A married Kent police 999 operator, who flirted with a female jogger in Folkestone, ended up being arrested after she rang the police!

Darren Hallpike tried to chat up the stranger and asked her out for a drink, not realising she too worked for Kent police.

The 46-year-old, from Cutter Close, Rochester, was later convicted by magistrates of an offence under Section Five of the Public Order Act of causing alarm and distress to Kent Police civilian analyst Samantha Mendelson.

Ms Mendelson had alleged that she had been sitting on a park bench in The Leas when a man walked by.

As she made her way home along Bouverie Road West and Turketel Road, she claimed the same man had followed her in a VW Polo – telling her: “Get in.”

She said she refused his offer but gave her name to the stranger who, she alleged, then followed her in his vehicle pleading with her to go for a drink and telling her she had a nice body.

Ms Mendelson said she told the man she was married and claimed he replied: “That’s OK, so am I.”

Mr Hallpike denied her accusations and claimed he thought she was the wife of a friend but agreed he twice asked her to go for a drink because he thought she was “fairly attractive”,.

“I just leant out of my car window and said: ‘You sure you don’t want to go for a drink?’. She said no and I drove away.

“I should have just left earlier That would have been the sensible thing to do but out of embarrassment I asked her out for a drink, even though I was married.“ he added.

Keith Yardy, for the respondents, asked: “What would you have felt if another man had approached your wife and spoke to her in the way in which you told us you did?”

Mr Hallpike replied: “I know my wife would have told them to go away and not given her name!”

But now a judge, sitting with two magistrates, has overturned the verdict, even though he accused Mr Hallpike of being “sleazy”.

His barrister Simon Taylor told Canterbury Crown Court: “There is no law in this country which outlaws trying to engage a female in a conversation. There is no Sleaze Act 1986!

“There is no law in this country which outlaws trying to engage a female in a conversation. There is no Sleaze Act 1986!" - Simon Taylor

“This may not have been the most appropriate thing to have done and he may have been somewhat cack-handed in his attempt in speaking to a woman in the street, but it falls far short of being a criminal offence.”

Recorder Laurie West-Knights QC said: “However distasteful, we have to be certain he intended it to be or was aware his behaviour was offensive.”

He told Mr Hallpike he and the magistrates had “by the skin of your teeth” decided to overturn the conviction and allow the appeal “because we are not sure you realised the effects of what you did.”

But he added: “We do not reject the subjective evidence of Ms Mendelson, although she may have gilded the lily a little, but in her own mind she was upset at the time.

“And we do not accept your account in full by any means because you stopped and flirted with this woman, which was sleazy.”