Judge sides with one of the police making jokes (7)

I believe the answer is:

jesting

'making jokes' is the definition.

'judge sides with one of the police' is the wordplay.
'sides' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'one of the police' becomes 'sting' (Sting, lead singer of The Police).
'judge' with its centre taken out is 'je'.
'je'+'sting'='JESTING'

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.

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