A German police officer has been fined €2,250 (£1,900) and sacked for stealing 180kg of cheddar cheese from an overturned truck after an accident.

The officer, who worked for highway patrol, helped himself to about £500 worth of cheese and loaded it into a police minibus after he was sent to the scene.

His curd caper was later discovered by police chiefs, who sacked the officer, while he was also ordered to pay the fine by a criminal court in Frankenthal.

The officer appealed his dismissal, but it was upheld by the Rhineland-Palatinate higher administrative court, which noted that he took the cheese back to his office and shared it with friends.

“He drove a police minibus close to the damaged truck, opened the sliding side door of the police bus and asked the employee of a salvage company working there to hand him several undamaged packages of cheese from the refrigerated container,” the court said in a statement.

In his appeal, the officer had argued that the cheese had become worthless as after the accident it was no longer part of the “cold chain”, the temperature-controlled supply chain used by the cheese provider to safely store the goods.

‘Damaged reputation’

He also argued that he did not eat the cheese himself, an excuse that does not seem to have impressed court officials, who said the theft “seriously damaged the reputation of the country’s police force”.

The officer had also initially told his superior officers that the cheese was lying in the road, according to German media outlet SWR, but this turned out not to be the case.

The court said the cheese was stolen regardless of the value of the haul, or whether it was at risk of perishing because of the fault with the cooling chamber.

The accident occurred in September 2019, when the van containing the cheese tipped over and the cooling unit was damaged.

According to Tagesschau, a German news programme, the officer asked an employee of a goods recovery company at the scene to let him take the cheese away.

It said he had also been charged under the offence of theft with weapons, as the officer was carrying his service weapon while on duty.