To guard the scene
Not what you want the police doing at the murder scene.
Two Metropolitan police officers who shared photos of two murdered sisters and referred to them as “dead birds” have been found guilty of gross misconduct.
PC Jamie Lewis, 33, will be instantly dismissed from the force, while former PC Deniz Jaffer, 47, had already resigned.
They were posted to guard the scene where the bodies of Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, were discovered in June 2020 after they had been stabbed to death by a teenager obsessed with Satan.
To guard the scene; not to treat the scene as a source of jokes and photoshops.
The officers were posted to guard the cordon after the bodies were found in Fryent Country Park in Wembley, north-west London, in the early hours of 8 June. Photos were shared on WhatsApp, with both former officers using the derogatory terms “dead birds”.
The tribunal was told Lewis sent a picture message of the dead women in a police WhatsApp group shortly before 4am, writing: “Unfortunately I’m sat next to two dead birds with stab wounds.”
Jaffer used the offensive term “two dead birds” in a later WhatsApp message group, which included members of the public.
Lewis then sent a “selfie style” photo of himself superimposed, with the victims visible in the background, to Jaffer. Both officers failed to report each others’ criminal conduct.
I’m guessing police have to develop a thick skin to be able to do the job without falling apart, but there has to be a limit.
The criminal case heard Jaffer left the post he had been assigned to and went into bushes where the women had been left by their killer. The officer took out a mobile phone and took pictures of the bodies.
He sent four images to Lewis, who edited one of the photos and superimposed his face on to it with the two murdered women visible in the background.
That skin had become way too tough.
I know what you’re saying, but it seems a bit more than overly-thick skin. They really went out of their way to be horrible people, there.
One quibble with the reporting, which I think is related:
The police are members of the public. It’s vital that they are members of the public. Because if they’re not, what you have is an army. One of the problems I think police all over the world have is believing that they are somehow different to members of the public or acting in the interests of something that differs from those of the public. In a lot of cases (and increasingly in the UK), police seem to think they are an army. The last thing we need is for the media to unthinkingly promote this idea.
Interesting point.