From the Dover Mercury, 17 February, 2021. By Sam Lennon.

Police officer narrowly avoids being sacked.

A policeman found to be guilty of gross misconduct narrowly avoided being sacked.

P.C. Stephen Kerr instead got a final written warning after a Kent Police disciplinary panel had ruled that he had failed to take action to protect a woman who was assaulted outside a working men’s club in Dover.

The members had also ruled that he had made an inaccurate statement, with omissions, about what had happened.

Their decision on the sanction came on Friday afternoon after four hours of deliberation.

Panel chairman Ms. Chiew Yin Jones said:- "The panel finds that a final written warning is a proportionate outcome.

But she told him:- "P.C. Kerr, I can’t tell you how close you were to being dismissed today."

The case stemmed from a domestic incident at "Dover Working Men’s Club" in London Road on October 23, 2019 when P.C. Kerr was off duty and playing pool with friends.

A row developed between a couple and the man took the woman outside.

The panel upheld the allegation that P.C. Kerr saw the man was being aggressive and had failed to follow them out to check on her welfare and failed to call police.

She ended up with her head pushed against a car windscreen.

P.C. Kerr, 47, on giving evidence, had asserted that he felt he had no reason to intervene as the woman did not seem distressed and did not appear to be in danger.

This point was echoed by two of his friends, Edward King and Paul Wright, who were there that night and appeared during the tribunal as witnesses.

But the panel took the weight of its evidence from CCTV filmed that night.

P.C. Kerr said he didn’t call on-duty police as a member of the public had already done that.

He had denied all the allegations against him.

Kevin Baumber, counsel for P.C. Kerr, told the hearing:- "He was not involved in the incident but it was a failure to get involved where he fell foul."

He added that the extent of the woman’s injury was that her lip had been banged inside the car.

The panel decided that P.C. Kerr had breached three standards in professional behaviour, which were honesty and integrity, duties and responsibilities, and discreditable conduct.

The officer was expected to uphold these even when off duty.

One mitigating factor the panel took into account was that P.C. Kerr was never responsible for the assault itself.

They said that his inaccurate statement was to mitigate his poor judgement at the time rather than harm an investigation.

They also accepted that P.C. Kerr had been in a single, brief and fast moving episode where he had to make instant decisions. Character references showed that he was otherwise honest, hard working and reliable.

The three-day hearing, with video links between parties, was centred on Kent Police Headquarters in Maidstone.

The tribunal had earlier ruled that the woman victim was not to be publicly identified.

Detective Chief Inspector Natalie Potter of Kent Police’s Professional Standards Department said in a statement:- "Police officers are in a position of trust and should display honesty and integrity at all times whether on or off duty. This has been accepted by the panel as a lapse of judgement by P.C. Kerr whose actions did not support our efforts to tackle domestic abuse and safeguard victims.

"We expect the highest standards of profession