A police officer has been sacked after searching through 92 photographs of sex workers on his force’s record system – then messaging a pimp days later to set up a meeting with a sex worker.
Police officers are barred from engaging the services of sex workers because they are classed as a “vulnerable group”.
PC Dan Anghelina was found guilty of gross misconduct after he browsed police photos of sex workers for 50 minutes during a night shift.
Days after these unauthorised searches, the constable reached out to a “sex work facilitator” – commonly called pimps – to enquire about setting up an encounter with a sex worker.
PC Anghelina claimed that he was looking at the images because he was looking for “Eastern European organised crime connections”.
PC Anghelina was also found guilty of a separate instance of misconduct, using the police record system whilst on sick leave.
During this time, he accessed “sensitive” information about around 40 of his neighbours, his local pubs, his partner, and himself.
At a Hampshire Constabulary misconduct hearing, PC Anghelina was dismissed without notice and placed on the barred list for a minimum of five years. He was found guilty of gross misconduct for breaching the Standards of Professional Behaviour.
At the hearing, PC Anghelina admitted that he made the searches, but he argued that they were for a “policing purpose” rather than for personal reasons.
He worked as a response officer, dealing with local policing, and did not need to investigate crimes.
He had previously worked in the Metropolitan Police for around five years before transferring over to Hampshire Constabulary.
Stephen Morley, representing Hampshire Constabulary, told the hearing that PC Anghelina had been working on a night shift when he looked at the records of sex workers.
Mr Morley said: “On April 11 [2024] the officer was working a night shift. He was using policing records, RMS (Police Records Management Software), from 12.10 to just before 1 in the morning.
“He was looking at the records of sex workers, and out of 71 records, he looked at 92 photographs.
“In his written response, the officer gives a response for looking at that material. He says it was for policing purposes because he was looking for Eastern European organised crime connections.
“We say that cannot be the case. First of all, this is only three days before he is making contact with sex work facilitators for personal reasons.
“He also wasn’t spending a lot of time looking at the records and looking at organised crime connections. He is spending a lot of time looking at photos.”
Mr Morley said that PC Anghelina clicked past the personal details of the sex workers, and he was looking at their photos, spending only around six seconds in some cases on the information before clicking on to their photographs.
He said: “What the officer is really doing, it would appear, given what you know happens three days later, you might think he is thinking about engaging the services of a sex worker.
“So then we move to the messages that were sent to a sex work facilitator.
“The officer is exchanging messages for about 40 minutes, and the officer admits that he does enquire about the services of a sex worker.
“He said he changed his mind, realised it was a bad idea and didn’t go through with it, but for 40 minutes that was what he was doing.”
Mr Morley said that the standards for police officers prohibit them from engaging with sex workers because they are a “vulnerable group” and it cannot be identified if they are voluntarily working in this capacity or they are a part of an organised crime group.
He said that if the sex workers were to find out that he was a police officer, then this could make him ‘vulnerable to blackmail’.
Mr Morley also said that PC Anghelina had spent a lot of time looking at information on the police system about his neighbours, his partner, his local pubs and himself when he was off duty or on sick leave.
He said that it was a “real red flag” that PC Anghelina had looked up people he knew on the RMS because he could look at “highly sensitive” information that he should not have access to.
PC Anghelina said he had done these searches to “familiarise” himself with the RMS system, but Mr Morley said that the evidence of what he looked at did not support that.
He said: “By the time he is looking at himself and his partner, we are five months into him being [at Hampshire Constabulary] and in September 2023 he is looking at himself and his partner.”
Mr Morley said that he was using the police record system for “personal reasons” repeatedly between April 2023 and January 2025 and he also sent information to his own personal email address.
Mr Morley said that on one occasion, PC Anghelina looked at between 30 and 40 of his neighbours when he was on sick leave and said he couldn’t get out of bed.
He said: “PC Anghelina says ‘Oh yes, I did all of this because I could smell cannabis down the road and I was trying to gain intelligence about this’.
“Intelligence is the word he used.”
Mr Morley said he should have reported this to his superiors and not tried to gather the information himself by clicking on “highly sensitive information”.
Mr Morley said that on one occasion PC Anghelina had looked up an incident involving himself as a victim and had information about who his attacker was, with their address and phone number.
He said that this could be information he could use and it should not be something he should look at.
Mr Morley said: “In short summary, this isn’t a student officer, a 20-year-old who has just joined the force, who thinks that RMS is similar to Google.
“You have someone who served at the Met police as a qualified police officer.
“He struggled a bit with the IT at the start, but what it looks like is the officer checking out what this organisation knows about himself, his partner and his neighbours.
“And that is a major breach of the standards.”
