LONDON (AP) - They're all so very sorry.

British police, an editor and a press regulator took turns to
express regret over their role in the phone hacking scandal
Tuesday, each acknowledging that they could have done more to get a
grips with illegal practices whose exposure has rocked the
country's establishment.

For years, officials took turns dismissing suggestions in the
Guardian newspaper that phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News of
the World was widespread, denials which eventually fell apart when
scandal erupted in July, leading to the dramatic closure of the
top-selling tabloid as well as dozens of arrests and resignations.

First up Tuesday was London's Metropolitan Police Service, which
for years insisted - apparently without bothering to examine the
evidence gathered by its own officers - there were only a handful
of phone hacking victims.

At London's High Court lawyers for the police acknowledged that
they had violated the human rights of thousands of potential
victims by failing to inform them that they and their private
communications may have been targeted by unscrupulous journalists.

The force said it had been stretched by an "unprecedented
increase in anti-terrorist investigations" in the mid-2000s and
noted that it now had some 130 officers devoted to chasing phone
hacking allegations.

"This in part reflects the lessons that have been learned about
how police should deal with the victims of such crimes," police
said in a statement. "All the claimants are receiving personal
apologies."

On the same day, the former chairwoman of Britain's press
regulator, Peta Jane Buscombe, said she regretted her dismissal of
the phone hacking issue, explaining that she had been lied to by
Murdoch's News International.

In 2009 the Press Complaints Commission downplayed the
Guardian's claims, saying in a report that the paper's allegations
didn't live up to their "dramatic billing," while Buscombe
herself seemed to suggest that a prominent lawyer for the hacking
victims wasn't telling the truth.

Buscombe paid 20,000 pounds in libel damages for her comments,
while her organization was forced into a humiliating retraction
once it became clear that its report had gotten the hacking story
catastrophically wrong.

A judge-led inquiry ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron is
considering whether to scrap the Complaints Commission, which
critics have derided as ineffective, and on Tuesday Buscombe blamed
Murdoch's company for pulling the wool over her eyes.

"I regret that I was clearly misled by News International, that
I accepted what they had told me," she told the inquiry.

Later Tuesday it was Times of London Editor James Harding's turn
to apologize, saying he was sorry that one of his journalists had
hacked into the email of the detective behind an award-winning
police blog.

"As editor of the paper, I am responsible for what it does and
what its journalists do," Harding said. "So on behalf of the
paper, I apologize."