Retired top cop loses legal battle

A retired police chief who had denied a series of allegations about his behaviour has lost a High Court fight with a police and crime commissioner.

Mark Gilmore, who became chief constable of West Yorkshire in 2013, complained that West Yorkshire police commissioner Mark BurnsWilliamson had unfairly failed to decide whether he had a “case to answer” after misconduct allegations were made.

He asked a judge to order Mr Burns-Williamson to “make a case-toanswer decision”.

But Mr Justice Supperstone, who recently analysed rival arguments at a High Court trial in London, dismissed his

“He was under no obligation to make a case to answer”

application. He said Mr Burns-Williamson was “under no obligation to make a case-to-answer determination”.

The judge spelled out a serious of allegations made against Mr Gilmore when he was heading the West Yorkshire force in a written ruling published yesterday.

Mr Gilmore had been accused of having an “inappropriate relationship” with bosses at a car dealership; using that relationship to “benefit personally via the purchase of a VW Golf for his son”; treating colleagues “inappropriately”; making “comments of a sexual nature to female staff ”; misusing police resources and bypassing an “official procurement process” in order to “employ a friend in a senior management role”.

He denied the allegations.

Mr Justice Supperstone said Mr Gilmore had said he was retiring in August 2016, about two weeks after Mr Burns-Williamson was presented with an investigator’s report.