A Police Constable who scanned a 7p barcode for carrots to pay for a £9.95 box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts has lost his job for gross misconduct
Former Police Constable Simon Read’s claim that he had made an honest mistake at a self-service checkout in the town of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, was “lacking in credibility”, a panel concluded at his disciplinary hearing.
The Cambridgeshire Police Constable was in his uniform when he purchased the doughnuts, along with carrots, a sandwich and a drink , while shopping at a Tesco Extra on the 10th of February.
He scanned the barcode of the carrots twice and failed to scan the barcode for the Krispy Kreme doughnuts, buying the items for around £4 instead of their true worth of around £14.
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A Tesco manager then later informed the police of reports of a “suspicious police officer at its store” and the matter was then investigated, the hearing in Peterborough was told.
Chair of the disciplinary panel, Sharmistha Michaels, said: “On the balance of probabilities we are satisfied that PC Read did intentionally scan the wrong barcode.”
Even though Mr Read claimed that he had not checked the screen at the self-checkout, Ms Michaels said that the stores CCTV showed him looking at it in order to select his payment method.
He had put the barcode of the 7p carrots on the box of the doughnuts, on the same side as its original barcode.
If he had truly intended to pay the full price for the doughnuts, then he could have verified that he had indeed scanned the correct barcode, said Ms Michaels.
The panel ruled that the officer had breached the professional standards of honesty and integrity required by the police force, amounting to gross misconduct, for which he lost his job without notice.
Ms Michaels said his actions were “incompatible with his role as a police officer”.
“The officer’s behaviour has undermined public confidence in the police,”
Lawyer Mark Ley-Morgan, who set out the misconduct case, said it was “an officer effectively stealing while in uniform”.
“He was using his uniform as cover,” he said.
“Who would be suspicious of a police officer?”
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PC Read’s lawyer, Carolina Bracken, said that the officer had received prank calls in the night from people who had been offering him doughnuts.
She said that the former officer’s career was “unblemished” before the doughnut incident, having played a role in the visit to Blenheim Palace by US President Donald Trump, as well as several royal weddings while he servied with Thames Valley Police from the year 2008.
He had previously served in the armed forces and joined Cambridgeshire Police in January of this year. PC Read currently has a right to appeal against the panel’s decision.
