NSW cop sacked over topless waitress party, domestic violence case failures

A NSW Police officer who hosted a team Christmas party featuring a topless waitress and failed to adequately investigate domestic violence allegations has failed in a bid to overturn his dismissal.

The NSW Industrial Relations Commission last week upheld an order by Police Commissioner Karen Webb to sack Andrew Herring, a senior constable with 13 years’ service, based on concerns about his integrity and performance.

A NSW Police officer has been sacked following a string of incidents that put his integrity and performance into question.Credit: Edwina Pickles

By 2022, the Lake Illawarra Local Area Command officer had received several warnings for not using body-worn video and failing to adequately respond to domestic violence complaints.

In September that year, he met a woman who alleged her ex-partner had posted intimate images of her online, including advertisements that made her look like a sex worker.

The woman had compiled screenshots but could not play a video due to a lack of internet connection.

Herring did not provide an email address when the woman asked if she could send the video to police, did not perform a risk assessment and failed to mention the intimate images when he later typed up her complaint.

He would later say the images were difficult to make out.

The next month, Herring visited a woman who complained her ex-partner had breached an apprehended domestic violence order with a flurry of 35 phone calls and 11 intimidating voice messages.

“Until it reaches a criminal element, there’s nothing the police can do,” Herring told her. He took no notes and failed to record the incident in the police database for two weeks.

But after another officer investigated the woman’s complaint, her ex-partner was charged with breaching a domestic violence order and stalking/intimidation.

Toward the end of 2022, Herring hosted a “Yellow Team Christmas Party” at an apartment, which he described as “a fairly loose affair”.

The Industrial Relations Commission heard another police officer had arranged and paid for a topless waitress to attend.

Herring said he only realised she was a topless waitress when she took her top off in front of the 20 to 30 guests.

“I don’t understand why it is my sole responsibility to be the one to remove her,” Herring said in a later interview.

“There were people who left the unit due to the scenario but as I said earlier there were more than a dozen who remained behind who clearly had no issues with her presence.”

The police commissioner’s lawyers argued that allowing the waitress to remain at the party amounted to sexual harassment.

They alleged Herring had given “dishonest, or at the least disingenuous” accounts of the party and his responses to the domestic violence cases.

Herring argued he was a committed officer and a person of integrity who had not maliciously or intentionally failed to investigate the domestic violence complaints. But as a male officer without specialist training, he said he was “not particularly well suited to DV investigations”.

Industrial Relations Commission Deputy President Jane Paingakulam found Herring had failed to show his dismissal was “unreasonable or unjust”.

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