Officer’s actions and decision in a criminal investigation - West Mercia Police, July 2018
In 2017, a man was convicted of four public order offences. The victim of one of these offences was the partner of a serving West Mercia Police officer. The man appealed the convictions and sentence in respect of the offences.
Following a report by the officer’s partner that there was graffiti by their house, which they believed the man had been responsible for, in July 2018, a police officer went to their home to obtain a statement from the officer’s partner. While there, he observed the file of papers relating to the man in the officer’s possession and raised this as an issue with one of the inspectors. The matter was passed to a chief inspector, who conducted an interview with the officer in which the officer gave their reasons for retaining the file. It became apparent that the officer had assumed an officer in case (OIC) role for the ongoing appeal matter. The officer said they had not conducted any systems checks on any of the parties involved.
The matter was referred to Professional Standards Department. An audit of systems access was carried out, which showed that the officer had conducted checks on the man, on their partner and themselves on police systems, which did not appear to have a legitimate policing purpose.
West Mercia Police referred this to us as a conduct matter in July 2018.
We reviewed relevant force policies and obtained statements from a number of police witnesses. We also interviewed the officer under caution.
There was no obvious explanation for why the officer made searches relating to themselves and their partner. No reason appears to have been documented at the time to explain this and the officer gave no reason during their interview. The officer carried out other searches that appeared to have a legitimate purpose and be commensurate with their role of OIC. However, we were of the opinion that the officer should not have been OIC. The officer should have flagged searches they were carrying out in relation to the ongoing case in respect of the man, in line with the force policy. This in turn would have alerted the supervisor to the potential conflict in their continuing as OIC. The officer accepted this was an error in judgement. We noted that the officer had done nothing that could be considered to have enhanced the evidence available or in any way made the case stronger than it initially was.
Based on the evidence available, we were of the opinion that the officer may have a case to answer for misconduct. We completed our investigation in February 2019.
After reviewing our report West Mercia agreed. The officer attended a misconduct meeting, and received management advice.
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You can request a review/appeal if you’re not satisfied with how your complaint has been handled.
