A policeman stood before a judge and denied having an improper relationship with a woman whose case he was investigating.

A court heard that Police Constable Ian Dring had been suspended from Thames Valley Police after being charged with one count of abusing police powers and privileges.

The 49-year-old officer from Abingdon had previously served with the force at Loddon Valley Police Station and was the officer in charge of a case involving a woman complainant.

It was alleged that Dring formed an improper relationship with the woman during the investigation into her case.

Ian Dring outside court (Image: Hyde News & Pictures Ltd)He denies the charge.

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Paul White, clerk at Aylesbury Crown Court, put the indictment to Dring as he stood in the dock yesterday (November 5).

He said: "Between September 18, 2022 and October 22 last year, while in office as a constable of a police force in England and Wales, namely Thames Valley Police, you exercised the powers and privileges of a constable improperly in that you engaged in a relationship with a complainant in a case for which you were officer in the case and failed to notify your employer of the existence of the relationship and you knew or ought to have known, that the exercise was improper."

Aylesbury Crown Court Aylesbury Crown Court Judge Jonathan Cooper, speaking at Aylesbury Crown Court, said that the case was one that needed to take place outside the Thames Valley Police area.

Prosecutor Edmund Blackman said: "The Crown says that Dring should not have been engaging in a relationship with her at all."

The court heard from Dring's defence counsel Peter Gotch that he is suspended with pay from the Thames Valley force.

A trial date was not set and the next hearing will be on March 28 next year.

Dring was granted conditional bail.

Judge Cooper told him: "It is probably in your interest and the public interest that the trial is not delayed."

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