Subscribe to trusted local news
If you are accessing this story via Facebook but you are a subscriber then you will be unable to access the story. Facebook wants you to stay and read in the app and your login details are not shared with Facebook. If you experience problems with accessing the news but have subscribed, please contact subscriptions@thestrayferret.co.uk. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
- Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.
Already a subscriber? Log in here.
23
Mar
North Yorkshire Police officer cleared of gross misconduct
A North Yorkshire Police officer who was accused of bombarding his former partner with messages has been cleared of gross misconduct.
PC 772 John Axcell faced a three-day misconduct hearing between March 9 and 11 after he was alleged to have breached professional standards between August and December 2023.
PC Axcell, who was awarded the Royal Humane Society Certificates of Commendation in 2022 for saving a man from bleeding to death in Scarborough, denied any misconduct both prior to and during the hearing.
But a notice of the outcome published this week said the panel overseeing the hearing did not find PC Axcell's behaviour amounted to gross misconduct.
According to the notice, PC Axcell and a woman referred to only as Miss A were in a relationship in May 2023.
By August that year, Miss A told PC Axcell she was in a new relationship and requested he ceased contact and delete her phone number.
However, PC Axcell was alleged to have “persistently messaged, phoned and left voicemails” for Miss A between September and December 2023.
The currently suspended officer used WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook to contact Miss A, the notice says, adding PC Axcell allegedly repeatedly asked his ex-partner to meet him.
This led Miss A to block him.
But PC Axcell allegedly created an “alternative profile” on TikTok to contact Miss A, which police claimed “caused Miss A to be in fear of you, and/or anxious, and/or alarmed, and/or distressed”.
Miss A’s evidence
According to the outcome notice, the panel found Miss A to be a “credible and truthful” witness.
Miss A admitted during the hearing she had “deleted selective messages from the conversation” between her and PC Axcell, but told the panel the “false narrative this created was solely for the purposes of hiding the message exchanges from her boyfriend”.
She provided investigators with screenshots of the messages as she was “not asked to provide her phone for a forensic download”.
The outcome adds:
During the hearing, Miss A stated that she did not feel she had been harassed by the officer until the police became involved, at which time she reflected that she did believe that his behaviour cumulatively amounted to harassment; she described him as 'pestering' her.
The witness, both in her statement and her oral testimony described how PC Axcell sent her several messages, to which she did not reply in order to try to signal she didn’t want to maintain contact, and she sent him 'angry emojis' in her messages to demonstrate she was unhappy about him messaging her friends. The witness also said that she told PC Axcell she just wanted to move on with her life.
Miss A described PC Axcell as “creepy” during the hearing and told the panel he had allegedly “behaved like this to other women she worked with or was friends with”.
The notice says there was no independent evidence of this, but adds:
PC Axcell’s contact with Miss A’s friends was corroborated by evidence in the bundle, which showed he had “matched” with two of her friends on dating apps, and had messaged them on different social media apps whilst concurrently messaging Miss A.
Miss A also admitted she later unblocked PC Axcell on various platforms, but “could not explain” why she did this.
“The panel noted that she had replied to messages and proactively called him during the period in question”, the outcome says.
It also says:
She said her messages were not intended to encourage an ongoing relationship, and that she had in fact told him repeatedly to leave her alone.
Other than one message, there was no documentary evidence of Ms A asking the officer to leave her alone. The one message that was in the bundle where she did ask to be left alone was just before her formal complaint, and the officer did not contact her after receiving this message.
‘Asked her to come round for a shower at his house’
Another officer, PC Glen Coates, gave evidence during the hearing.
He told the panel Miss A had approached him for advice on the situation, but said she had “no intention of reporting the officer”.
Police only got involved after PC Coates reported the situation to his supervisor.
A woman referred to as Miss B, Miss A’s friend, reportedly “corroborated Miss A was unhappy” about PC Axcell's messages, but that she had "only directly seen a long thread of messages on one occasion".
Miss B remembered little detail of the messages due to the time that has since passed, but confirmed Miss A had "told her that she had asked PC Axcell to leave her alone".
The notice says:
The panel noted in the bundle that Miss B stated that the officer, upon matching with her on the dating app, told her in the first few messages that he was a police officer. He was flirting with her, and she shared a recollection of a time when the officer was messaging her and asking her to come round for a shower at his house.
Miss B described PC Axcell in her statement as ‘snaky’.
PC Axcell: 'Miss A was jealous’
The panel found PC Axcell’s own account to be “plausible”.
PC Axcell told the hearing he “would never ordinarily delete messages", despite some discrepancies in the message threads provided to the panel.
However, the notice says: "Given the officer volunteered his phone and pin when unexpectedly arrested, the panel were assured that he had not intended to proffer false documentary evidence”.
It adds:
The officer confirmed that he had matched with two of Miss A's friends on Bumble or Tinder but said this was an unintentional coincidence.
He asserted that he believed Miss A was jealous that he was with a younger officer and this was the explanation for her switching between being pleasant towards him and then expressing her anger.
He explained his continued contact with her, even though he knew she was upset with him, was because he wanted to be nice and check in with her.
Findings
The panel found the allegations made against PC Axcell were not proven on the balance of probabilities and, as such, he was cleared of misconduct.
He was accused of breaching professional standards relating to authority, respect and courtesy, and discreditable conduct, but the panel also found he did not breach such standards.
The outcome notice says:
Miss A's phone was never fully investigated, and this, together with a lack of cogent evidence necessary to meet the civil (or criminal) test for harassment, resulted in insurmountable gaps in the evidence.
Therefore, despite the panel finding Miss A to be a credible witness, the panel find that the Appropriate Authority has not proved these allegations on the balance of probabilities.
The panel found no breaches of the standards of professional behaviour… and therefore found that there is no misconduct in this case.
The panel did say, however, whilst PC Axcell’s behaviour “fell short of the level required to prove the allegation of harassment”, it was concerned about his “lack of understanding for Miss A’s boundaries”.
This could undermine public confidence and is not conducive to the conduct of an officer, the panel added in the outcome notice.
0