A serving police officer who posted in a WhatsApp group chat that the Black Lives Matter movement wanted ‘a superior race that whites bow down to’ has been kicked off the force.
The female officer – who cannot be named after a misconduct panel chairman granted her anonymity – also responded with smiley face emojis and ‘will do’ to a message containing a racist slur that she should ‘give them p***s a good bashing’.
Those comments – made in 2020 - were met with horror by those involved in Oxford’s Black Lives Matter events two-and-a-half years ago.
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Oxford City councillor Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini, who spoke at BLM events in the city and is the council's migrants champion, told this newspaper: “The details of the case are absolutely horrifying.
"This is a case not just of insulting comments about the BLM movement.
"They are also violent, misogynistic comments about racial minorities.”
She added: “Individuals need to have complete confidence that there is an absolutely independent, systematic investigation that looks at all of these issues in a holistic way – not case by case, ‘this is a bad apple, we’re going to look at the next one’.
"That’s not going to cut it.”
The unnamed female officer was found to have told her sister that a black woman they were discussing on WhatsApp should ‘go back to her own f****** country’.
After a Black Lives Matter demonstration on June 7, 2020, saw a statue of Winston Churchill vandalised in central London she said the BLM movement wanted a ‘superior race that whites bow down to’ and ‘everyone needs to be black’.
In a WhatsApp conversation with her father, she replied with four smiling emojis and ‘will do’ to a message from her father that she should ‘give them p***s a good bashing’. The officer claimed that her response was an attempt to close down her dad’s comments.
She was found to have disclosed information about incidents, investigations and arrests. They included sharing information about the identity of a ‘famous singer’ she had arrested and why, details about a child abduction, and a Milton Keynes murder investigation that had not been made public.
It was said the messages were ‘borne out of her seeking attention, “offloading” to her family about the pressures she faced in her role and stupidity’ about the dangers of telling others the confidential information.
All the WhatsApp messages were sent between September 2019, when she was sworn in as a Thames Valley Police constable, and April 2021.
The officer had also failed to notify the force about her sister and father using cannabis.
She was found guilty of gross misconduct by the independent panel and dismissed from the force without notice.
Deputy Chief Constable Jason Hogg said: “The behaviour displayed by this former officer is truly disgraceful and so far from what we would expect from a Thames Valley Police officer.
“The racist views and opinions she shared on private WhatsApp groups are unacceptable and I hope that the fact that this officer has been dismissed without notice shows how seriously [we] take such incidents and that we are committed to removing such insidious and bigoted views from our police force.”
The misconduct case came to light as, on Tuesday, the Home Secretary called on police forces to ‘double down’ on efforts to get rid of corruption and reform vetting processes.
Suella Braverman's comments followed the conviction of Metropolitan Police firearms officer David Carrick, who on Monday admitted the latest in a list of two dozen allegations of rape dating back 20 years.
He worked in the same department as Wayne Couzens, who was jailed for life last year for the rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
Carrick had been allowed to continue working – despite the Met and three other forces receiving 14 complaints about him, it was reported.
Those complaints included allegations of rape and harassment.
He was only suspended in 2021 after he was charged with rape, three months after being arrested for a different rape allegation.
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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.
To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk
Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward
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