{"id":21200,"date":"2022-02-17T21:15:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T02:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=21200"},"modified":"2022-02-17T21:15:38","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T02:15:38","slug":"met-officers-charged-over-whatsapp-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/02\/17\/met-officers-charged-over-whatsapp-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"Met officers charged over WhatsApp messages"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two serving Metropolitan Police officers and a former officer have been charged with sending grossly offensive messages on WhatsApp.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 16 March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said the charges arose from an investigation into the phone records of Wayne Couzens, who murdered Sarah Everard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Met said the serving officers had been suspended from duty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The offences are alleged to have happened between April and August 2019 and involved discriminatory messages, the IOPC said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a statement the policing watchdog said: “The IOPC’s investigation began following a referral from the Metropolitan Police Service in April last year and was completed in December when we referred a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“The CPS has now taken the decision to authorise charges against the officers.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rosemary Ainslie, head of the CPS special crime division, said: “Each of the three defendants has been charged with sending grossly offensive messages on a public communications network. The alleged offences took place on a WhatsApp group chat.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She said the function of CPS was not to decide a person’s guilt but to make fair assessments about whether it was appropriate for a court to consider charges and added that nothing should be published that could jeopardise the defendants’ right to a fair trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Typically defendants, including police officers, are identified when they are charged but the CPS said it could not currently confirm the names of the officers for operational reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a statement the Met said: “We are aware of charges brought against two serving Metropolitan Police officers and one former officer about sending grossly offensive messages on a public communications network.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“They are suspended from duty.”<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two serving Metropolitan Police officers and a former officer have been charged with sending grossly offensive messages on WhatsApp. They will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 16 March. The Independent Office for Police Conduct […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[2959,5033,2848,5098,3067],"class_list":{"0":"post-21200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-cps","10":"tag-iopc","11":"tag-metropolitan-police","12":"tag-westminster-magistrates-court","13":"tag-whatsapp","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21203,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21200\/revisions\/21203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}