Too ill to work? Portrait of the police sergeant who was signed off with stress
IN one photo she stretches out her bronzed limbs on a sun-kissed seashore. In another, she poses suggestively with a pair of pineapples.
But in neither image – and many others like them – does police sergeant Leanne Carr, 33, appear ill.
In fact she was off work with stress for seven months when she posted pictures of herself enjoying holidays abroad on social media.
The £45,000-a-year officer – considered something of a poster girl for Lincolnshire Police, according to a source at the force – has uploaded dozens of images of herself, often in skimpy outfits, over the past 18 months.
The photo of her topless on a South African beach clutching two pineapples was posted last month.
Although a number of the same holiday images have appeared on Sgt Carr’s Facebook and Instagram accounts months apart – making it impossible to date them – her father confirmed last night that she had been on vacation while on sick leave.
Graham Carr, 59, a gas safety installer, said: ‘She’s had time off work for stress and during this time she’s been on holidays all over the world, which has helped her and she’s now back at work.’
He added his daughter enjoyed flaunting her figure in bikinis. ‘She looks like a model – she’s got the curves just like her mum and I’m proud of the way she looks, but I’m biased,’ he said.
Lincolnshire Police said officers were allowed to go on holiday while off sick, but Sgt Carr’s apparent jet- set lifestyle has angered some colleagues.
A police source said: ‘She doesn’t look very stressed in the images she’s put on her social media. In fact, she’s having a whale of a time in luxury resorts all over the world, funded by the public purse.
‘Officers have a tough job to do and sometimes the strain becomes too much, but these photos of her living a life of luxury while she was supposed to be recovering are a bit hard to take.’
Sgt Carr, who is based in Gran- tham, Lincolnshire, and joined the police after studying forensic science and criminology at Lincoln University, suffered a stress-related illness last year after being made the subject of an internal investigation into misconduct.
The investigation was concluded during her sick leave and she returned to work on ‘recuperative duties’ in January. She is now back full-time.
Sgt Carr has also modelled for a clothing company called Alutius, an extreme sports brand run by her South African boyfriend Luke Westen. One photo on the company’s Instagram page shows her posing in a bikini on a rocky shoreline, while other racy images of Sgt Carr appear on Mr Westen’s personal page on the photo sharing network.
In a comment next to one picture posted by Sgt Carr in November, in which she is sitting on a hotel balcony in a bikini behind a laptop, a friend asks: ‘Have you become a model?’
A picture posted to Facebook in July showed her jumping into the sea with a man thought to be her boyfriend. A friend joked in a comment: ‘B****y hell, you are always on holiday.’
In September the officer posted images of herself in a Baywatchstyle bikini sunbathing in Cyprus.
A month later, she posted several photographs of herself frolicking in the snow in Austria. Another image that month, showing her sitting high in a mountain range, was captioned: ‘Climb mountains not so the world can see you but so you can see the world.’
In November she posted a picture of herself posing in a Bangkok hotel swimming pool. Other images put online in November and December showed her at the Holiday Inn resort in the Phi Phi islands, Thailand.
Sgt Carr also has a YouTube channel, with 73 subscribers, on which she charts her holiday exploits last year in a video posted on New Year’s Day.
She does not use her real name
‘She’s had a tough time’
on social media or mention the fact that she is a police officer.
Mr Carr said his daughter previously sued Lincolnshire Police for compensation after suffering an ‘appalling’ shoulder injury eight years ago during a training exercise while using a battering ram.
He added: ‘She was off work because of the injury and there was a bit of a carry-on about how much time she’d had off. She was given grief by some colleagues.
‘She’s had a tough time and deserves some happiness. She goes on holiday a lot all over the world and I can’t keep up with all the places she’s been to. Sometimes I don’t even know where’s she’s been till she’s back. Being away seeing different places helps her cope with her stress. She’s doing nothing wrong.’
Mr Carr, from Mexborough, South Yorkshire, said his daughter did not want to comment.
Detective Superintendent Suzanne Davies, from Lincolnshire Police, said: ‘The officer in question was absent from work due to illness for a period of seven months whilst an internal misconduct investigation was carried out.
‘These matters have now been concluded and were dealt with by way of a misconduct meeting.
‘When any officer is absent from work due to illness, regular contact is maintained with them and they are entitled to do as they wish during that time, including going on holiday, as long as it does not prohibit their return to work as soon as possible. I am satisfied this officer returned to work as soon as she was able to.’
Det Supt Davies said the force was aware of Sgt Carr’s social media pages, but added officers were ‘entitled to a private life’. An investigation could be mounted if the accounts breached the ‘high standards’ expected of an officer.
A spokesman for the force could not confirm whether Sgt Carr was paid her full salary during her period off work.