Overview

• Judge Richard McConaghy at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court sentenced Owen Mills to two years' imprisonment for corrupt and improper exercise of police powers, with 40% to be served in custody and the remainder on licence.
• Court testimony detailed Mills’s sexual contact with a mentally vulnerable woman detained under the Mental Health Act in the back of a police car and later in a hospital waiting area.
• Prosecutors revealed Mills also exchanged sexually explicit messages and images with a separate witness from a police matter and sent inappropriate content to a shop worker he’d interviewed.
• Mills was arrested in January 2023 after a Staffordshire Police Anti-Corruption Unit inquiry, suspended immediately and resigned from the force in June 2023.
• Acting Deputy Chief Constable Caroline Marsh said the force has delivered mandatory professional-boundaries training and launched an anonymous reporting hotline to prevent similar breaches of trust.