Paul Street was formerly of Cambridgeshire Constabulary when he committed the offences

An ex-police sergeant has been found guilty of misconduct in public office after he created a “toxic” work culture in WhatsApp groups affecting dozens of colleagues.

Paul Street, 41, was found guilty at the Old Bailey this afternoon, after encouraging his team to bully a teenage detainee, and asked a colleague to send him a sexual video of a female suspect.

Street was formerly of Cambridgeshire Constabulary when he committed the offences, leading a team at Cambourne Police Station dealing with county lines drug supply and organised crime.

The disgraced officer, of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was found guilty of two charges of misconduct in a public office.

After deliberating for almost four hours, the jury cleared Street of assaulting a drug dealer during an arrest, and perverting the course of justice afterwards.

The defendant held his head in his hands in the dock as Judge Mark Lucraft KC remanded him into custody, to be sentenced on July 30.

Street had previously admitted two offences of unlawful disclosure of personal data relating to information and screenshots he sent to his partner in 2020.

Jurors heard 12 other officers had been investigated over their conduct, arising from the “toxic” culture Street had created.

Among them, PC Josh Williams, 38, from Huntingdon, pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office.

Of 11 others who were investigated, two resigned, one was dismissed for gross misconduct, one received a final warning, two received written warnings, and five others were dealt with for low-level performance issues.

Prosecutor Anne Whyte KC said Street had “created a culture of bragging and intolerance towards suspects”, and 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.”

With his “robust” style, he got “impressive results” in tackling serious crime, and found fame in television crime programmes - appearing on the BBC's Britain’s Teenage Drug Runners in 2017, and Channel 4’s Famous And Fighting Crime documentary in 2019.

However, anti-corruption officers uncovered Street’s two WhatsApp groups in 2021 after a new police officer reported him - one including 17 colleagues, and a second for his “inner circle”.

In April 2020, Street called on his team to “bully” 17-year-old detainee Robiul Islam, encouraging them to “please hit him” and “smash his head in”.

In the autumn of 2020, Williams was tasked with examining the phone of a female suspect he told Street was “quite fit”, where Street then asked if there were “any nudes”.

Williams went on to send Street a photo from the woman’s phone depicting her in underwear, which was passed around to “the lads from footy”.

When he was interviewed about it, Street claimed he wanted to see the images to reassure himself the woman, who was released without charge, was “not the victim of exploitative behaviour”.

Jurors heard Street’s WhatsApp chat set the tone for junior officers to follow, making regular references to bullying suspects.

Giving evidence, Street admitted his messages on WhatsApp were “poor”, but said the language was “gallows humour”.

He told jurors: “That was part of the culture at the time. I am not solely responsible for that.

“I would say they are abusive messages and I should not have sent them. I was successful in my job and it did make me arrogant.”

Ms Whyte suggested Street was more than a “maverick” officer with unorthodox methods, and having good arrest rates did not justify his “out of control” behaviour.

She told jurors: “He broke the rules repeatedly and chose to ignore the fact that in doing so, he was not just dishonouring the trust that the public should have in the police, but he was behaving precisely like the criminals he loved to despise.”