Scotland’s Chief Constable twice tried to ‘recruit’ a disgraced senior officer who was stripped of his Queen’s Police Medal after being found guilty of misconduct charges, including sexting from his force phone.
Nick Gargan – a former chief constable himself – quit the police in 2015 after sending inappropriate messages from his work phone, improperly interfering with a recruitment process, and passing on confidential emails.
However, despite his tarnished police career, internal emails reveal that Chief Constable Jo Farrell tried to enlist Mr Gargan in 2023 to advise senior executives at Police Scotland on digital services.
Her relationship with Mr Gargan – who now works as a consultant advising companies which sell services to UK police forces – is under the spotlight again after she recently encouraged her executive team to sign up to an email newsletter that he distributes.
Mr Gargan was forced to resign as Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset in 2015 and was later stripped of his Queen’s Police Medal for bringing the service into disrepute.
As a police liaison officer at the British Embassy in Paris, he was involved in the investigation into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed in 1997.
But that National Criminal Intelligence Service secondment also ended under a cloud when he was suddenly ‘returned’ to the UK after it emerged that he was having an affair with the daughter of a colleague.
Despite his fall from grace, in August 2023, weeks before Ms Farrell officially took charge in Scotland, she wrote to the force’s chief digital and information officer, Andrew Hendry, instructing him to set up a meeting with Mr Gargan to discuss technological transformation.
Chief Constable Jo Farrell tried to enlist Mr Gargan in 2023 to advise senior executives at Police Scotland on digital services
Mr Gargan was forced to resign as Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset in 2015 and was later stripped of his Queen’s Police Medal for bringing the service into disrepute
Ms Farrell wrote to the force’s chief digital and information officer, Andrew Hendry, above, instructing him to set up a meeting with Mr Gargan to discuss technological transformation
However, that meeting was eventually cancelled because Police Scotland’s executive management team raised concerns, with one senior officer said to be ‘apoplectic’ at the proposal.
A Police Scotland source said: ‘It is incredible the Chief Constable thinks it appropriate to champion Nick Gargan, whose police career ended in disrepute.
‘The Chief hasn’t learned anything from her first attempt to foist him on to senior decision makers. It beggars belief that her assistant chief constables and the deputy chief constables should be pressured or feel compelled to sign up to Gargan’s newsletters.’
A probe by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) established that Gargan used his police phone to ‘send, receive and store intimate emails and images’, and that he emailed one woman ‘a critical incident report’ about a sensitive operation involving a missing person.
He was also found to have sent confidential police documents to non-colleagues, and emails and texts to another woman to give her an advantage when applying for a job at Avon and Somerset Police.
The IPCC said his work phone ‘contained very intimate text message exchanges between him and various women’.
The officer was suspended on full pay for more than a year while the probe took place.
The report accused him of ‘flawed judgment’ and ‘ill advised’ behaviour but said the findings did not justify dismissal and recommended that he be reinstated.
However, after an outcry which included calls for him to resign from three former chief constables, he was forced out of the £175,000 a year post.
The Chief Constable’s bid to introduce Mr Gargan to Police Scotland decision-makers came just weeks before the ‘Taxigate’ scandal in 2023, when she commandeered a police patrol vehicle to take her home from Edinburgh to Northumberland.
Only 11 days into her new role, and with travel warnings in place because of Storm Babet, a police officer was removed from strategic duties to whisk her and former Durham Constabulary colleague Gary Ridley to their respective homes on a 240-mile round trip.
She later apologised for an ‘error of judgment’.
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘The public will be concerned at this apparent clash of opinions between Scotland’s top police officer and senior figures.’
Police Scotland said that ‘no services have been procured’ from the Nick Gargan Consultancy.
Mr Gargan has been approached for comment.
