Andrew Price

Introduction

Andrew Price was an inspector with Lincolnshire Police, based in Louth, until a misconduct hearing dismissed him without notice for gross misconduct in August 2026. The hearing found Price “failed to maintain a professional boundary” with a vulnerable person — a relationship whose extent, which included paying off a £40 drug debt for them, he failed to report — and separately that he kept a can of PAVA synthetic pepper spray at his home rather than returning it to the police station. Chief Constable Paul Gibson said Price “saw himself as a saviour” and described his actions as “deliberate and intentional.” Both findings amounted to gross misconduct, ending a career colleagues described as high-performing.

Background Information

Price served with Lincolnshire Police and reached the rank of inspector, based in Louth. The case against him concerned conduct toward a vulnerable person in the community he policed — the kind of relationship that safeguarding rules require officers to report and manage, not privately deepen. According to the force, Price breached the integrity standard by failing to report the extent of his relationship with the vulnerable person, which included paying off a £40 drug debt on their behalf. The second matter was property: Price kept PAVA spray — a synthetic capsaicin-style incapacitant issued as less-lethal force equipment — at his home instead of returning it to the police station. The matters reached a misconduct hearing at the force’s headquarters in Nettleham chaired under the chief constable’s authority.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The claims in this section are findings of a Lincolnshire Police misconduct panel, which reported substantiating them. They were never criminally charged and never adjudicated in court. A misconduct panel’s gross-misconduct finding is a civil employment-law determination, and no criminal proceedings against Price are reported.

The hearing found that Price failed to maintain a professional boundary with a vulnerable person, and that by failing to report the extent of the relationship — including paying off the person’s £40 drug debt — he breached integrity. It also found gross misconduct in his keeping of the PAVA spray at home rather than returning it to the station. Mitigating material put to the hearing included that Price was “burnt out” and experiencing stress when he took the spray home; he also told the panel he had subsequently been diagnosed with ADHD and “scored highly on the autistic spectrum.” The panel found gross misconduct proven on both counts and dismissed him without notice. Chief Constable Paul Gibson said Price “saw himself as a saviour” in the boundary case, describing his conduct as “deliberate and intentional” — language that attributed choice, not confusion, to the failings.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The dismissal was reported by the BBC and regional press on 6 August 2026. Gibson’s public statement paired criticism with acknowledgement: Price was described as a “high-performing officer and well thought of by colleagues” — a formulation that made the case harder-edged rather than softer, because the misconduct was found deliberate despite the service record. The hearing’s acceptance of mitigation evidence — burnout, stress, late diagnoses — did not change the outcome, which was the most severe available: dismissal without notice and, by operation of the gross-misconduct finding, placement on the College of Policing’s barred list, which prevents work in policing and other law-enforcement bodies.

Current Status

Price has been dismissed without notice from Lincolnshire Police and, following the gross-misconduct finding, is barred from policing. No criminal charge arising from the relationship or the spray is reported. The vulnerable person’s identity and the full detail of the relationship remain protected in the public reporting. The ADHD and autism-spectrum diagnoses he cited were noted as mitigation but did not alter the panel’s conclusion that the conduct was deliberate and intentional.

Impact on Their Career/Life

An inspector’s career — the rank officers reach after a decade or more — ended over a £40 debt and a can of spray, which is precisely the arithmetic the misconduct system intends: a vulnerable person’s trust cannot be privately bought, and force equipment does not leave custody by oversight. The chief constable’s “saviour” framing named the dynamic that safeguarding rules exist to interrupt, where an officer converts professional access into personal dependency. For Lincolnshire Police, the case lands in an era of tightened boundary enforcement across UK forces, where failing to declare contact with vulnerable people — even without any sexual or financial exploitation found — is treated as integrity failure in itself. The mitigation evidence ensures the record shows a complicated officer, not a cartoonish one; the dismissal ensures the record ends the same way either way.

Sources

• BBC News, “Lincolnshire police inspector sacked for gross misconduct,” 6 August 2026 — source