{"id":25781,"date":"2025-03-27T04:01:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T04:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/allegations-of-officers-abusing-their-positions-at-record-high\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T04:01:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T04:01:50","slug":"allegations-of-officers-abusing-their-positions-at-record-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/allegations-of-officers-abusing-their-positions-at-record-high\/","title":{"rendered":"Allegations of officers abusing their positions at record high"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Julian O\u2019Neill<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC News NI crime and justice correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"GettyGetty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Police said a crackdown on officers who misuse their powers was taking place<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

The number of investigations into police officers alleged to have abused their position for sexual purposes is at a record level.<\/p>\n

An inspection of the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (OPONI) found it had 19 active cases as of July 2024. Since then the number has risen to 24.<\/p>\n

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said a crackdown on officers who misuse their powers was taking place.<\/p>\n

Last year it sacked an officer for having sex with a vulnerable woman<\/a> in Antrim while on duty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The issue has been highlighted in a report by Criminal Justice Inspection (CJI), which stated there needed to be “timely consequences” for officer misconduct.<\/p>\n

It discovered that complaints of malpractice were taking about 17 months to investigate on average.<\/p>\n

Often, officers are suspended and remain on full pay.<\/p>\n

“Minimising delay in the progress of investigations is key,” said Jacqui Durkin, from the CJI.<\/p>\n

“Work by the Department of Justice (DoJ) to progress a legislative amendment to enable swifter disciplinary action to be taken by the PSNI, when and if appropriate, should be expedited.”<\/p>\n

A DoJ spokesperson said it is “currently considering how provisions can be introduced to improve the police officer misconduct process, some of which may require amendment to primary legislation”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"PAPA Media<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Singleton said abuse of position would not be tolerated<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

The PSNI said it welcomed the report.<\/p>\n

Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Singleton said: “The abuse of position by a serving police officer or staff member is totally unacceptable.<\/p>\n

“It is not and will not be tolerated.<\/p>\n

“Last year, we re-issued a service-wide statement of intent, which made explicit once again that there will be no tolerance for police officers and police staff who abuse their power.<\/p>\n

“We will continue to work with OPONI and other criminal justice partners to crackdown on this type of behaviour within our organisation.”<\/p>\n

Director of investigations at OPONI, Nikki Davis, said she was pleased the report backed its call for legislative change to enable cases to be fast-tracked.<\/p>\n

She added that following OPONI investigations, six officers had been convicted or dismissed for abusing their role for sexual purposes since 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julian O\u2019Neill BBC News NI crime and justice correspondent Getty Images Police said a crackdown on officers who misuse their powers was taking place The number of investigations into police officers alleged to have abused their position for sexual purposes is at a record level. An inspection of the Office of the Police Ombudsman for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4992,5594,1062,2852,9267,1061],"class_list":["post-25781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-abusing","tag-allegations","tag-high","tag-officers","tag-positions","tag-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25783,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25781\/revisions\/25783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}