Humberside Pc '˜downloaded image of woman onto personal computer'

Pc David Smith faces a disciplinary hearing next week over five separate counts of misconduct, relating to allegedly recording images relating to his work and downloading them for his own personal use.

He is also accused of taking video footage of a young woman in Harrogate police station and downloading it onto his personal computer and external hard drive. During this incident in 2012, Mr Smith was on duty with the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Roads Policing Team.

According to the list of disciplinary charges: “You attended Harrogate Police Station and used your mobile phone, whilst acting as a video recorder, to pan around the foyer of the public area of the police station before framing and settling the image on a young woman seated in the public area of the police station.

“The image of this female was then downloaded onto your personal computer and external hard drive. There was no policing reason for you to deliberately record the image of the female member of the public.”

In a separate incident in November 2012, Mr Smith was said to have used a Cleartone automatic number plate recognition camera to photograph novelty number plates “without any proper policing purpose to do so”.

He is also alleged to have downloaded movie clips from an onboard police vehicle camera and a photograph of a bus parked in the street with no insurance, both without a “policing purpose”.