Former police officer barred from policing for possessing indecent video of children

A former Greater Manchester Police officer has been added to the College of Policing Barred List for possessing an indecent video of children.

Former PC Lee Ashcroft (12/06/1983) pleaded guilty on 24 October 2022 to making an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child.

He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years, at Liverpool Crown Court on 19 December 2022.

Ashcroft was given a 30-day rehabilitation order and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and ordered to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years.

An Accelerated Misconduct Hearing today (Tuesday 27 June 2023) ruled that Ashcroft’s behaviour amounted to gross misconduct.

The hearing at Force HQ was chaired by Chief Constable Stephen Watson, who said that Ashcroft’s actions breached the standards of professional behaviour expected of a police officer.

The hearing was told that Ashcroft, who was a PC in GMP's Special Operations, would have been dismissed had he still been serving. Ashcroft resigned from the force on 21 October 2022.

CC Watson said Ashcroft’s culpability was regarded as ‘high’ due to his ‘deliberate actions carried out in the full knowledge that his conduct was blatantly unlawful and morally reprehensible’.

CC Watson said: “Ashcroft’s conduct and conviction inevitably brings the organisation into disrepute and undoubtedly damages the confidence the public might otherwise wish to place in their police officers.

“That Ashcroft appears to have derived some perverse sexual pleasure from the exploitation and suffering inflicted on a child is despicable.

“His conduct cannot be further removed of that required of a police officer. He now stands rightly convicted as a sex offender, his career lies in rumination, he has completely forfeited the trust of the public whom he was sworn to serve.”

GMP’s Professional Standards Branch can be contacted via the force’s website: https://www.gmp.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/c/af/complaints/ Reports can also be made anonymously via Crimestoppers at www.crimestoppers-uk.org or 0800 555 111.