A police officer accepted that they had breached standards of professional behaviour by harassing a woman known them by sending excessive messages.
A misconduct hearing was held at Sussex Police headquarters on 8 and 9 January in front of a panel led by an Independent Legally Qualified Chair (LQC), who directed that the officer would remain anonymous.
LQCs are selected from a list of independent, legally-qualified persons to conduct police misconduct hearings, and are governed by Police Conduct Regulations. LQCs work with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and others to instil and embed as much transparency and proportionality into misconduct hearings.
The officer, referred to as officer Z, was granted anonymity by the LQC after making legal representations before the hearing. It is the responsibility of the LQC alone to determine whether or not a hearing is partially or wholly held in public or in private, and whether any participant should be anonymised. Sussex Police are directed by and must abide by rulings made by the panel chair.
The hearing was told that the officer’s behaviour included contacting the woman, known as Female A using multiple means of contact, including email, WhatsApp, Facebook, text messaging and telephone. They sent excessive numbers of emails to Female A from 19 November 2020 and continued to send excessive number of emails despite being informed on 19 December and 21 December that the level of emails was not acceptable to Female A.
They sent further email correspondence despite being asked by Female A to stop, including on 20 January 2021 and many of the communications to the woman were made while the officer was on duty and should have been carrying out their duties on 4, 16 and 17 November 2020.
The panel found these excessive messages amounted to harassment and were a breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour for Discreditable Conduct. The officer was given a final written warning for two years. The other allegations were found not proven by the panel.
Detective Superintendent Jon Robeson deputy head of force Professional Standards said: “Police officers and staff must behave in a manner that does not discredit the police service or undermine public confidence, whether on or off duty.
“All staff are aware of the standards of professional behaviour and the force remains committed to holding officers to account where they fall below the high standards the public rightly expect.”
