it was entitled to put the scenario and Hughes' comments to Gordon Brown for his reaction.
Ofcom watched the full unedited footage of the interview, in which Hughes said that anti-social behaviour was important to the force and needed tackling.
It said in its ruling: "The programme makers' failure to fairly represent these comments and only to rely on the limited extract in the programme as broadcast resulted in Mr Hughes' comments being used out of the full context.
"Ofcom concluded therefore that to present Mr Hughes' comments out of the context in which they were given resulted in unfairness to him."
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