Actions of officers at the scene of and following a sudden death and whether officers gained an unfair advantage in a police driving examination– Metropolitan Police Service, January 2020

In January 2020, Metropolitan Police Service officers attended an apparent sudden death. At the scene, an officer took a picture of the deceased on his personal mobile phone and sent it to a colleague.

The officer who received the image later sent it to another police officer and another phone number, believed to belong to a member of the public. A download of this officer’s phone revealed he may have also been involved in sharing prohibited police driving exams for colleagues due to take the exam.

During our investigation, we reviewed a download of an officer’s phone that revealed he had received and sent an image of a deceased male that was taken at the scene and been involved in the sharing of police driving exams. We requested statements from all the police officers under investigation answering the allegations.

This was identified during the analysis of a mobile phone belonging to an officer subject to investigation in Operation Turton 1.

Statements were also requested from the other officers who attended the scene of the man’s death and from officers in the police driving school, confirming how the exams were to be administered.

Our investigation concluded in October 2021.

We waited for all associated proceedings to be finalised before publishing our findings.

We concluded that an officer and former officer had a case to answer for gross misconduct, and another officer had a case to answer for misconduct. We were of the opinion that two additional officers that were subject to our investigation did not have a case to answer, but reflective practice would be an appropriate outcome to address the performance of one of these officers.

A misconduct meeting was held on the 16 August 2022 for the officer where we found a case to answer for misconduct. Misconduct was not proven by the panel. Therefore, no sanctions were applicable but they were ordered to take the reflective practice review process to learn and reflect on their actions.

A misconduct hearing was held in January 2023 for the officer and former officer facing gross misconduct. The officer was dismissed without notice and will now be placed on the College of Policing's barred list preventing future employment with the police. The former officer, who was previously sacked and jailed for sharing photos of murder victims, was already placed on the barred list following an accelerated hearing in December 2021. He would have been dismissed if he was still a serving officer.

We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. In this case, the investigation has not identified any learning.