A female officer is set to win £100,000 in compensation after an employment tribunal upheld her complaint of sex discrimination against Sussex Police.
Reported by The Daily Telegraph, Pc Barbara Lynford, serving as the only woman in a team of 19 at Gatwick airport, told the tribunal that she repeatedly suffered taunts by her male colleagues who called her a “daisy”, a “whoopsy” and a “lipstick”.
The officers littered their station with pictures of topless women and drew attention to her breasts, according to the newspaper.
The tribunal further heard that her colleagues watched an X-rated television channel while on duty, faked patrol reports, slept on the job and ran a forfeit system where they had to buy each other doughnuts as a penalty for leaving guns lying around. They would also look out for attractive female travellers and air stewardesses and report them on their radios using derogatory codenames, the tribunal heard.
Lynford, who has been signed off work suffering stress since August 2005, said: “I am pleased the tribunal has vindicated me. I hope now Sussex Police will learn from this case and take such complaints seriously in the future so that other female officers are not subjected to this kind of treatment.
“In all my life I have never been treated as badly as I have been at Gatwick. Nothing prepared me for the people at Gatwick. I felt sick every time I went to work and cried every time I got home.”
Her compensation will be fixed by the tribunal at a later date.
