Peter Laverack and Bobby Talalay succeed in a significant case concerning the abuse of police officers’ powers towards lone women

Peter Laverack (for the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police) and Bobby Talalay (for the IOPC) succeeded in judicial review proceedings concerning the degree of censure that should attract to an officer who uses his warrant card to engage a lone woman for personal gain.  The Administrative Court today accepted the British Transport Police’s case, supported by the IOPC, that it was irrational for a misconduct panel not to dismiss one of its officers.

During the pandemic lockdown, an off-duty police officer approached a lone female pedestrian, whom he did not know, having got out of his car alongside her, leaving the engine running. He engaged her in conversation, for no policing purpose, during which he observed that she is “too curvy to be Asian” and showed her his warrant card to demonstrate that he was a police officer. She informed him that she is meeting someone and that she is “taken”; she also messaged a friend saying “help me”. He stood close to her to show her photographs of himself working out in the gym, on his mobile telephone. He asked for her telephone number and immediately called her to check she had given him the correct number. Before she left, he asked her for a hug. After she walked away, he drove alongside her at a slow speed seeking to wave at her. That evening he messaged her addressing her as “babe”.

Following the woman’s complaint that she felt sexually harassed, a disciplinary process resulted in a Police Misconduct Panel finding that there was gross misconduct by the officer but it imposed an outcome of a final written warning.

The British Transport Police was not satisfied with that sanction, believing that an officer displaying such conduct had no place in its organisation, so challenged the Panel’s decision in judicial review proceedings. The central issue in the proceedings was whether a sanction short of dismissal was open to the Panel or whether the only rational outcome was dismissal.

Charles Bagot KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, agreed with the British Transport Police, as supported by the IOPC.  The judge found the Panel’s sanction to be irrational, quashed it and imposed the sanction of dismissal without notice.  Certain factual findings of the Panel were also found to be irrational, having been made applying “an outmoded and discredited attitude” to interpreting women’s outward reactions to predatory men.  The judge also held that the Panel failed to follow the required structured approach when assessing which sanction to impose.

The judgment provides important guidance to police forces and misconduct panels on how to deal with officers who abuse their position for a sexual purpose and who misuse their warrant cards for personal gain.

The judge held that the Panel had failed to grasp the seriousness and significance of the officer’s conduct and the impact that such conduct has upon public confidence in the police.  He held that a warrant card provides an officer with the means to disable, disarm, placate and reassure members of the public so that they acquiesce to the officer in ways that they would not to a member of the public.  The use of a warrant card to influence a lone woman for the officer’s personal gain so seriously undermines public confidence that it is corrosive to policing by consent.  He held that this conduct should properly have been characterised as APSP (abuse of position for a sexual purpose) and “serious corruption” which has no place in policing.

The judge determined that “It was clearly inappropriate to meet the conduct as found by the Panel with anything short of dismissal”.

Peter Laverack represented the Claimant, the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police. He was led by John Beggs KC. They were instructed by Simons Muirhead Burton. Bobby Talalay represented the Second Interested Party, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

Case name: R (on the application of the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police) v Police Misconduct Panel v PC Imran Aftab v Independent Office for Police Conduct [2023] EWHC 589 (Admin)

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Related barristers

Robert Talalay

Call 2010

Peter Laverack

Call 2015

Related areas

Police Law

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Public & Administrative

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