Firearms officer sacked for secret visits to lover

A married firearms sergeant who "lived for his job" has been sacked after spending hours with his lover while on duty.

Sgt Steven Ainsworth, 39, met the woman, a young constable only referred to as Officer A, at a friend's birthday party in 2022 and said they had formed an "instant connection".

While he visited her home on 15 different shifts and she came to his house three times, they both emphatically denied ever having sex while on duty.

Sgt Ainsworth was found guilty of gross misconduct and dismissed without notice by a Merseyside Police misconduct panel, while Officer A received a written warning for misconduct.

A four-day hearing at Merseyside Police Headquarters in Liverpool heard Sgt Ainsworth was the force's Tactical Firearms Advisor (TAC) when he was on duty.

The role of a TAC is to offer senior officers advice and guidance around tactics when a firearms incident is declared.

TACs did not need to be in the same physical location as the senior officers.

The panel heard TACs were usually urged not to get "tied up" in other police activity like patrolling or making arrests.

This meant there were hours when Sgt Ainsworth was able to slip away unnoticed from his base at Merseyside Police's Operational Command Centre (OCC) in Speke.

The affair came to light when Officer A's boyfriend, also a serving constable, found out and told Sgt Ainsworth's wife, a senior detective who worked in the force's anti-corruption unit.

An audit of Sgt Ainsworth's police computer use found a lack of any action related to police work during the time he was at Officer A's property.

He also admitted accessing a force computer system to check on Officer A's location, which he said was because he had been worried about her safety after she had raised concerns about being sent to "sketchy" jobs while on solo patrol.

Officer A also admitted checking on Sgt Ainsworth's location on force systems.

The panel heard that on one of the occasions she visited him, she was on a designated break period and was cleared of breaking any rules that day.

However on another occasion, while Sgt Ainsworth was off duty, she drove in a patrol car to tell him her partner was planning to expose their affair to his wife.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss, who chaired the panel, said it accepted the two officers had not met to have sex and instead had wanted to offer each other "mutual support" when they were struggling with their mental health and personal issues.

However, he said the visits were also to "further their personal relationship".

The senior officer said the visits had included a shift when Sgt Ainsworth had been involved in advising on a major incident.

It was acknowledged, however, that he only left the OCC after firearms officers were stood down and there had been no criticism of his performance that night.

Sgt Ainsworth told the panel his "world fell apart" when he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office in November 2023.

A criminal prosecution was subsequently dropped.

He claimed at the time he began seeing Officer A his mental health was suffering due to problems in his marriage and the impact of distressing incidents at work.

Matthew Holdcroft, representing the force, told the panel Sgt Ainsworth's conduct was "deliberate" and involved an "abuse" of his role.

Luke Ponte, representing Sgt Ainsworth, urged the panel to stop short of ending his client's 17-year policing career.

"This was a grave error of judgement over some time but the public might be more forgiving of circumstances in which [the panel] found they were offering each other mutual support," he said.

The panel's decision means Sgt Ainsworth's name has been added to the College of Policing's barred list, prohibiting him from working in any policing role.

Det Ch Supt Sabi Kaur, head of the force's Professional Standards Department, described the behaviour of the two officers as "completely unacceptable" and said it risked "seriously undermining public confidence in policing".

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