Cambridgeshire Constabulary
Ethics Playing Cards
Copyright © 2025 Compass Ethics
7
You discover a colleague is in a relationship with someone whom they met when they were a complainant in a DV case. What do you do? Is the relationship appropriate and does it matter if they are both happy?
Case Studies
- You discover a colleague regularly follows up cases involving single mothers as complainants. He says that making time for them is important, but you suspect that the motivation is not professional. What do you do?
Discussion
It is completely unacceptable for a police officer to be in a relationship with a DV victim they met at an incident. The PSD Abuse of Authority policy reads "The Code of Ethics states that officers/staff must not engage in sexual conduct or other inappropriate behaviour on duty and must not establish or pursue an improper sexual or emotional relationship with a person with whom they come into contact in the course of their work." There are multiple reasons for this very clear position:
- There could be related issues for uniformed or police staff.
- Perceptions of integrity are vital for the police organisation as a whole.
- Recognising and fully understanding the position of trust that is involved here is essential. Misusing privileged information or knowledge about someone’s domestic situation could be a professional standards issue. Taking advantage of a vulnerable person clearly would be a serious professional standards issue, so how the two parties met could be very important. For example, has privileged information been used or accessed? Is the person involved vulnerable, or made vulnerable by the power imbalance in the situation?
- What does this mean for the independence of the officer involved? It would be impossible for them to give evidence or provide any kind of objective statement on the situation or antecedents.
- When coming to the aid of someone who has suffered at the hands of someone else, it is possible to become susceptible to a form of “noble cause corruption”. In such situations where the duty appears to be to rescue someone (i.e. a noble cause), it can be tempting to use unethical or even illegal means to attain a clearly desirable goal. This is compounded when one considers the “greater good” argument. When someone is convinced of their righteousness, it is tempting to use whatever powers available to ensure the right result. For example, disclosure of unused evidence to the other side is an essential part of a police investigation and ensuing prosecution through the courts. This is to ensure that important leads really are followed up and miscarriages of justice can be avoided (e.g. when it turns out the person had an alibi all along). A failure to disclose awkward or conflicting evidence by the police is therefore a serious matter, but it is far more likely to occur if the investigating officer is certain that they are stopping a ’bad person’. The trial process in which evidence is tested to see if it stands up to scrutiny can be seen as rather inconvenient ‘red tape’ if the problem has clearly already been solved as far as the officer is concerned. Therefore, it is easy to see how if someone is confident that they have got the right person, they are more likely to bend the rules a little to ensure that nothing gets in the way of successfully holding them to account (this is discussed at some length in Anon. The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken (Picador, 2019), chs. 8 & 9).
- An otherwise good person doing the wrong thing because they believe in a goal can be just as dangerous as a bad person deliberately causing harm.
- Is there a period of time which lapses when it then becomes acceptable?
Even in a situation where there appear to be no further issues raised, there is a clear need to disclose the relationship to PSD to comply with vetting. It is clearly much better for the colleague involved to do this themselves rather than for them to be reported by someone else, but this is not something that you or anyone else that becomes aware of it can ignore.