Black Female police Supt conviction. This is appalling!

[dianebrewster]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/10/met-officer-in-child-abuse-video-case-faces-fast-track-dismissal

Senior black female officer. She was in a family WhatsApp group, her sister sent her a video of child sex abuse - because she wanted her to do something about it. She never looked at the video, says she didn't check WhatsApp. Still convicted of possession of the video. Now on the sex offenders register and facing the end of her career. This is crazy.

I often don't look at WhatsApp messages, I often don't look at the videos people post to my groups - or to me (looking at you J with your strange taste in humour ). The thought that this could lead to a criminal conviction is horrific.

Agree that this is awful. The way she has been treated is appalling.
How can we be held responsible for things that other people send us?

If the facts are as you present them - that's awful. I don't think her ethnicity is relevant though.

I have WhatsApp on my phone, don't often look at it either. I have no control over what people send, and don't always read the messages either.

Going to be a fun Christmas in their house...

Apparently she didn’t delete it or report it and was with her sister all day the following day so it must have come up in conversation.

She probably didn't delete it because how could she deal with it if she didn't have the video. I'm not certain but I think she received it in the evening and did report it the next day.

I think it was the not reporting it that was the issue. She couldn’t deny having no knowledge of it and should have reported it.

This is it.
Every other person in the group either deleted it straight away or reported it.
She didn’t do either.

Its a utter disgrace and smacks of institutional racism. Her employer was able to exercise discretion in the case but chose to throw her to the wolves. The usual response should have been a few quiet words or a discplinary . I also feel for her sister and BIL who were undoubtedly stupid but now have to sign a sex offenders register and have lost their jobs never to be employed again when they were disgusted by the video and sent it in that vain. Whats is worse is that the other 14 people who received the video weren't prosecuted!!

So 15 people see and report something and one does not and they get prosecuted? If 14 other people report a crime I would think why bother

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck- it’s racism and sexism. As plain as the nose on your face. This wouldn’t even have made the outside of the office if it was a white man. How do we know? Well we haven’t heard it- have we. And let’s not pretend white men don’t get sent similar videos.

But I can look at some WhatsApp messages and ignore whole other threads - I often do. Just because she didn't delete it doesn't mean she saw it. And even if she DID see it and only reported it the next day - to be convicted and put in the sex offenders register is totally OTT.

If it'd been a senior white male would they have prosecuted ? I do think her race and sex are a factor.

As a senior Police officer surely there are procedures she has to follow if she becomes aware of a crime? She would know this and if she didn’t follow them then of course she should be disciplined
If there is evidence that she has been treated more harshly due to her sex or ethnicity then obviously that’s wrong BUT if she has behaved improperly then she should face the same sanctions as anyone else

How would she know, let alone be able to prove that she's been treated more harshly, if as a pp said, it may have been dealt with internally if it had happened before. She may not be privy to that information.

This really shouldn't have been brought to court.

I don't see them any more because I strictly block anyone who does it... but every now and then on Facebook you get someone posting "Oh God, how horrible is this? Let's share so the culprit can be found." - And it's a video, taken by a potato instead of a camera judging the quality of it, of some sick act of burning puppies, or smacking a child in the face, likely in a different country, circa 1997. Madness. I've even known of it on Mumsnet of people discussing how distressed they are by some viral videos.

WhatsApp has the added difficulty of automatically downloading the pictures, gifs or videos to your phone. As I can tell when I go to my camera roll to upload a picture to instagram and theres a mad gif my husband has sent me that I haven't seen in WhatsApp yet but it's in my phone's gallery.

A very busy, well decorated police officer with an exemplar record is not up to date with social media and has a mad family. Its madness and the law is not up to scratch with modern day life. It's the same as if someone came to my house and left images of child sexual abuse stuffed into my toilet cistern. It's my home and my property but I wouldn't know anything about it!!

The prosecution was a disgrace and I believe that it is racism. Shes being held to a different standard and had none of the discretionary leniency shown to her that she could have had.

Theyve used her to make an example but the example theyve made is a bloody mockery of the system. Give someone a criminal record and put them on the sex offenders register when they have no knowledge, and no fault just gives actual perverts reasonable doubt about what scum they are when they have similar convictions.

If I remember rightly there was an inconsistency between her statement and her defence. That meant she had lied... she even said she had lied, to protect her sister from prosecution.

I don't think it is helpful of her defence to pull the "Think of the harm this will do to the black community" strategy. That should backfire on them, hard. As if the 'black community' would want an officer who lies for her family to represent them in law... think it through!

I don't think she did this right from the very start. Her deliberate inaction, her legal teams reliance on her sex and race as some sort of magic defence. All wrong!

As for the WhatsApp thing, I was a teacher. You just don't have them, or you monitor them so very closely if you do!