A BARNSLEY police officer who pursued an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with a woman in an incident he attended would have been sacked had he not resigned, a hearing has confirmed.
PC Joseph Wilby pursued an inappropriate relationship with a female complainant in a case he attended and did not make any disclosure to the force regarding the relationship.
He appeared at the force’s headquarters late last month to face nine allegations put against him.
Of the nine allegations, six were proven.
A report states: “It is alleged that PC Wilby pursued an inappropriate personal relationship with Miss A after August 29 2021 which is evidenced by his attendance at her father’s home on September 14 2021 (whilst on duty) and by telephone contact on February 19 2022 (when off-duty) and by text messages sent between those dates and October 2022.
“Although the text messages at pages 26-29 of the bundle reveal some text messages between PC Wilby and Miss A, the panel is satisfied that those messages are by no means a complete record of the messages between both individuals.
“The fact that PC Wilby is asking Miss A whether she has ‘recovered from Covid’ when none of the messages indicate that she told him that she had Covid and later that she was ‘looking good’ when there was nothing to provoke that response mean that the panel has an incomplete picture of the messages sent.
“The panel has no hesitation in concluding that it was entirely inappropriate for a serving police officer to send text messages to a former alleged victim of domestic abuse with some or many ‘xx’ at the end of each message.
“Further, the messages PC Wilby sent were very unprofessional and flirtatious.”
The panel found that this incident breached the standards expected of a police officer and therefore concluded it amounted to gross misconduct.
Allegations were also put forward about accessing the police system without a legitimate policing purpose - though PC Wilby said he did so with good reason.
The report added that the first access to the system could not be proved, though the second was not and so amounted to gross misconduct.
Further allegations of viewing someone’s personal records were also proved by the panel.
PC Wilby, who did not attend the hearing, resigned the day before.
The panel found that he would have been sacked had he not resigned.
The report added: “This is a breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour in respect of discreditable conduct, confidentiality, orders and instructions, authority, respect and courtesy and honesty and integrity.
“The matters set out above are breaches of the standards which are so serious as to justify dismissal and therefore constitute gross misconduct.
“The outcome of the hearing was that, had the officer not already resigned from the organisation, they would have been dismissed without notice.”
