Police officer keeps job after allowing dossier of paedophiles and victims to be dumped in public

Dog walker found sensitive documents in Hartlepool street and handed them to newspaper

Sgt Martin Skirving-Chehab was found to have committed gross misconduct (PA)

A police officer has kept his job after allowing a dossier of sensitive information on paedophiles and rapists to be dumped in public.

Sgt Martin Skirving-Chehab look two Lidl carrier bags full of documents home from a Cleveland Police unit for managing sex offenders.

A disciplinary hearing was told that his mother-in-law accidentally put some of the files in the household recycling, and they were later found near a skip by a dog walker in June.

“I saw the pages with ‘sex offender’ on and then a police logo and traced them back to an overflowing skip where this blue book was lying on the ground,” the man said after passing the dossier to The Sun.

“I looked inside and there were all these details. I was shocked.”

The chair of a Cleveland Police hearing said the blunder created a risk of “serious harm” to 55 registered sex offenders whose details could have been made public.

The documents, dating back to 2016, contained information including their home addresses, bank accounts, vehicle registration numbers and details about victims.

Sgt Skirving-Chehab had removed the documents from a sex offender unit in Middlesbrough while he was on a day off, after meeting a superior about a job opportunity.

He then stored them at his Hartlepool home, which was being renovated, for some weeks and they ended up in his kitchen before being binned.

The hearing was told that the officer should have sorted the papers at work and disposed of them securely.

Sgt Skirving-Chehab was in hospital with his wife, who had just given birth to their first child, when he was contacted by a superior officer about the serious security breach.

“The panel has decided that the conduct amounts to gross misconduct because there was a sustained failure to take data protection seriously, leading to significant reputational harm to the police and a risk of serious harm to members of the public,” said panel chair Jayne Salt.

The hearing was told that Sgt Skirving-Chehab, 42, had been a police officer for 15 years and received two formal commendations.

The panel ruled that he would receive a final written warning for breaching professional standards.

Nicholas Walker, representing Mr Skirving-Chehab, had argued the public would not be best served by dismissing him from the police service.

The documents had been taken from a Cleveland Police sex offender unit (PA Archive / PA Images)

Mr Walker said the officer had received commendations for his work in helping the family of murdered pensioner Norma Bell, and saving an elderly woman with dementia from the North Sea.

One of Mrs Bell's sons wrote to the hearing to commend his work, saying: "It's difficult to put into words how grateful my family and I still are for him helping us through the most difficult of experiences."

Mr Walker said the officer had spent 18 months - the entirety of his baby's life - with the disciplinary hearing hanging over him, and he had suffered from stress but managed to keep going in his career, despite being on restricted duties.

Sgt Skirving-Chehab worked in sex offender management before becoming a family liaison officer dealing with murder cases.

Cristiana Emsley, Cleveland Police’s director of standards and ethics, said: ”The result of the hearing should be a warning to our workforce that any mishandling of sensitive data can have serious consequences.

"Whilst it is accepted that police personnel may take data off police premises, it is their utmost responsibility to ensure it is secured and managed appropriately at all times.

"A force-wide compliance plan has already been put in place and this is being monitored by a dedicated Data Protection Auditor."

The force, which was found to be failing in all areas by the policing inspectorate earlier this year, had referred the incident to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

Interim regional director David Ford said the case showed that police officers “cannot afford to become complacent” about the handling of sensitive data.

He added: “We recognise that Cleveland Police has apologised to those individuals who were affected by this data breach and we have recommended that they also review their data protection policies.”

Additional reporting by PA