Former Nottinghamshire police officer breached strict policing standards, gross misconduct hearing hears

A former Nottinghamshire police officer breached strict policing standards by obtaining information about an incident in which he was the victim, a hearing has heard.

PC Joseph Barker attended a gross misconduct hearing at Sherwood Lodge, Nottinghamshire Police headquarters, on Thursday 12 September.

Although he admitted violating three professional principles – confidentiality, dishonourable conduct and orders and instructions – he denied that this constituted gross misconduct.

The hearing, chaired by Nottinghamshire Police Chief Constable Kate Meynell, found that Chief Constable Barker had breached regulations by repeatedly using the police system to look up details of an attack on him which was the subject of the investigation.

The former officer, who had already resigned at the time of the hearing, had intervened in an off-duty incident and was assaulted on 12 March 2022. When PC Barker reported the incident, an investigation was launched.

Despite receiving regular updates from the officer handling the case, the hearing heard that between March 2022 and February 2023, PC Barker searched the crime records system for information relating to the incident on 28 occasions, accessing information relating to the suspect’s arrest record, the incident log, his own witness statement and CCTV footage.

PC Barker also used the police’s digital evidence management system to view video footage of the attack both on the day after the incident and on 6 May 2022, and recorded a video using his personal phone which shows parts of the CCTV footage.

Another officer became aware of the video in November 2023. PC Barker admitted how the video got there and the Professional Standards Directorate (PSD) launched an investigation.

At the time, a suspect was facing charges in connection with the attack on the former officer, and the criminal case was later dismissed in part because of his actions.

His decision to access the information without any valid police purpose was seen by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as undermining the credibility of the case, and the charges were dropped.

At the hearing, PC Barker said his actions had been “naive” and he was “genuinely sorry”, but claimed he had made a “real and honest mistake”.

After reviewing all the evidence, Chief Constable Meynell concluded that the officer had indeed committed gross misconduct and would have been dismissed had he still been working for Nottinghamshire Police.

CC Meynell said: “The public have a right to expect that personal information held in police computer systems will be treated as strictly confidential and accessed only for genuine police purposes.”

“Apart from being a victim, PC Barker was not party to this investigation and therefore had no right to log into the police crime recording and digital evidence management systems and search for his actions.

“As has been set out in this hearing, accessing confidential information without a valid police reason constitutes an abuse of authority.

“As a police department, we take the protection of our data extremely seriously and do not accept general curiosity as a reason for violating these strict police standards.”