A former Northamptonshire police constable has been found guilty of gross misconduct over a stream of crude, discriminatory messages posted in a private WhatsApp chat that Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet said reflected a ‘toxic masculinity’ culture of one-upmanship, shock value, and contempt for others.
The accelerated misconduct hearing was told the officer was an administrator of a WhatsApp group titled ‘P90 Test Successful’, created on 15th June 2020 and ostensibly used to discuss the video game Call of Duty. Over a period running from 15th June 2020 to 26th December 2020, the group had six participants, including other serving officers. The misconduct panel concluded the messages showed a consistent pattern of disrespect towards women, minority groups, and disabled people, with participants attempting to outdo each other by posting the most offensive comments they could.
Although the officer did not attend the hearing, he was represented by a police friend and provided a detailed written response to the investigation. He accepted that he had sent the messages attributed to him and made admissions that his conduct breached professional standards, but he did not accept that it amounted to gross misconduct. He had resigned on 5th December 2025, but the panel was asked to decide whether he would have been dismissed had he remained in post.
The hearing was told that members referred to the chat as a ‘safe space’, suggesting it was somewhere they could speak without being challenged. Balhatchet rejected the officer’s claim that he had tried to divert or neutralise the tone of the group, finding there was evidence he instigated a number of the comments and helped set the culture. One message cited in the decision recorded a member saying it was ‘a chat where you don’t have to rethink before you click send’, which was treated as reinforcing the idea that offensive remarks would be tolerated.
The Chief Constable described the messages as frequently crude and vulgar, including sexually derogatory comments about women, racist language directed at minority groups, and insulting terms about disability aimed at the wider public. The hearing also noted that a highly graphic video showing a person being murdered and almost decapitated was shared within the group. While the officer did not comment on the video, the decision-maker found he took no action to challenge its circulation or report it, despite the obvious inappropriateness of such material being shared among serving officers.
In mitigation, the officer argued he did not intend the comments to mean what others inferred, and claimed he did not realise certain phrases were discriminatory or derogatory. One example highlighted in the decision was his claim that he did not know that the term ‘raghead’ was a racial slur. Balhatchet said that was difficult to accept given the officer’s experience and described the explanation as lacking credibility. Any inconsistencies in his account, the decision noted, could not be tested because he chose not to attend, and the panel concluded the position was ‘exactly as it appears’.
The hearing nevertheless acknowledged an impressive history of service, including character testimony describing him as liked, trusted, and effective in his role. The decision also noted accounts from female colleagues who spoke of support he had given them in their private lives and the respect he had shown them at work.
The panel concluded that, had the officer not resigned, the only proper outcome would have been dismissal without notice.
OP-ED
The establishment’s favourite buzzword, ‘toxic masculinity’, gets thrown around a lot in this report. The term is, in itself, derogatory, offensive, and sexist, because it implies that the sort of behaviour this unnamed officer engaged in is a shared trait by men in general. It is not. It is, however, typical of the sort of men who join the police force, who seem, by their nature, to have a penchant for cruel and crude humour. Perhaps there is some assimilation here, given the sometimes violent and dangerous nature of police work. You must also take into account that there are no special concessions or protections afforded to male officers within the force, unlike their female counterparts, who are routinely treated as ‘vulnerable’ for the purposes of misconduct hearings against male officers. Simply put, male officers are expected to be held to a higher standard than their female counterparts.
Balhatchet might want to take stock of what a police force would be like if it were thoroughly feminised in the manner that he and his privileged kind fantasise about. I can imagine ‘toxic masculinity’ may sometimes come in handy when you are facing off a terrorist with a knife or a gun who is going on a killing spree in the middle of a city centre. Who knows?
The unnamed officer in this case was sharing snuff videos of people having their heads almost decapitated. That, in itself, is a troubling form of sickness – a depravity I cannot understand. Anyone who enjoys disseminating snuff should never, ever be in a public-facing role. But Balhatchet mostly disregards it in favour of labelling the officer as a sexist, ableist, and racist instead. This is because in his world of skewed logic, victims of hurt words rank higher than victims of truly violent harm.
In my opinion, Chief Constable Balhatchet’s casual use of the term ‘toxic masculinity’ places him firmly in the category of sexist and hypocrite. He also has the most unfortunate and ironic name in the police service, given his obsession with emasculating male officers.
