Former Cambridgeshire police sergeant Paul Street, 41, who appeared in BBC and Channel 4 crime documentaries, has been jailed for four years after being convicted of two counts of misconduct in public office. An Old Bailey jury found he bullied a 17-year-old detainee, Robiul Islam, during a 2020 drugs arrest, and asked a colleague to send him a sexually explicit video found on a female suspect's phone so he could show it to "the lads from footy." The case highlights serious abuses of trust and power within a police unit that had been publicly praised for its "robust" approach to tackling county lines drug dealing.

The court heard Street referred to himself as "daddy" on a work WhatsApp group that fostered a culture of "bragging and intolerance" towards suspects. His colleague, PC Joshua Williams, 38, admitted misconduct in public office for sharing the images despite the suspect warning him the phone contained private material, and was jailed for 16 months; he later factory-reset his phone fearing investigation. Street was cleared of separately assaulting a drug dealer with a baton and of perverting the course of justice, though he had messaged colleagues boasting about the baton confrontation. Sentencing judge Mark Lucraft KC called the officers' use of WhatsApp "appalling," warning it undermined public trust in police handling of seized phones.