Police officers 'shared images of person who died by suicide' - Warning: graphic descriptions

[MNettersForNoahAndFiona]

Warning: graphic descriptions follow, in BBC News article and BBC video interview with the family:

Two NI police officers have been investigated for more than three years over allegations they manipulated a person who died by suicide's body and shared photos and a video online.

One of the officers has been suspended with full pay while the Police Ombudsman investigates. It is part of a wider investigation encompassing 11 separate but related incidents spanning several years. There are multiple suspects, including police officers and civilians, in Northern Ireland as well as in England. The investigation is looking at a range of possible offences including misconduct, harassment and the suspected supply of drugs.

The allegations around the two Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers are harrowing. The police officers asked the family to leave the room. The victim's body was moved around the room and posed for photographs and a video. His trousers were taken down and his genitalia exposed for one of the photographs. The images were then photoshopped with speech bubbles mocking the victim, including using a derogatory term for his religion and shared.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-62012268

The victim died in 2017 in Belfast. That is five years ago and still the police (PSNI) have not charged these sick and callous individuals. Only 30 hours of interviews have taken place in 5 years. When two disgraceful Met police officers similarly shared images of the bodies of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, they were quite rightly prosecuted and sent to prison - even by the Met.

The BBC recently broadcast interviews with two Police Service of Northern Ireland whistleblowers speaking publicly for the first time about serious allegations of misconduct and negligence within the PSNI:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017yyn

Some Mumsnetters will have also seen my threads and those of others about the death and disappearance of young Noah Donohoe, also in Belfast, in 2020. After he had been missing for 6 days, Noah's naked body was retrieved from a drain. Two years later, his mother Fiona is still having to fight for the truth about her son's death and for justice for him. It is the same police force: the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), and the same Chief Constable: Simon Byrne.
Here is a factual and reliable pinned Twitter thread for people new to Noah's story or wanting to know more:
mobile.twitter.com/MarymoBelfast/status/1370453351616425985
Here is Fiona's podcast:

Here is a Channel 4 News report: www.channel4.com/news/noah-donohoe-family-seek-answers-over-belfast-teenagers-death And please do sign Fiona's petition if you haven't already: www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4573833-noah-donohoe-his-mothers-fight-for-the-truth-and-justice-please-help-stop-the-police-coroner-and-brandon-lewis-from-keeping-investigation-files-into-the-death-of-a-child-secret-thread-3?

These are only three examples of many serious failings from the PSNI. Victims' families have lost trust in them. Decent, whistleblowing officers have lost trust in them. The Metropolitan Police have recently been put into special measures for their failings. AIBU to believe that the same must happen with the lazy, corrupt, incompetent, racist and bigoted PSNI?

The police officers who posed with the bodies of murdered sisters Nicole and bibba, sent those images on a WhatsApp group with 50 + members of the police in it. Indicating that they knew at least 50 other members of the met would find that funny or acceptable. These are no isolated incidents, these are just the stories which are exposed and make the news. The toxicity of the culture in our police runs deep and we need to completely reject it.

There are bad apples in every barrel, police included. The vast majority are good people, just like all professions, but I agree when people in authority behave badly it knocks confidence in them all

Sick idiots. Who does that?!

I hope the 3 families from Catholic backgrounds get an honest investigation and the bad eggs are removed from the system.

Wishful thinking.

Adding Shona Gillan to the list. ❤️

I'm so tired of the "few bad apples" thing that always gets thrown about.

Let's talk apples.

There many only be a 'few' bad apples but there's a fuckton of heavily bruised ones.

Every police officer who hears about or sees bad conduct and says nothing is a 'bruised apple'.

Every police officer who knows their colleague's nickname is 'the rapist' is a bruised apple.

You don't get to the point where officers can do horrendous things and have WhatsApp groups of dozens and dozens of colleagues laughing about it if these 'few bad apples' aren't surrounded by apples so badly bruised no fucker would eat them and Tesco would gather them up and chuck them in the bin out back.

Bad apples rape, abuse, threaten, expose the genitals of the dead and laugh about it in groups of 50.

Bruised apples know all of this happens and say nothing.

Brilliant post.

It really frustrates me that people use the 'few bad apples' thing without using the whole quote. It's 'a few bad apples spoils the barrel'. You can't shrug and say it's a few bad apples and no big deal but that's exactly how the rest of the barrel gets spoilt (or bruised, to use your very good analogy). I think it's pretty clear that this is now a spoilt barrel.

Two Northern Ireland police officers investigated for sharing photos of man who died by suicide
www.independent.ie/news/two-northern-ireland-police-officers-investigated-for-sharing-photos-of-man-who-died-by-suicide-41824693.html

'After his son’s death, the victim’s father said it was 18 months before he was made aware of the claims. The family said the incident has added to their trauma. The man’s father said he is “physically sick” to this day by the way his deceased son was treated.

UUP MLA Mike Nesbitt described the revelations as “an absolute scandal”.

Speaking to the BBC, policing board member Mr Nesbitt said he has grave concerns about transparency in the flow of information from the police.
It comes after it was revealed that around 130 police officers are currently being investigated for gross misconduct in Northern Ireland, revealed at the latest public Northern Ireland Policing Board meeting on Thursday.
The former Ulster Unionist Party leader said he suspects that’s “a very high number” compared to other forces around the UK.
“If it’s true – then it’s an absolute scandal… I have grave concerns and have had for some time about the flow of information from the PSNI to the Policing Board,” he said.
“We can only hold them to account for what we know is happening.”

The victim’s family's lawyer Pádraig Ó Muirigh said the five-year wait for justice was unacceptable.'

Thank you for these posts @IncompleteSenten and @Hardbackwriter

'a few bad apples spoils the barrel'.

When I read the BBC and Independent.ie reports above and watched the BBC interview with the victim's family, these things - apart from the abject horror of what the police officers had done to the person's body, of course - particularly struck me:

"Those police officers were in the house while I was there - asked me to leave the room - and I done everything they asked me to at the time,” he said.
The family trusted the police officers. Such a gross breach of that trust and when the family were at their most vulnerable. This family had just tried to resuscitate their loved one and the father was kneeling by the side of his dead son's body.

"And all that keeps coming back to me is why did I leave the room, because that must have been when they done it, when they took the photographs.”
They've got this grieving father blaming himself for leaving them with his son's body, for trusting them, for doing what most of us would have done in that situation.

This also brought me back to Fiona Donohoe, Noah's grieving mummy. She trusted the police, she didn't know any better, when Noah tragically disappeared and his body was found. The PSNI told her to trust them, told her they would do all they could to find Noah and then to investigate his death. The PSNI - all the ranks involved from top to bottom - soon and increasingly lost that trust by their own actions. Like the family above, Fiona learnt the hard way that the PSNI couldn't be trusted at all.

It's hard not to come to that conclusion.

Thank you very much for your post @IncessantNameChanger and all the very best to your friend.

Excuse me??! How rude are you?

I'm not the one posting a sensationalist MN title knowing no one is going to disagree with you and then posting about your own cause and agenda. Totally disingenuous.

I never said I was anti BLM or pro police. What I said was thankfully the days of police being slagged off all over social media had auietened down and you are stirring it all up again with your agenda.

I'm not derailing your thread, but equally you dont own Mn and cannot instruct us all to fall in line. 'Distraction' techniques indeed.

Nasty.

Ans this isnt distracting and derailing, no?

Hello - can we ask that everyone considers our Talk guidelines before posting? Disagreements are absolutely fine but please do so politely.

Apologies @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet - I will unwatch and hide and leave Op to it.

@IncompleteSenten Excellent post.

@beautyisthefaceisee What is your issue? Are you a PSNI officer?
Why can't you see that both cases are related to unprofessional behaviour from PSNI officers against members of the Catholic community.

I added Shona Gillan's name to the thread too, another victim whose death wasn't seen as suspicious despite the circumstances until they released the body for her wake to be embalmed before deciding her death was suspicious.

Those cases are a drop in the ocean when it comes to the Catholic community in NI.

These families are left without any investigations or justice. Noah included.

Why are you defending years of ignorance towards 50% of the population from NI.

Thank you @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet

Trigger warning - suicide:

'The Belfast Telegraph can reveal that a Twitter account linked to one of the accused tweeted in April 2017: “Awesome, couple of hangings in the last couple of days.” The same account also tweeted: “Is it bad that hanging bodies make me laugh?”

The family would have been unaware of the gross breach of their grief only for the overt activities of a number of officers who had been publicly abusing high-profile figures, including Alliance leader Naomi Long. After the Police Ombudsman was called in to investigate the online activities of several officers, the pictures, along with a number of other alleged offences, were identified.

There has been criticism of how long the case has taken, with the officers at the centre of the investigation suspended on full pay for almost five years.

The investigation into the police troll accounts led to the arrest of Bangor-born ex-police officer Lee Howard, who ran an anonymous Twitter profile. Howard, who spent much of his youth in Coleraine, was convicted in 2020 of eight offences involving unauthorised access to computer data and disclosing personal data. However, the 32-year-old walked free from court after a judge was told he was mentally ill and undergoing treatment. Until his arrest, Howard was a serving officer with Greater Manchester Police. The delay in the Ombudsman’s investigation, in comparison to how promptly the Manchester Policing Authority dealt with the case, led to criticism and questions being asked at the NI Policing Board.'

Just to be clear, as I understand it, Lee Howard is not one of the officers who took the photos and video or posed and exposed the body of the person who died by suicide. Apparently you're ok if you abuse ordinary people, just not high profile people like Alliance Party Leader/Justice Minister Naomi Long. That is the only reason it came to light.

Interesting that I apologised to MN yet you said thank you as if you played no part in it whatsoever and we answer to you.

I dont think I've ever come across such an entitled poster.

I thought you were going to leave the thread? May I suggest you do as you pledged? You arguably have form for this sort of thing on threads.

You can suggest, but it's nothing to do with you (nor is what I do on other threads, so I'm not sure why you're involving yourself in that too and bringing it over here, which is against MN etiquette). If by "sort of thing" you mean not allowing MN to turn into one big echo chambers by entitled posters, I absolutely do. The only reason I'm going is what tends to happen is MN suspends posters to appease the bullies like yourself, and I'm not giving you that, so please don't think I'm unwatching for any other reason (certainly not cause you've told me to). Thanks for your input!

So shocking.

All those families absolutely failed when they were so vulnerable.

It takes a particular type of scum to disrespect a corpse.

Thanks for posting OP, I was unaware.

Many years ago, about 30? there was a film on tv called Closing Ranks about how a PC's physical abuse of his wife was ignored. As a then serving Police Officer I recognised the culture. That would go a long way to explaining why other people daren't whistle blow, unless they want there career to be over. I've seen similar things happen re someone trying to do the right thing. Sad, but true. Make/still makes me both and .

Thank you @Herejustforthisone - hopefully we can get back to just posting about the subjects of the thread now.

I think some attempts to change this have been made in recent years in some police areas @SpongeBobJudgeyPants . A huge problem remains though for the spouses and partners on the receiving end of Domestic Abuse from serving and ex police officers in reporting it and getting help. Like you say, it's the culture, and is somebody going to watch your back when on patrol if you report them for any wrong-doing? The whistleblowers in the BBC Spotlight programme I've linked to in the OP had a very hard time, from senior officers and not just colleagues, and they are the tip of the iceberg in the PSNI.