Named and shamed: Here's a list of 'bad apple' Northants Police officers who've been sacked, punished or decided to quit

Here is a list of ‘bad apple’ Northamptonshire Police officers who have have been punished, sacked or quit for unprofessional behaviour in the last couple of years.

This newspaper has put together a list of officers who have been dealt with by the courts and/or by Northamptonshire Police’s Chief Constable Nick Adderley in a public hearing.

In the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 many in the UK are expressing a lack of faith in the police.

As the investigation into Sarah Everard's murder continues, many are calling for systemic change within the police force in the UK and greater accountability for officers.

Head of Professional Standards at Northants Police, superintendent Natalee Starbuck said: “We are absolutely committed to rooting out of policing those individuals who abuse their position and the trust of both the public we serve and those who work in our policing family.

“We hold our police officers and staff to the highest standards and the vast majority come to work each and every day determined to make a positive difference to the communities they serve.

“However, we recognise that there are some who fall well below the standards expected and when that happens, we deal with them robustly and transparently – ensuring the outcome of every misconduct hearing is proactively publicised.

“We remain absolutely determined to root out the bad apples in our organisation and will continue working tirelessly in order to do so.”

Richard Hall

Former Northants Police Sergeant Richard Hall was accused of breaching the standards of professional behaviour between December 2019 and January 2022.

A misconduct hearing held by Northamptonshire Police this month (March) found that Hall’s conduct was “inappropriate and harassing” towards female colleagues.

The force held a misconduct hearing on March 10, 2023 relating to his treatment of junior female colleagues, in the workplace and at work related social events.

The hearing heard that Mr Hall “failed to treat junior officers with respect and courtesy” or “maintain a professional boundary” and was “inappropriately personal”.

It was also said that Mr Hall’s conduct directed towards female colleagues was “harassing” and “specifically based on their sex”.

A panel concluded that the former copper would have been sacked if he had not already resigned.

PC Karen Canwell

PC Karen Canwell, who was once nominated for a national bravery award, was found guilty of one count of common assault in November.

It is alleged that she was drunk and off duty at the King Edward VII in Queen Street, Rushden, with friends on Saturday, December 11, 2021 when the incident happened.

Northamptonshire Police said that at or around closing time, a bouncer asked Canwell and her friends to finish their drinks and leave but they “persistently failed to do so”.

She denied the assault charge before being convicted on Wednesday, November 16, at Loughborough Magistrates’ Court. She was ordered to pay a £1,609 fine.

A misconduct hearing chaired by Northamptonshire Police’s temporary chief constable Paul Gibson will hear the case on Wednesday (March 15) from midday.

Oliver Binns

Disgraced former police constable Oliver Binns was jailed in June 2022 for pestering a woman he arrested with Snapchat messages.

Aged 26 at the time, Binns was sentenced to seven months by a judge at Northampton Crown Court after admitting misconduct in a public office for using a variety of fake usernames to hide messages to other women from his partner.

According to details of the case published by Northamptonshire Police, Binns also accessed a confidential police database to glean personal details about the woman he had first ‘met’ when she was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm on September 30, 2020.

A panel concluded that had the officer not already resigned he would have been dismissed without notice.

Matt Manifold

Former Northamptonshire Police Sergeant Matt Manifold kept secret his relationship with a co-worker and lied to get confidential information about them.

A disciplinary panel held on Tuesday (May 3, 2022) heard Manifold tricked a lower-ranking officer into accessing details about the co-worker and her former partner.

The panel decided the sergeant breached standards of professional behaviour in respect of confidentiality, orders and instructions, discreditable conduct, authority respect, courtesy, honesty and integrity adding that he would have been instantly dismissed had he still been a serving officer.

Jamie Gibb

Former Northamptonshire Police officer Jamie Gibb was a ‘serial texter’ who sought to have sexual chats with two vulnerable women.

Gibb met the women in the course of his work but ‘groomed’ them into potentially intimate conversations, a hearing was told.

The force’s Chief Constable Nick Adderley found Mr Gibb had committed gross misconduct.

Mr Adderley said he was ‘ashamed’ that Gibb ‘once wore the same uniform as I do’ and said his force has a ‘zero tolerance’ to such misconduct.

Gibb would have been sacked had he not quit, the panel ruled in February 2023.

Alex John Foster

Foster, a former Northamptonshire police support worker, was in jailed for two years in November 2022 after he admitted agreeing to meet a 15-year-old girl who was in reality an undercover police officer.

Foster previously of Tilbury Road, East Haddon, who was a police safety training officer for the Northamptonshire force for more than 20 years, began talking to the ‘15-year-old girl’ on social media in July.

He pleaded guilty to leaded guilty to three charges relating to the sexual communication with a child, including arranging or facilitating and intentionally encouraging or assisting.

Foster was also handed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and placed on the Sex Offenders' Register.

Ex-special constable Gemma Hall

Former Northamptonshire Police volunteer officer Gemma Hall assaulted three officers while she was drunk on a night out in Wellingborough in March 2022.

Hall, aged 27 at the time, was given a 12-month community order and fined £480 last October for her behaviour in Wellingborough Regent Street.

She admitted three counts of assaulting an emergency worker and one count of being drunk and disorderly at Northampton Magistrates’ Court in September, ahead of her sentencing a month later.

She would have been sacked if she had not already quit the force, a panel heard.

PC Steve Scott

Northamptonshire Police officer Steve Scott was given a final written warning in February 2023 for failing to rebuke his partner for using racist language and sending her the email address of a member of the public.

A police misconduct panel was told PC Steve Scott, who has worked as an officer for 18 years, had ‘implicitly validated’ racial abuse with his behaviour.

PC Scott had been using his personal mobile phone while on duty in May 2020 when he responded to a WhatsApp message from his partner which included racist language about one of her colleagues with a GIF, a short video clip, of a black woman.

Chief Constable Nick Adderley said PC Scott was not racist himself but that his conduct on both occasions was ‘stupid and ill-thought through’ and was a ‘sad indictment’ of his decision-making.

PC Scott accepted both instances amounted to misconduct but not gross misconduct. He kept his job but was given a final written warning, which will be on his record for two years.

Robyn Wilson

A female Special Constable who “joked” about having sex with another Northamptonshire Police officer while on duty would have been sacked if she had not already quit, a disciplinary panel ruled in August 2022.

Robyn Wilson claimed she told two colleagues about her affair with the officer during a “jovial and raucous evening” drinking cider in a local pub but they had used the information in attempt to “destroy her career”.

Wilson resigned from Northamptonshire Police on April 27 2022.

George Tomlinson

Special constable George Tomlinson was dismissed in 2021 after colleagues busted a house party he was attending during the third national lockdown.

Tomlinson was in the third and final year of a professional policing degree at the University of Northampton and working as a special constable for Northamptonshire Police in February 2021 when the incident took place.

Tomlinson, in his early 20s at the time, was at a house party in Birchfield Road on February 20 2021, where more than 15 people were in attendance, thus breaking the Covid restrictions that were in place at the time.

Just the week before he was reportedly issuing tickets to members of the public for breaching Covid rules.

Unnamed offenders

Northants Police has also published a list of misconduct investigations and outcomes between October 2022 to December 2022, but the offending officers have not been named.

November 2022

An officer was given a written warning after a member of the public complained that the copper had knocked food out of his hand, barged past him and ‘singled him out’ because of his ethnicity.

According to Northants Police, the officer admitted two of the three breaches and after considering all of the evidence the chair found two allegations to be proven for Mmsconduct and one not proven.

The officer was given a written warning.

October 2022

A former officer pleaded guilty to three sexual offences against children and was remanded in custody, according to a police report from October 2022.

The officer has since resigned.

A Northants Police spokeswoman said: “Given the nature of the allegations and the findings against the former member of police staff, the panel found no other acceptable outcome other than if the former member of staff had continued serving, he would have been dismissed.”