Investigation into actions of officers sending and receiving racially discriminative images – West Mercia Police, June 2020
In June 2020, West Midlands Police’s intelligence department identified a post on the social networking service Twitter containing four racially abusive memes. Memes come in a variety of forms such as images, videos, and other viral content.
Two of these images mocked the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being arrested and restrained by police in the USA in May 2020.
The racially abusive memes were posted by a Twitter user who noted the memes were sent by a serving police officer in the UK.
Following further enquiries by West Midlands Police, it was found that the memes had been originally shared by a former prison officer, who had subsequently become a serving police constable with West Mercia Police. The officer was suspended, and their mobile phone was seized.
We received a mandatory conduct referral from the force and decided to independently investigate the matter. That investigation concluded in February 2021.
During the course of that investigation, phone data revealed that the subject officer had sent a number of racially discriminative and abusive memes to other colleagues, who were also serving police officers with West Mercia Police. At least one of the officers had responded with material of the same nature.
We conducted a secondary investigation based on the allegation that five West Mercia Police officers shared material that was racist in nature in a WhatsApp group chat, and that they failed to report the material they received.
Our investigators obtained accounts from the subject officers and other witnesses. We seized mobile phones and reviewed and analysed the digital material, as well as the training records and complaint history of each officer.
We found that one of the five officers had a case to answer for gross misconduct with regards to sharing a number of racially discriminative images in a WhatsApp chat and failing to challenge or report receiving racially discriminative images from another officer.
We shared our report with the force, who agreed. We decided that disciplinary proceedings should be brought against the officer and that they should take the form of a gross misconduct hearing.
We found that there was no indication that the other four officers had committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner to justify disciplinary proceedings. We recommended that their performance be addressed using the reflective practice review process. This process allows officers to learn from and reflect on what could have been done better.
We recommended that this should focus on understanding and implementing a police officer’s duty to challenge and report improper conduct, and understanding and recognising discriminatory factors linked to race.
The gross misconduct hearing for the individual officer concluded in November 2023. The officer was found to have breached the police standards of professional behaviour for authority, respect and courtesy, equality and diversity, conduct, and challenging and reporting improper behaviour. These amounted to a finding of gross misconduct and the officer was dismissed without notice.
We referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). They decided not to pursue criminal proceedings. We requested a review of this decision, and the officer was charged with Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. They pleaded not guilty.
At the trial, the judge decided the legal document that notifies you that a decision has been made to prosecute you in court was out of time. An appeal made by the CPS was dismissed in December 2024.
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.
We did not identify any organisational learning in this case.