Detective allegedly forged witness statements during investigation – Hampshire Constabulary, June 2019

In June 2019, a detective constable from Hampshire Constabulary was working on a murder investigation when he obtained a statement from a significant witness. The witness alleged the detective requested and obtained signed blank statement pages to complete the statement on their behalf when they were not present. The witness also alleged the detective forged some of the signatures, purporting to be the witness.

This came to our attention in August 2019 as a conduct referral. The detective was served with a notice of investigation as there was an indication the officer may have committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner which would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

During the investigation, we interviewed the officer, obtained statements from the witness, forensically examined the statement concerned and reviewed relevant legislation.

We finalised our investigation in June 2020. We waited for all associated proceedings to be complete before publishing our findings. 
We concluded the detective had a case to answer for gross misconduct. We shared our conclusion with Hampshire Constabulary who agreed with our findings.

We determined there was an indication that a criminal offence may have been committed, so we referred a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which made the decision to charge the officer.

The detective was charged with making a false instrument with intent for it to be accepted as genuine, under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. In September 2021, the detective was found guilty and sentenced to eight months in jail.
At a special case misconduct hearing in October 2021, Hampshire Constabulary ruled the former detective would have been dismissed if still a serving officer. The detective was placed on the police barred list.

We considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. In this case, we did not identify organisational learning.