Yahoo News Jailed: Married police officer who 'used job as a dating agency' and slept with two crime victims
A married police officer who sent sexual messages to crime victims and contacted prostitutes at work has been jailed for 14 months.
PC Palvinder Singh, 39, of Wednesbury, West Midlands, pleaded guilty to five counts of improper exercise of police powers and privileges at Birmingham Crown Court on Wednesday.
The West Midlands Police officer, who worked out of Smethwick Police Station, used police systems to build sexual relationships with four women, sending them inappropriate messages about bondage and threesomes.
One of the women he contacted said Singh treated his job “as a dating agency”.
The officer slept with two of his victims in his family home while his wife of 16 years was away, the court heard.
He was dismissed from West Midlands Police a week before his court appearance.
Opening the case against Singh, prosecutor Jennifer Josephs said: “He very quickly turned any contact into one of a sexual nature.
“(The messaging) was prolific – hundreds and hundreds of messages on a daily basis.”
Giovanni D'Alessandro, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said Singh targeted female victims of suspected crime, who he was "assigned to assist, for his own sexual gratification”.
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Jailing Singh, Judge Roderick Henderson told the disgraced officer: “You have a fine record as a police officer over 14 years and you have thrown it away.
“Over five months you went off the rails and committed these offences.
“We give our police officers great power, not just legal powers, but influence. They are the people we turn to in a crisis and we need to be able to trust them.
“The effect of behaviour like yours is to make people, women in particular, reluctant to call on police during a crisis in their lives.
“It is obvious to everyone that the police should not behave like this.”
Defence barrister Sharonjit Bahia said: “He was abusing his power to further his contact with women, rather than to take advantage of them.”
