Police office jailed over sexual relationship with vulnerable woman he met on duty

A police officer who left a colleague waiting outside as he had sex with a vulnerable woman he had met while on duty has been jailed for two years.

Both on and off duty, Met Police officer Scott Johnson failed to protect someone who was vulnerable and risked public trust in the police, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Jailing him on Thursday, judge Amanda Pinto QC told Johnson his actions were “at complete odds with the code to which you had signed up”.

“This was a gross breach of your duty,” she said.

The court heard Johnson, 45, of St Mary’s Bay, Kent, first met the woman when he attended a call on September 21, 2016.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has a history of poor mental health and suicide attempts, and had drunk half a bottle of wine and taken anti-depressants.

She was taken to West Middlesex Hospital, where she and Johnson engaged in a sex act in a cubicle, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Johnson claimed the hospital encounter was consensual and the woman had told him: “I always wanted to sleep with a police officer.”

From there, things snowballed, the court heard.

Thomas Broomfield, prosecuting, said: “Following this incident they began communicating over WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and both parties shared many intimate photos of themselves.”

After a month, he saw her another two times, and they had consensual sex on both occasions.

On the first occasion, he took along a bottle of Southern Comfort whiskey, and on the second, he attended her flat “while on night duty, in full uniform, leaving another officer outside”, the court heard.

Mr Broomfield said “both on and off duty Scott Johnson failed in his duty to protect someone who was vulnerable”.

Johnson was arrested in October 2017, after the woman told officers about the relationship following another attendance by police and paramedics.

In her victim impact statement she said: “I want justice for the trauma Scott Johnson and the Metropolitan Police have caused me.”

Johnson pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office in October.

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