Senior cop fired second time for sexual advances to staff

A SENIOR police officer has been sacked a second time for making sexual advances to two female colleagues.

Chief Insp Mark Anastasi, who touched one woman’s breast and rubbed another’s thigh, had been fired for gross misconduct in 2014.

But he was reinstated a year later when the High Court ruled he had not been able to contest the charges. After a second hearing a Northumbria Police panel found him guilty again of gross misconduct and he was dismissed. The force’s professional standards chief Det Supt Janice Hutton said: “No one should come to work and be subject to this behaviour by a colleague, let alone a supervisor. It is completely unacceptable.” Anastasi, who joined Northumbria Police in 1990, had been on gardening leave since the High Court ruling.