(Image: Richard Doughty Photography.)
A North Yorkshire Police officer who compared their colleagues' skin colour to chocolate bars has been sacked.
The police officer told one colleague: “I can call you Bounty or coconut or Milky Way”, according to a report following the misconduct hearing.
North Yorkshire Police’s misconduct hearing panel dismissed the officer, whose name was redacted in the report, without notice after concluding they committed gross misconduct.
The panel found the police officer “appeared notably comfortable using chocolate-bar comparisons to describe skin tone, suggesting this was an ingrained aspect of their vocabulary”.
They said the comments comparing the police officer’s skin colour to Bounty and Milky Way chocolate bars “did not appear to have caused [the officer] any distress”.
The panel also said it did not consider that the officer had been “acting with malicious intent” when they made the comments, adding that the officer “appeared to be intended to be descriptive rather than deliberately derogatory”.
But the panel said it “considered the remarks to be racially insensitive, in that they were reductive and placed undue focus on a person’s skin colour”.
The panel also found that the police officer compared a different colleague’s skin colour to a Galaxy chocolate bar.
Galaxy chocolate bars (Image: Philip Toscano/PA Wire)
They said the police officer had sought to frame their language as “light-hearted exchanges between close friends”, but the panel said the comments had progressed to a “different level” which they considered to be racist.
“The panel considered that this was racist as comparing someone to a chocolate bar frames their identity primarily in terms of their pigmentation,” the report said.
“It treats their race as a novelty, spectacle or defining feature rather than a neutral characteristic.”
“They considered, in any event, reducing the individual to their skin colour, draws on racialised and historically pejorative tropes, and implies difference or otherness and was inconsistent with the prevailing equalities principles and expectations of the time,” the report added.
Dismissal necessary to ensure fairness in policing, panel rules
Meanwhile, the police officer was cleared of a further allegation that they made insulting comments about Ramadan due to “insufficient evidence”, the report said.
During the hearing at North Yorkshire Police's Northallerton headquarters, the panel said it heard mitigating factors including that the police officer was “performing their role within policing to an otherwise high standard”.
But they said the officer had breached the professional standards in a way that amounted to gross misconduct.
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The panel said the seriousness of the breaches meant a “reduction in rank (were this available) or a final written warning, would be insufficient sanctions in the circumstances of the case”.
“The panel noted the officer’s submission that the public would consider their dismissal a disproportionate sanction, given their actions were not deliberate and were unconscious and not malicious.
“The officer had submitted dismissal was unnecessary to uphold public confidence and that they should have an opportunity to change their practice.
“The panel rejected this submission. They considered there is a clear and legitimate public expectation that police officers refrain from using discriminatory language at any time.
“The panel considered that dismissal is necessary to ensure the service is viewed as fair, impartial and genuinely accessible to all members of the community.”