A police officer who called 999 to report a fellow PC had drunk four glasses of wine at a pub before getting behind the wheel of her car did so out of “malice”, a misconduct hearing has heard.

William Carter, 25, a Thames Valley Police officer who was based at Amersham, called the emergency number to falsely report a colleague for drink-driving on October 24 last year.

Mr Carter, who resigned from the force a day before the misconduct hearing was held on April 6, had been in the unnamed pub while off-duty at around 9pm that night.

‘PC A’ was also with a group, and Mr Carter had been in the pub for around five to ten minutes with the group before he left.

At 11 minutes past nine, Mr Carter called 999, saying a “known drink-driver” was “just about to leave a pub”.

He did not identify his colleague by name but provided a description of the pub, the registration of her vehicle and a description of her.

When Mr Carter was asked how much the “drink-driver” had consumed, he told the operator: “At least four glasses of red wine”.

He also said he did not know the name of the “drink-driver”, adding: “I just heard her talking, her friend was just saying you shouldn’t drive and she said ‘I’ve only had four I’ll be fine’.”

Mr Carter added that she was “extremely intoxicated”, “seemed quite drunk” and was “a bit slurry”.

He told the call handler he wanted to remain anonymous because he visited the pub occasionally.

When police went to PC A’s home at around 11pm that night, she voluntarily provided a sample of breath for analysis, which showed 12 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath – significantly below the legal drink-drive limit of 35mcgs.

Minutes after he made the 999 report, Mr Carter logged into police system CMP at 9.26pm and searched for the record of the incident he had reported – making three further attempts to view it at 9.31pm, 9.33pm and 9.34pm.

After reviewing the police report, he called 999 for a second time at 9.27pm, saying he had just found out that the “drink-driver” he had reported was a police officer, and then called again at 21.46pm, repeating the fake claims.

The misconduct hearing heard that Mr Carter had knowingly made false statements, wasted police resources and caused PC A “stress and upset”.

It heard he also had no “legitimate or authorised policing purpose” for accessing the report on police systems.

Th ex-police officer did not wish to challenge any of the statements made by the witnesses for the hearing and did not attend the hearing, but apologised for his actions and said he had nobody to blame but himself.

He said: “At the time, I did not realise the gravity of my actions”. He added: “I have been under great stress whilst learning to become a competent police officer.

“The lapse in my behaviour and [redacted] are not excuses for my actions… my actions were unacceptable. This behaviour is completely out of character for me and I will never do something like this again.”

Mr Carter joined the force in April 2020.

The misconduct panel said it was “satisfied” that Mr Carter’s actions had breached Thames Valley Police’s standards of professional behaviour in terms of honesty and integrity, authority, respect and courtesy, orders and instructions, confidentiality and discreditable conduct.

They said: “We consider that all of the proven allegations are of the utmost severity. Their seriousness is self-evident and in one sense requires no further elaboration, involving, as it does, deliberate dishonesty, motivated in part by malice.

“Ex-PC Carter says… that his conduct was out of character but we have no real way of judging this, given the lack of any character evidence and the very short time that he was with the police service.

“However, even if it was out of character, that is scant mitigation in the circumstances, given the seriousness of the misconduct involved.”

They concluded that had he not resigned already, he would have been dismissed from the police force.