A disgraced police officer who created a ‘toxic’ culture at work has been jailed for four years.
Former police sergeant Paul Street, 41, was known for his ‘robust’ style and ‘impressive results’ and appeared on TV shows on the BBC and Channel 4.
Anti-corruption officers launched an investigation in 2021 after a new police officer reported him, uncovering his two WhatsApp groups.
In them, he encouraged colleagues to ‘bully’ a teenage detainee and asked one workmate to send him a sex video of a female suspect while he was working at Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the Old Bailey had heard.
There, he led a unit at Cambourne Police Station which mainly tackled county lines drug supply and organised crime.
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Following an Old Bailey trial in June, Street, of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was found guilty of two charges of misconduct in a public office.
Street had previously admitted two offences of unlawful disclosure of personal data relating to information and screenshots he sent to his partner in 2020.
On Wednesday morning he appeared at the Old Bailey before Judge Mark Lucraft KC alongside Josh Williams, 38, who pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office.
Some 11 other officers were investigated over their conduct arising from the ‘toxic’ culture fostered by Street.
Two of them resigned, one was dismissed for gross misconduct, one received a final warning, two received written warnings, and five others were dealt with for low-level performance issues.
In April 2020, Street called on his team to ‘bully’ Robiul Islam, then 17, encouraging them to ‘hit him’ and ‘smash his head in’.
In the autumn of 2020, Williams was examining the phone of a female suspect he described as ‘quite fit’ to Street.
To this, Street asked if there were ‘any nudes’, and Williams replied there was a video of the woman committing a sexual act.
Williams went on to send Street a photo from the woman’s phone depicting her in underwear.
The following year, Street asked on WhatsApp if Williams still had the intimate private video because he wanted to show it to ‘the lads from footy’.
When he was interviewed about it, Street claimed he wanted to see the images to reassure himself the woman, who was released without charge, was not the victim of exploitative behaviour.
But jurors were told it was not Williams’s job to discuss or share the private images, and neither was it Street’s job to ask for the explicit images.
Giving evidence, Street admitted his messages on WhatsApp were ‘poor’ but described the language as ‘gallows humour’ and said it was part of the culture at the time.
He also said he had become ‘arrogant’ due to his success at work.
Street previously appeared on the BBC show Britain’s Teenage Drug Runners in 2017, and in 2019 was on Channel 4’s Famous And Fighting Crime documentary.