IN ANOTHER life, when I’m not pootling around York minding my own business, I spend a lot of time with police officers in London.

Not, you understand, on the wrong side of the law, but observing them working on the front line as part of my day job.

These are rank-and-file officers I’m working with, mostly constables and their skippers, with the odd inspector thrown in. And many of them have been asking me about Grahame Maxwell, North Yorkshire’s embattled chief constable who, at the time of writing, was still in charge despite being found guilty of gross misconduct for nepotism by an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation.

“So how come he’s still got his job, then?” they ask. For without exception, they fail to understand why the figurehead of a police force, who presumably got there because of his skills and unimpeachable credentials underpinned by the fundamental requirement, one would assume, of being honest and above board, is still in post. What makes it worse in their minds is that they have no doubt whatsoever that if one of them had done a similar thing and been found guilty of gross misconduct they would have been sacked.

There are those who think Maxwell has been given his come-uppance and that having to answer to the IPCC and North Yorkshire’s police authority coupled with having his name splashed all over the media, is punishment enough for the actions unbefitting to his position that potentially gave a leg-up to a member of his extended family in his force’s recruitment process.

But such a view perhaps fails to take into account the feelings of police officers who, at the behest of leaders such as him, spend day after day, night after night catching the lowlife of this world with the aim of making it a better place for the rest of us.

In doing so they don’t necessarily agree with the crime performance targets they’ve been set by their higher ranking officers (“they should get off their backsides and onto the streets to see what it’s really like”); they get pretty hacked off with the paperwork they have to undertake especially when it keeps them off the front line; they can get mind-numbingly bored when they have to spend hours on end policing football matches or pop concerts, and they can get seriously frustrated with civilian police staff when they perceive they haven’t got their act together because their rosters are changed at the drop of a hat or their rest days cancelled at the last minute.

But such issues aside, your average police officer doesn’t just do the job because of job security (not so much now though, unless you’re a recalcitrant chief constable, perhaps) and not-too-bad pay and conditions, but because he or she has a fundamental belief in what they do.

It is their duty to uphold the law and challenge dishonesty in its many criminal guises, very often in difficult and trying circumstances. On occasions they put themselves in danger and are targets of violence and recrimination.

And they take the stick from an ever-challenging public for the few of their number whose actions have been found wanting, either because they’re “bent”, have overstepped the mark in dealing with individuals, or failed to reach it in dealing with others. Which is why they – or at least those numerous officers who’ve spoken to me – find it totally galling that a chief constable who got found out for disgracefully bending the rules when he, more than any other officer in his force, should lead by example, has kept his job and is enjoying his not inconsiderable salary and no doubt looking forward to pension rights that as taxpayers they – and you and I – are paying for.

Maxwell might have successfully directed North Yorkshire’s officers in a way that has seen a reduction in crime, and the county might, as a consequence, be one of the safest places to live in the country.

But he has betrayed the trust of those officers who pound the beat for him, as well as the residents of York and North Yorkshire who have every right to expect their top police officer to be irreproachable in his actions.

In short, he hasn’t lived up to the force’s aim of ensuring that it “operates in an ethical manner” and is “providing a police service in which the public has trust, confidence and satisfaction”.

His public apology after he was found out wasn’t enough. So at the very least, out of respect for those rank and file officers who are working the streets day in, day out in his name, he should fall on his baton and go.