A Met police officer dubbed “Creepy Campbell” by colleagues has been sacked after sending anonymous texts to two young female officers asking for sex.
A misconduct panel was told PC Alex Campbell, who is married to a police officer and has a young child, bought an untraceable burner phone from a supermarket so he could send anonymous messages to one probationary officer.
Among the messages published by the misconduct hearing was one asking if she was “loyal to your fella or do you consider other avenues?”
When the female officer demanded to know his identity, he told her: “I can’t babe! Not till I know I can trust you x.”
He went on to tell her he was “being a sleeze behind the mrs back and thought I could try and hook up with you?”
The next day he sent her messages from his own number telling her he was looking forward to working alone with her again and when she confronted him confessed he had also sent the anonymous messages.
An investigation found Campbell, who was based in the Safer Neighbourhood team in Clapham and had been with the Met for over 10 years, had sent similar messages to another young female officer months before and had continued to message her after she made it clear she was not interested.
In one, he told her he has missed her “sexy little bod” while she had been away from work.
The panel was told she had been hesitant about reporting the messages but “subsequent to the Wayne Couzens case and subsequent actions taken by senior officers in the Metropolitan Police Service, she was motivated to pursue matters further”.
A misconduct report said Campbell admitted the allegations and said he “indicated that he had been affected by Covid”.
It went on: “The panel finds that PC Campbell utilised the power imbalance in his relationship with PC’s A and C in order to target them for his sexual advances.
“His contact with them was abhorrent. It was a predatory campaign of sexually-motivated harassment. It had a sexual motive. It was degrading. It caused upset, distress, anxiety, shame, fear and distrust to its victims.
“PC Campbell was repeatedly advised in no uncertain terms by his victims that his advances were unwanted and unwarranted, but failed to heed these warnings and persisted with his own agenda nonetheless.”
PC Campbell was dismissed from the Met without notice.
His case will be another blow to the Met which was recently labelled institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic in a damning report by Baroness Casey and has faced a series of scandals, including the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens and David Carrick being unmasked as one of the UK’s most prolific sex offenders.
