Police officers violent to women will be sacked under new guidance
Police officers who are violent towards women or girls can expect to be sacked, under new guidance for misconduct within police ranks.
The College of Policing has reviewed the penalties for breaches of police standards in a bid to “bring common sense and consistency” to the process.
It concludes violence against women or girls by police officers will always have a “high degree of culpability”.
Behaviour will still be considered on a case by case basis.
But those found guilty should normally be dismissed and barred from the police, the college said.
The CoP – which is responsible for setting standards of ethics and training for the police service – has tightened up its guidance following recent cases where police officers have abused and attacked women. In 2021 Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered by a serving Metropolitan Police officer.
Police officers who break the law can be prosecuted. Misconduct hearings can also follow either criminal convictions or less serious breaches of police professional standards.
They are chaired either by a senior officer or a person with a legal qualification, and can result in a written warning, reduction in rank or dismissal without notice.
The new guidance is for these hearings and designed to ensure a consistent approach is taken – in order to prevent abusive officers from remaining in their jobs.
Setting out the current problems, Chief Constable Andy Marsh, the college’s chief executive, said: “I have spoken before about my frustration at having to re-admit officers to my workforce who I thought should have been shown the door.
“In many cases, the guidance wasn’t clear enough that legally-qualified chairs should be considering the impact an incident may have on wider public confidence, as well as the specific incident itself.
“Today’s updated guidance is very clear that the undermining of public confidence caused by an officer’s wrongdoing, or just the risk that it could be undermined, should be central to the decision-making.
“If someone’s behaviour is so bad that it would damage the public’s trust in their police service, they should be sacked. There is no place for them in policing, and neither chief constables nor their colleagues want them.”
For misconduct hearings, the officer has to be found to have acted unprofessionally on the “balance of probabilities”. In other words, they are more likely to be guilty than not.
In criminal courts, a jury or magistrate has to be “beyond all reasonable doubt” that an offence was committed – a higher bar for conviction.
According to CoP figures, between April 2020 and March 2021, 139 serving police officers were dismissed and barred from the police, 100 officers were dismissed after they had resigned, and 18 after their retirement.
In 38 cases, officers abused their position for sexual purposes. There were 17 cases involving an assault and seven involving domestic abuse.
Source: (BBC News)