‘Second wave’ of allegations against police chief revealed
WEST YORKSHIRE’S former chief constable was set to face a ‘second wave’ of damaging claims about his personal conduct when he decided to retire from policing, a High Court hearing has heard.
More than 50 of his colleagues, including Mark Gilmore’s successor as the county’s top officer, gave evidence to an investigation into allegations that he made comments of a sexual nature to female staff and asked his subordinates to pick up his wife from an airport, it is claimed.
Details of the investigation were heard yesterday at the High Court, where Mr Gilmore is taking legal action against the county’s police and crime commissioner (PCC) Mark Burns-Williamson over what he says is a failure to make a ‘case to answer’ decision over his alleged misconduct.
The officer, appointed as chief constable in 2013, was suspended in 2014 and redeployed away from the force amid claims, which he denies, of an inappropriate relationship with bosses at a car dealership in his native Northern Ireland.
Prosecutors ruled in 2015 that he had no criminal case to answer, but a conduct report by Lancashire Police found he had a case to answer for misconduct.
In August 2016 Mr Gilmore announced he would retire, meaning he would not have to face a public misconduct hearing.
John Beggs QC, representing Mr Burns-Williamson, said a number of anonymous complaints about Mr Gilmore surfaced over the course of 2014.
He said lengthy statements were given by several senior officers to Lancashire Police in the early part of 2016, relating to alleged improper behaviour.
Mr Beggs said this report, carried out separately to the probe into Mr Gilmore’s dealings with the car dealership, was some way off being completed by August 2016, but that Mr Burns-Williamson was made aware of the details.
He said that the PCC was “through kindness ensuring he got the message” that “another report is coming down the track
and you need to know what that is about”.
He added: “Unless all those miscellaneous individuals were making it up, he was behaving in a manner inconsistent with the statutory standards of professional behaviour.”
Mr Beggs said that the PCC would have appreciated “the enormity of what was now emerging as a second wave”. He said of Mr Gilmore: “From August 2 he had gone within a week, having for two years robustly challenged everything there was to challenge.”
The claims against Mr Gilmore, which he strenuously denies, were made via the force’s whistleblower reporting system.
They include that he “treated colleagues inappropriately, swearing and throwing items at staff in rage”, and “made comments of a sexual nature to female staff ”.
The High Court hearing in front of Mr Justice Supperstone is over two days. Both the PCC and the former chief constable were in court yesterday.
In documents submitted to the court, Mr Gilmore accused Mr Burns-Williamson of abusing the misconduct investigation process against him for “political and media purposes”.
The court was told that a note of a meeting between Mr Burns Williamson and the senior Lancashire Police officer investigating Mr Gilmore revealed that the crime commissioner said the investigation “must be thorough to justify the length of time Mark Gilmore has been suspended/redeployed”.
Jeremy Johnson QC, representing Mr Gilmore, described the comment as a “glimpse behind the veil” of the PCC’s approach and an act of “pusillanimous political planning”.
Mr Johnson said: “He had got himself into difficulties, suspending a senior officer for a long period of time and re-deploying him for a long period of time and then having to justify that.”
In his statement submitted to the court, Mr Gilmore said that in 2015: “I believed the defendant was abusing his authority and abusing the misconduct investigation process for political and media purposes.”