Yorkshire police officer who assaulted teenager while off duty could be sacked

Police constable Graeme Gale allegedly pulled the boy off a wall and then knocked him to the ground using several leg sweeps on July 14 in 2021.

The force said the boy, who has not been named, suffered a “visible injury in the form of scratches to the back of his neck and pain”.

Four months after the incident in Darlington Road, Richmond, he pleaded guilty to assault at Teesside Magistrates Court.

He was then given a 12-month community order and ordered to pay a victims’ surcharge and costs, during a hearing at the same court on December 17.

The officer is now due to attend a misconduct hearing at the North Yorkshire Police headquarters in Northallerton on Friday, February 11.

If the three-person misconduct panel rules that his actions amounted to gross misconduct, he could be dismissed from the force without notice.

At another hearing earlier this month, Christopher Bolton was found guilty of gross misconduct after he started an inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable woman he met while on duty.

He was called to a domestic incident at the woman’s property in August 2020, when he was a police constable working in York for North Yorkshire Police.

An Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation found he returned to the property twice and had “some sexual contact” with the woman, before they began exchanging WhatsApp messages.

North Yorkshire Police said he “viewed an inappropriate image of the female, touched her breasts, exchanged images of an inappropriate, intimate and or sexual nature and engaged in conversation discussing the possibility of forging a relationship with her”.

The misconduct panel stated that if he was still serving with the force, he would have been dismissed.