I’ll forget anything ever happened, policewoman ‘told drug dealer’

PC Toni Darroch is on trial at Leeds Crown Court accused of perverting justice over the incident when she was called to deal with a drugs haul found at a hairdressing salon.

The court heard West Yorkshire Police officer Darroch told convicted drug dealer Denise Wright, also known as Denise Hayden, to use baby wipes to get rid of fingerprints from a lunch box containing £200 of cannabis.

Darroch is then alleged to have taken the drugs with her before instructing a police community support officer to make a false entry about the incident on a police log.

Prosecutor Michael Slater said: “The prosecution say that, for reasons we cannot explain, the defendant took it upon herself to dishonestly exonerate Hayden from any prosecution regarding the drugs find.”

Darroch was called to Trims and Tans, Doncaster Road, Wakefield, in August last year to a complaint that Wright had been selling drugs.

Wright got a job there as a barber shortly after being released from prison on licence for drug offences.

Police were contacted after she had offered to sell cannabis to people at the shop and drugs were found by the salon owner Kay Hibbert.

Ms Hibbert told the court Darroch said to Wright: “I really don’t know what to do because you are on licence.”

She said the officer then took Wright to the kitchen area and told her to use baby wipes to remove her finger prints from the box.

She added: “The police officer said she would take them. She said ‘I will take them away and forget anything ever happened.’”

Darroch was interviewed and said she may have been unprofessional but had not been deliberately dishonest.

The trial continues.