digger parked nearby". The charges were dropped, although this was around a year after the original events, despite the strength of the evidence that they were innocent. Salt was included on the roll of honour of officer's who fell in the line of duty by the Police Federation. His name was included on the memorial in the West Midlands Police headquarters on Colmore Row as well as the national police memorial in London. Overturned convictions Around 40 convictions failed in the 1980s, and a further 60 convictions have since been overturned. This is a summary of those cases where there has been news reporting or the judgment has been published. A near complete list can be found below. Birmingham Six The Birmingham Six, Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker, were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unjust and unsatisfactory and quashed by the Court of Appeal on 14 March 1991. The six men were later awarded compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million. Derek Treadaway, Michael Dunne, Ronald, Donald and John Brown Derek Treadaway, Michael Dunne, Ronald, Donald and John Brown were arrested in Operation Cat and accused of being members of the so-called Thursday Gang, named after a series of post office robberies which were committed on Thursdays. Treadaway was convicted in 1983 of three post office robberies committed in 1979 in Erdington and elsewhere. His conviction was overturned in 1996. He was a victim of "bagging", that is use of a plastic bag to suffocate interviewee's to extract a confession. Treadaway alleged at a civil trial for damages "that his confession was the false product of police impropriety in handcuffing him, placing a series of plastic bags over his head, so as to suffocate him, and forcing him in this condition to sign the written confession which had already been prepared for signature by police officers. There was evidence in the criminal trial that he had, by reason of this conduct, sustained petechial haemorrhages on his breast bone, about which a doctor gave evidence for the defence. He also complained in the course of the criminal trial that he had been deliberately denied access to a solicitor." Other evidence that was relied on at trial came from 'supergrass' witnesses, whose close involvement with corrupt officers