Thames Valley Police officers 'watched TV while suspect absconded'

The suspect absconded from The Horton Hospital in Banbury on 15 April 2021, the panel was told

Two police officers who were told to watch a suspect "like a hawk" chatted amongst themselves, used their mobile phones and watched TV before he absconded, a misconduct hearing found.

It happened when PC Lydia Jackson and PC Robert Lawton, of Thames Valley Police, took the arrested man to Banbury's Horton Hospital last April.

Their conduct "can only be described as incompetent", the panel said.

They have being given final written warnings that will last for five years.

The arrested man - suspected of intending to supply class A drugs - said he had multiple injuries, including a broken finger from being detained and handcuffed, the hearing at Thames Valley Police headquarters in Kidlington heard.

PC Jackson and PC Lawton took the man from Banbury Police Station to Horton Hospital, arriving at 23:54 GMT on 14 April.

The officers had been briefed by a custody sergeant that the man might "present a significant risk" of self-harm or suicide, and that they had to be "vigilant at all times" and the suspect should be "watched like a hawk".

'No supervision'

At 01:30 on 15 April, they faced the opposite direction to the suspect in a hospital room, talked, used their phones and watched TV, the panel heard.

After sitting with "no supervision" for seven minutes, the suspect got up and left.

The misconduct hearing concluded the fault was "not a momentary lapse of concentration".

The panel found both were guilty of gross misconduct in the face of "overwhelming" evidence.

But it said both had shown "genuine remorse and fully accepted responsibility for their actions" and the final written warning was the "least sanction applicable".

It also said PC Lawton should use "reflective practice to consider his interaction with others", after the panel also heard he had used a sexually explicit swear word to describe a colleague and referred to a colleague's partner as "a dog", while on a training day in June 2021.