Pc apologises to mum for failing to act on abusive ex

TELLS MISCONDUCT HEARING HE DID NOT PERFORM DUTY PROPERLY

A POLICE officer has apologised to a mother for failing to take action when she accused her ex-partner of attacking her and keeping her prisoner.

The woman called the police about her abusive ex-boyfriend who, she said, was in the house with her son and was threatening to smash her property up if she rang for help.

But when Pc Aidan Weldon showed up, he allegedly paid too little regard to her accusations and let the man leave the house with their pair’s young autistic son, despite the woman screaming in protest.

Pc Weldon, 27, who served as a special constable during his time at De Montfort University before becoming a full officer, recorded the matter as a non-crime incident.

He reported back to his sergeant that the woman was “hysterical and abusive” while the man was “rational calm”, a misconduct hearing was told this week.

He allegedly failed to notify his sergeant of the woman’s accusations of violence and asked for his sergeant’s agreement that the father should be allowed to leave the property with the boy.

Two weeks later, the woman made a complaint. Pc Weldon is now accused of misconduct and gross misconduct.

At the hearing at force HQ, in Enderby, he admitted to a “wholesale failure to investigate” the matter and told the online hearing: “I got things wrong. I’d say she was justified in making a complaint about my behaviour.

“I failed to safeguard the female and the child. In reality he should have been arrested and taken into custody and investigated properly.”

When asked what he would say to the woman now, he said: “I’m very deeply apologetic. I’ve seen the body-cam footage several times.

“I’m quite embarrassed and ashamed about it. I didn’t perform my duty properly. It’s almost as if I’ve given too much credence to what he was saying over what she was saying.”

Giving evidence about the incident in Leicester in July last year, he described how he had been surprised by how different things were at the scene compared to the briefing he had received from the callhandling team.

He said: “I thought it sounded quite bad. Like a hostage situation.”

Luke Ponte, his lawyer, read the transcript from Pc Weldon’s bodycam which showed him asking the woman, “Has there been any vioand lence,” and her replying, “...slapping me around the face, pulling my hair, trying to bite my cheek earlier”.

She also told him: “This guy’s kept me in the bedroom for three days”.

On the footage Pc Weldon then asked her what she wanted the police officers to do and she said she wanted them to get him out of the house and retrieve her house keys.

He confirmed to the hearing what she said to him was an allegation of assault and possibly actual bodily harm and the man should have been arrested.

He told the hearing: “My thought process was, she doesn’t want to make a complaint, she wants him removed from the address. I’m going to facilitate that.

“I think I got tunnel vision. He needed to leave the property and then she would no longer be at risk.

“We’d moved past the idea of her wanting to make a complaint. I was trying to think 10 steps ahead.”

He has denied ever attempting to mislead or lie to his sergeant. It is alleged he omitted details and also denied knowing about any alleged crimes.

Earlier in the hearing, the disciplinary panel heard from Pc Rhiannon Green, who had been shadowing Pc Weldon as part of her training.

The panel heard the pair had called for back-up and permission to use Tasers on their way to the property.

But she said when they arrived they found the man “very calm, very collected” while the woman was “frantic”.

Asked by Pc Weldon’s lawyer if she would have been happy to leave the child with the woman in the state she was in, she replied: “No”.

Pc Green said if she had heard the woman make accusations of assault and false imprisonment she would have taken a different view.

The hearing was expected to end yesterday.