An instructor responsible for training new police officers made three female recruits place their heads on a table while he used bolt cutters to remove their earrings, a disciplinary hearing was told.
PC Martin Briggs’s “astonishing” treatment of the women before a fitness test left one of them with bleeding ears.
The instructor was overseeing a bleep test at Dorset police headquarters — a drill which involves performing timed shuttle runs — and insisted that the 63 trainees remove all jewellery.
Three officers — PC Georgia Hedditch, PC Elizabeth Christie and PC Holly Law — told him that they were unable to remove their stud earrings.
When Hedditch jokingly suggested “you’ll have to cut them out”, Briggs left the sports hall and returned with a