Police officer sacked over 'sexualised language'

A police officer found to have caused two women he was supervising “psychological distress” with “sexualised” language has been sacked.

A panel found temporary Det Sgt Charlie Ellis had regularly used “misplaced humour” while working for Thames Valley Police at its Kidlington headquarters in Oxfordshire.

It found he said a photo of one of the women he took would be kept “for the bank”, which the panel inferred to be a reference to masturbation.

It said it received “very impressive” statements from colleagues and friends showing Mr Ellis was held in high regard but that dismissal was the “only proportionate and necessary outcome”.

It found following a meeting with a new member of staff, who he would line manage, he made a “throwaway comment” that it “felt like an awkward first date”.

Mr Ellis said he made the comment as a joke and thought it had been received as such, but the panel said his conduct “completely ignored the person”.

That woman was “vulnerable and anxious to make a good impression” but “confronted with a supervisor breaking the rules,” the panel found.

It said another sexist comment developed from an “ironic joke about the inappropriateness of certain language in the workplace previously considered appropriate” to a nickname that the other woman did not enjoy.

It said the woman’s evidence that she found it “belittling” was “coherent and compelling” and that "[her] life was made very unhappy as a result”.

The panel also found he described the same woman by using an expletive before calling her "incompetent”, which it understood was said when he was “frustrated and tired after a long shift and that frustrations happen in those circumstances”, but still amounted to misconduct.

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