A top cop has admitted there "may well be" more officers within the force who have been contacting sex workers after a recent spate of misconduct hearings saw them either resign or get sacked.

Detective Superintendent Nicole Main, who heads Leicestershire Police's professional standards team, made the admission following the report by the LDRS about five officers found to have contacted sex workers within the past six months, of which three have resigned, with two being sacked.

Four of these officers have been anonymised following recent decisions by the misconduct hearing chairs.

Under police rules, contacting sex workers is seen as "incompatible" with being a police officer or police staff member due to its "close links" to "organised criminality".

Speaking to the LDRS about the recent hearings, Det Supt Main said that many of the investigations into the officers stemmed from external inquiries unrelated to the force.

She added: "We've discovered the behaviour that's going on. Our counter-corruption unit does a lot of hard and good work.

"There may be an issue from some officers who have contacted sex workers.

"We have conducted investigations and identified others who have displayed similar behaviour and then progressed them to a misconduct hearing.

"That represents 0.2 per cent of our workforce".

Det Supt Main added that many of the sex worker revelations started from external investigations outside of the force but could not go into specifics due to their covert nature.

She added: "It's piqued my officers' interest, and they've tried to understand how we can identify the officers involved, and then we've progressed that further into investigations into others".

After being asked if there were potentially more officers in the force who may have committed similar wrongdoing, Det Supt Main continued: "There may well be.

"I would like to think we would reduce that, but we would not stop our work.

"Policing is reflective of society. Sadly, we have these people without our ranks, and we have worked really hard not to work with these people.

"We don't want to work with those kinds of officers in this organisation. So it's important we root out that behaviour, which removes them.

"These are vulnerable women within our communities that we are there to protect.

"We want the public to be confident to trust what we do".

Det Supt Main also revealed there were currently 42 officers under gross misconduct investigation at Leicestershire Police, which include a breadth of issues from sexual misconduct to potentially criminal investigations

She added none of those investigations is relating to sex workers within the last year.

The top cop also revealed that the number of hearings within the last few months were "disproportionate".

She added: "These are historic cases from two years ago, based on the information that we found out".

Regarding officers being granted anonymity, Det Supt Main said it was important to be "open and transparent" while also looking after officers dealing with personal and mental health issues.

She continued: "We have to look after those officers regardless of what they've done. Officers' welfare under the Chief Constable is paramount.

"We have seen many officers under investigation who have harmed themselves and taken their own lives".

"That is something I 100 per cent don't want and something the Chief Constable 100 per cent doesn't want".

Andy Spence, chairman of Leicestershire Police Federation, also echoed similar concerns around the naming of officers, saying that 14 officers nationally had committed suicide in 2026 and also said he believed naming officers was in a "good middle ground".

He added: "There's an argument both ways. One, it sends a clear message to everybody that conduct like this is not acceptable in any way.

"When police officers join this career, it's not like anything else. They go from a policing family to being told they have to effectively walk away from that family.

"For a lot, it becomes very, very difficult. We've still got to look after them because otherwise it's 'police officer under investigation takes his own life'".

Det Supt Main acknowledged that many officers who face gross misconduct are a "very, very small percentage" of the force.

She added: "We're not here to penalise for making mistakes.

"What we are here to penalise or here to root out is to get rid of the officers that you don't want as your colleague, that we don't want serving our communities of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

"Those are the ones we're here to remove from the organisation".