A police officer highly regarded as an “energetic and effective” crime-fighter did not suddenly turn “maverick” and become a drug dealer, a misconduct hearing was told. PC Jonathan Biggins’ colleagues “jumped to the wrong conclusion” that he had seized and then returned Class A substances to users on the street in Weston-super-Mare in exchange for information about dealers, his barrister Nick Walker told the panel.
Speaking on day four of the hearing at Avon & Somerset Police headquarters in Portishead on Monday, May 22, Mr Walker said the plain-clothes officer had never traded drugs for intelligence. PC Biggins, who has since resigned from the constabulary, is accused of breaching the standards of professional behaviour for police officers, amounting to gross misconduct.
He denies the allegations, including falsifying records of how many wraps of Class A drugs were seized in three separate stop-and-searches to hide that he had returned some to each user to get details about the dealers, all of whom were then arrested shortly afterwards. Mr Walker told the panel that both PC Lauren Rickwood and PC Ben Whitby, who gave evidence to say they had witnessed the officer handing back drugs including crack cocaine to users, had accepted they had not actually seen any substances during the alleged transactions and that they had “put two and two together to make five”.
