A DISGRACED Gwent Police officer, who resigned before a disciplinary panel found he would have been fired for gross misconduct had he not quit, has abandoned his Employment Tribunal claim against the force.

Clarke Joslyn, a once-highly respected police constable with 26 years service, was “physically abusive, domineering and controlling” towards two ex-girlfriends, an internal affairs hearing found.

As well as a long list of “appalling” violence and control, the misconduct panel found he used derogatory language to describe disabled people.

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In his defence, Mr Joslyn said that his sense of humour was similar to that of popular comedians Ricky Gervais and Frankie Boyle.

Following his resignation from the force, he launched an unlawful treatment claim against Gwent Police.

In the initial Employment Tribunal proceedings, according to its “jurisdiction code” the accusation against his former employer cited an allegation of either “disability discrimination, unfair dismissal or unlawful deduction from wages”.

But this application was dismissed towards the end of 2019 following a withdrawal by the former officer.

In its conclusions earlier that year, the misconduct panel found that it was “satisfied on the basis of all the evidence before it that Mr Joslyn engaged in a continuously abusive course of conduct towards women”.

At the disciplinary hearing in Cwmbran, the panel heard from two of his former girlfriends, Witness D and Witness E.

He denied the charges against him.

Witness D told how Mr Joslyn had threatened to “end her” if she ever humiliated him and would grab her from behind and tell her he could choke her.

It was also accepted that he had grabbed Witness E by the face and, in a separate incident, had pinned her against the wall while holding a knife.

But a charge that Mr Joslyn had seriously sexually assaulted Witness E after a party was found not proved.

In his defence, Mr Joslyn wrote that his comments were “tame in comparison” to jokes made by comics such as Gervais or Boyle and provided the panel with a script by the latter.

But it was found that his comments had been “insulting and disreputable”, and all but one of the charges relating to those derogatory remarks were proved.

Mr Joslyn resigned from Gwent Police when proceedings against him began in November 2018. The panel found he would have been dismissed from the force had he not resigned.

Regarding the Employment Tribunal, a Gwent Police spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Clarke Joslyn issued a claim to the Employment Tribunal. However, he withdrew his claim in October 2019 at an early stage in the process.”