A police officer was caught on video stealing money from a vulnerable widow, Manchester Evening News reported.
David Bunting a police officer stole a bag of £70 in coins from a man when he was called to help him.
Bunting was a Greater Manchester Police constable with more than 20 years’ experience, attended the man’s home with paramedics because he was in “a dire medical situation,” a court was told.
The unnamed man had his family raise urgent concerns over his welfare and dial emergency services. What they got, however, was a greedy corrupt cop who wanted to steal from them taking advantage of their injured family member.
The 44-year-old man lives alone in Fitton Hill, Oldham, UK. He had “taken an overdose’ of tablets and had a knife,” according to a court summary.
The man was “bleeding profusely” according to the report. This is when the man’s family called the police for help and Bunting took advantage of the situation stealing from him.
The footage, recorded on a CCTV system the victim had set up to watch over his living room, shows Bunting wearing blue gloves standing beside the victim as he’s assessed by two paramedics.
The corrupt cop waits until the paramedics help the man up from a chair and walk him outside to an ambulance. Then what’s seen next is shocking, Bunting wearing his uniform is shown calmly reaching down to a coffee table and steals the man’s bag, which contained £70 in coins.
The officer then puts the bag in a pocket of his pants then walks out the room.
The victim only realized the money was missing when he was discharged from the hospital the following day. Then he checked his CCTV and to his surprise, he saw that the corrupt police officer had stolen money from him when he was in dire need of medical assistance.
The man suffers from mental health problems and showed the footage to a neighbor to double-check what he was seeing before he alerted police, Preston Crown Court was told.
Bunting, 49, of Shawclough Road, Rochdale, was subsequently arrested in February following the incident.
The officer appeared at Preston Magistrates Court in March and pleaded guilty to one count of theft.
Just last month Bunting was sentenced to three months in prison, however, he appealed against the sentence.
Preston Crown Court, Judge Beverley Lunt, sitting with two magistrates, dismissed the appeal and Bunting is now serving the three-month sentence.
“This offense, being such a gross breach of trust, it could undermine the trust that all members of the public put in the police,” she said.
The judge said the victim was ‘shocked to see a police officer in full uniform stealing the money as he left’.
He had to get a neighbor to check what he was seeing,” Judge Lunt said.
The whole purpose of him [Bunting] being there was to help. That makes this theft from a vulnerable man all the more serious.
Judge Lunt ruled the three-month sentence ‘was not wrong in principle and not manifestly excessive’. “We are entirely satisfied appropriate punishment can only be achieved with an immediate prison sentence,” she told Bunting.
