Thursday, September 17, 2026 - A former Cambridgeshire Police sergeant has been sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of misconduct in UK public office over conduct that included encouraging the mistreatment of a teenage detainee and seeking access to an intimate video belonging to a female suspect.
Paul Street, 41, who previously appeared in BBC and Channel
4 crime documentaries, was found guilty of two counts of misconduct in public
office. He also admitted two offences of unlawfully disclosing personal data
relating to information and screenshots he sent to his partner in 2020.
The investigation into Street began after a newly appointed
police officer reported concerns about his conduct, leading anti-corruption
officers to uncover two WhatsApp groups in 2021. Street committed the offences
while working for Cambridgeshire Constabulary and leading a unit at Cambourne
Police Station that mainly dealt with county lines drug supply and organised
crime.
Prosecutor Anne Whyte KC told the court that Street “created
a culture of bragging and intolerance towards suspects” and had a
“zero-tolerance attitude to anyone on his team who disagreed with his methods
and sentiments”. “He was not just promoting inappropriate attitudes, he was
positively creating a toxic culture which junior officers would find difficult
to challenge and likely to adopt,” Whyte said.
In April 2020, Street used a WhatsApp group to call on
members of his team to “bully” a 17-year-old detainee, including messages
encouraging colleagues to “please hit him” and “smash his head in”. Later that
year, PC Josh Williams was tasked with examining the phone of a female suspect
and told Street that he considered the woman “quite fit”.
Street asked whether the phone contained “any nudes”, and
Williams replied that there was a video showing the woman engaged in a s3xual
act. Williams subsequently sent Street a photograph obtained from the woman’s
phone showing her in underwear.
The following year, Street asked Williams through WhatsApp
whether he still had the intimate video because he wanted to show it to “the
lads from footy”. When questioned about the messages, Street said he wanted to
see the material to reassure himself that the woman, who was ultimately
released without charge, was not the victim of exploitative behaviour.
Jurors were told, however, that it was not Williams’s
responsibility to discuss or share the woman’s private images and that Street
had no professional reason to request the nud3s or s3x video. Giving evidence
during the trial, Street acknowledged that his WhatsApp messages were “poor”
but described the language as “gallows humour” and part of the workplace
culture at the time.
He also told jurors that his success in policing had made
him “arrogant”. Street previously appeared in the BBC documentary Britain’s
Teenage Drug Runners in 2017 and Channel 4’s Famous And Fighting Crime in 2019.
Williams, 38, was separately sentenced to 16 months in prison.
Eleven other officers were investigated over their conduct
arising from what prosecutors described as the “toxic” culture fostered by
Street. Two resigned, one was dismissed for gross misconduct, one received a
final warning, two received written warnings and five were dealt with over
lower-level performance issues.
Lisa Rose, Senior Specialist Prosecutor with the Crown
Prosecution Service’s Special Crime Division, said the case demonstrated an
abuse of the responsibilities entrusted to police officers.
“This case exposed a sustained pattern of unacceptable
conduct by a police officer who abused his position of trust,” Rose said. Paul
Street repeatedly crossed clear professional boundaries, by encouraging the
mistreatment of detainees and seeking access to intimate material that had no
place in a criminal investigation.
“Police officers are entrusted with significant powers and
are expected to uphold the highest standards at all times. Members of the
public should have confidence that any personal material obtained during an
investigation will be handled lawfully and appropriately. The actions of Paul
Street and Joshua Williams represented a serious breach of that trust.”
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