Sergeant pestered junior colleague on social media

A police sergeant who pestered a junior colleague on social media and joked about having children with her would have been sacked had he not resigned, a misconduct panel found.

Paul Bentley worked for Thames Valley Police (TVP) in a Berkshire neighbourhood policing team when the woman, who was still in her probationary period, joined his team in December 2023.

They became friends but the police constable said the friendship became too much, with Bentley regularly liking her posts and messaging her on Snapchat and Instagram and asking her to hug him.

He quit TVP in April 2025 but a panel overseeing a misconduct hearing found he had committed gross misconduct and would have been dismissed.

Bentley accepted he had regularly liked and commented on the officer's posts on social media, including one that read: "OMG you look amazing."

He accepted he had regularly messaged her when off duty, had "sent a higher ratio of messages to [his colleague] than [her] and he admitted that his messaging had become 'too much'", the panel said.

The woman said that comment, along with other jokes Bentley made about the pair living together and having children, made her feel uncomfortable.

Bentley, who joined TVP in 2010 and was promoted to the role of sergeant in 2019, accepted his behaviour was misconduct but denied it amounted to gross misconduct.

He accepted he "overstepped" his role as the woman's supervisor and that if he was in the same position again, he would do things differently.

The panel found the woman's welfare should have been "put front and central" by Bentley but instead "she found herself the subject of a repeated, unwanted course of conduct".

It said Bentley "failed in his duty to be a role model", that his behaviour had lasted for months and that it was "repeated and sustained".

But it accepted it was "not malicious or sexually motivated".

The TVP hearing took place in April but the outcome was published on Friday.