Constable seemingly escapes any formal disciplinary over car crash confrontation

The news has emerged after the police ombudsman today released a report into the incident, which found the constable had “abused his professional position” when confronting the man whom he believed was responsible for the collision.

This man (known as the complainant from here on in) then reported the constable to the ombudsman.

Few details of the collision were given in the ombudsman’s report, except that it happened in Downpatrick in November 2019.

The complainant said that shortly after the collision, the officer and his father came to speak to him at his workplace.

The ombudsman’s report says: “Although the officer made no reference at that stage to being a member of the PSNI, the complainant stated that the officer demanded that he admit liability for the crash.

“He refused to do so, but stated that the officer returned the following day and confronted him about the collision in an ‘aggressive and intimidating’ way.

“During this exchange, he said the officer produced his police warrant card and threatened to have him arrested for dangerous driving if he did not admit liability.”

When a police ombudsman investigator contacted the PSNI, a supervisor confirmed that the officer involved had accepted that producing his warrant card was inappropriate – something which meant “effectively placing himself on duty”, according to the ombudsman’s report.

The report adds: “The supervisor then told him not to make any further contact with the man.

“Despite this, the officer visited the man again the following day, stating that he did so to apologise for any alarm he had caused by identifying himself as a police officer...

“[T]he officer denied that he had threatened to have the man arrested or had acted aggressively.”

The constable also denied having inappropriately accessed information about the driver on police systems – and police logs turned up no evidence to indicate that he had done so.

The ombudsman, Marie Anderson, recommended that the officer be disciplined.

Asked what action had been taken, the PSNI told the News Letter: “A complaint was made to the Office of the Police Ombudsman, who subsequently made a recommendation of discipline.

“However, upon reviewing this recommendation and the full circumstances of this case, it was determined that the matter had already been proportionately dealt with by the officer’s line management through management action and performance management.”

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