A police officer has been dismissed with immediate effect after he was found to have committed data breaches in his role.
Two counts of gross misconduct were proven against PC Laurence Turton after a four-day virtual misconduct hearing, which began on Monday 11 January.
Legally-qualified chair Andrew Hearn led the hearing, which heard that PC Turton had, on one count, obtained third-party information through misleading means and that he had subsequently disclosed that information, which he was unauthorised to do.
The second count found that Turton had disclosed third-party information in contravention of policy and procedure.
The misconduct hearing found that he had breached the Standards of Professional Behaviour relating to Duties and Responsibilities, Confidentiality and Discreditable Conduct. One of the two counts was also found to have breached the standard of Honesty and Integrity.
Deputy Chief Constable Pippa Mills said: “This is not the behaviour we expect of our officers. We need the public, and our partners, to know that information provided to us will be handled in a responsible and sensitive manner. This was not the case here.
“We work hard to build and maintain the trust and confidence of those across Essex – in terms of protecting them or in working alongside them – and we need to ensure that we keep these and work hard to address anything which may undermine that.”
Essex Police clearly doesn’t work hard enough to “maintain the trust and confidence of people across Essex”, because of they did it would be taking the case of Jeremy Bamber much more seriously than seems to be the case.