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All week, the tributes have actually poured in. Those whose lives were touched by PC Lorne Castle haven’t thought twice to come forward. One lady’s account of how her kid’s life was conserved by his ‘generosity and humankind’ and determination to ‘exceed what is expected of a policeman’ is particularly moving.

She composed about how the troubled teenager lost his method life and became known to police, who were permanently needing to bring him home. It was PC Castle, himself a dad of 3, who ended up talking her boy down from the ledge, in a metaphorical sense as well as a literal one.

Not only did he make the teenager see that he had a future, he assisted him carve one out by setting up work experience, although this was not his task. ‘We need more officers like PC Castle, not less,’ this grateful mom concluded.

‘That one made me well up,’ says Lorne, 46, who is sitting in his living room in a quiet property street in Bournemouth, sorting through the countless messages he has gotten today - some from complete strangers, however others from those he straight assisted.

He appears rather overwhelmed and a little teary (really uncharacteristic, ‘or it was before all this’, according to his partner Denise), by all the good things individuals have actually been stating about him.

‘It’s blown me away, to be truthful,’ he says. ‘To have individuals come back to defend me. I’m not used to this, however it’s actually touching.’ He continues reading, on the brink of tears: ‘If I ’d passed away, you couldn’t have got better tributes.’

And in a method he has passed away, since, as he mentions: ‘I’m not dead but the law enforcement officer I was is dead. PC 1399 is dead.’

Who eliminated PC Castle? Well, according to his bosses at Dorset Police, the deadly wound was completely self-inflicted. Recently, he was fired - ‘in a manner that was brutal. Alan Sugar fires people in a nicer method,’ he says - after being discovered guilty of gross misconduct.

‘I’m not dead but the policeman I was is dead. PC 1399 is dead,’ says Castle

His crime? One that was deemed so major that it erased 10 years of unblemished service consisting of citations for bravery.

He jailed a teenage suspect - later on found to have actually remained in ownership of a knife - without displaying sufficient ‘courtesy or regard’. While grappling on the ground with the 15-year-old, who was resisting arrest in January in 2015, PC Castle screamed, swore and pointed his finger at the suspect, who was proclaiming his innocence.

In the cold light of day, safe in his own home, having simply waved his youngest child off to bed, Lorne, freshly jobless, still can’t quite think that finger-pointing helped lose him his whole career.

He raises the offending finger today and waggles it in front of his own nose. ‘I require to holster this,’ he says, despairingly. Nor can he accept a few of the questions he had to answer throughout a ‘destructive and humiliating’ three-day gross misbehavior hearing.

‘For a policeman, the idea of gross misconduct is simply the worst, however among the things I was asked was if I had not heard the suspect state that he hadn’t done anything. Did I not take a look at him and believe he might be informing the fact?’ He tosses both hands up.

‘Were they seriously asking me why I didn’t succumb to the old, ‘it wasn’t me, guv’ line. Most suspects resisting arrest state they have not done anything. I suggest a kid knows that.

‘Let’s put this into context. We were examining an attack. I have actually apprehended him. He has withstood. I’m struggling on the ground with him. There is a crowd gathering. I’m attempting to contain this circumstance however my top priority is to make this arrest and keep everybody safe.

‘So when he states he hasn’t done anything, I’m seriously expected to stop and state, ‘Oh, you didn’t do it? Dreadfully sorry, young Sir. Let me help you up! Tally ho! My error!’ This is a suspect who did have a knife.’

Denise, who states she ‘was so proud to be the better half of a law enforcement officer’, participated in every day of her husband’s disciplinary hearing and has existed to get the pieces as his life broke down

The shock and bewilderment in his living room is palpable. As is the sheer shock. ‘I mean, the audacity of even asking me that. But I knew even before the gross misbehavior hearing began that I was strolling to the gallows. And they hung me out to dry.’

He includes: ‘Even if I win my appeal, even if I got my job back, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

‘How could I walk down the street with members of the public thinking I’m a bully and a criminal - all the important things I entered into the authorities force to challenge.

‘My profession is gone. I’m never ever going to get another job, since who would offer me one. My life is destroyed. They have actually broken me.’

Denise, who tells me she ‘was so happy to be the better half of a policeman’, participated in every day of her spouse’s disciplinary hearing and has existed to get the pieces as his life broke down.

The couple, who have daughters aged 27, 18 and 8, tell me that on the day Lorne was told he was facing gross misconduct charges, he didn’t go home - ‘since how could I tell my spouse?’ - but walked along Bournemouth beach until 3am. He was too surprised to believe of walking into the sea and says he hasn’t seriously contemplated suicide ‘however can comprehend people who do, in this sort of circumstance, due to the fact that the nature of this task isolates you from people who aren’t cops, so when the rug is pulled from under you … you feel so alone’.

Denise states she has actually seen him ‘shrink, end up being someone who simply isn’t Lorne’.

‘My partner is an outbound, bubbly, glass-half-full person, who is a natural leader and motivator,’ she explains. ‘He’s the most moralistic individual I understand - our children will back me up on that. And he’s the sort of male who never employed sick even when he was ill.

‘Since all this, I’ve just seen him alter. He breaks down now. He questions himself. It has actually been ravaging to enjoy. Even the children state, ‘he isn’t Dad’.’

Their hero father, publicly lauded after plunging into the freezing River Avon to save an elderly woman, is now making headings for all the wrong factors.

When the first murmurings started, suggesting this once-admired officer had actually been unjustly treated by ‘woke’ managers who were far gotten rid of from the truth of policing at street level, Dorset Police moved quickly to defend their position, releasing damning video footage, drawn from a colleague’s body cam, which does certainly show PC Castle in a not-too-flattering light.

He’s taped informing the suspect to ‘stop shrieking like a little b ** ch’ and alerting him: ‘I’m gon na smash you’.

This video footage, Lorne claims, existed out of context, cherry-picked to ‘not inform the complete story’.

‘It was devastating that Dorset Police could do this to me, that they could wish to … ruin me,’ he says. ‘What that selective video footage didn’t reveal was the consequences - when this suspect continued to withstand arrest.

‘It took 4 officers to get him in handcuffs. That footage does not reveal the crowd around us, whom I could see in my peripheral vision.

‘There was only one 999 call made about what was occurring there and it originated from a member of the general public who was concerned about me. They called to state that there was an officer having a hard time, who appeared he required back up.’

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Lorne includes: ‘Dorset Police didn’t even think it was necessary to call that person as a witness in my disciplinary hearing. I needed to insist on it. It paints a really different image to what happened and I thank goodness that witness existed, due to the fact that otherwise I ’d believe I was going mad.’

This is an exceptionally troubling - and divisive - case. There is no concern that Lorne made judgment mistakes in his handling of that arrest on January 27, 2024.

He confessed as much throughout the misbehavior hearing and repeats that belief today. ‘I need to not have actually utilized the language I did. I’m ashamed and saddened that I did that, which it’s out there for everybody to see. But the essence of what took place was, unfortunately needed. That was an arrest that needed to be made and I made a judgment call.

‘Could I have done it in a different way? Naturally, but eventually I took a knife off the streets. Another authorities force has this motto, ‘Take a knife