Detective who missed rape suspect on CCTV was playing Solitaire

A POLICEMAN accused of playing a computer game while examining CCTV footage to catch a rapist has been sacked for gross misconduct.

Detective Constable Emyr Davies, 57, failed to spot the victim or her two attackers when he looked through four-and-a-half hours of recordings.

A colleague noticed a Solitaire game was also running on his computer screen. When questioned, Davies initially denied playing it, a misconduct hearing was told.

However, analysis of the computer revealed he had played ten games and that the program had been running for almost 90 minutes. Davies then admitted playing the game, but insisted he did so during breaks to ‘rest his eyes’ after studying CCTV footage.

He was tasked with reviewing the video after a 41- year- old woman was attacked by two men as she walked home from a night out in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, in February 2015.

She was dragged down an alley and raped by Romanian national Christian-Arnold Lascu, 45, while being held down by a second man who has never been caught.

Lascu was arrested after a tip-off and jailed for 13 years in 2016 when he was convicted of rape at Hull Crown Court. The misconduct hearing heard it was fortunate he did not cheat justice. Humberside Police said vital clues could have been missed because of Davies’s handling of the CCTV evidence.

Lascu, a serial offender, had served 20 years behind bars in his own country before moving to Grimsby. He was with another man when arrested but his suspected accomplice was freed due to lack of evidence.

When the CCTV was reviewed again eight months later, both the victim and her attackers were spotted. Detective Sergeant Ivan Simms said that had this been discovered earlier it may have generated ‘meaningful leads’.

The misconduct hearing heard that Davis was left alone in an office to watch the recordings on a computer, and ignored a warning not to fast-forward the footage.

Detective Constable Dean Stevens said: ‘When I came in I saw the section he was playing was on an accelerated speed. Straight away, I said “don’t – you run the risk of missing bits”.’

He added that he saw a computer game on standby at the bottom of the screen but did not know if his colleague had been playing it. Davies eventually confessed, after initially denying he had done so. ‘I was resting my eyes and taking a break,’ he said.

‘It’s not healthy to stare at a computer screen for hours. It switches off your mind.’

He denied playing Solitaire while looking at the CCTV footage but ‘could not recall’ why he left it on standby. Davies claimed he was only supposed to be looking for the victim, but his bosses said he should have been looking for the suspects as well.

The panel, sitting in Goole, East Yorkshire, cleared him of the charge that he was distracted by the computer game while studying CCTV as it could not be disproved that he was only playing during breaks. However, he was found guilty of gross misconduct for failing to review the footage properly, and was sacked. He had been a policeman for 15 years.

Panel chairman Simon Mallett, who had originally banned the media from identifying Davies, allowed the officer to be named.

Detective Superintendent Matt Baldwin welcomed the panel’s ruling. He said Davies’s actions fell below acceptable standards and had ‘the potential for serious repercussions’.