Two Met Police Officers Receive Jail Sentence For Photos Of Murdered Sisters
Published
Two Metropolitan police officers have been jailed after sharing photos from the crime scene of murdered sisters.
Former Metropolitan Police constables Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33, took photos of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman after they were killed in Fryent Country Park in Wembley last summer.
The officers had been assigned to guard the area where the sisters were attacked and reportedly took photographs of the deceased women after entering the crime scene without authorisation in the early hours of June 7, 2020.
In a hearing at the Old Bailey, per The Independent, the court heard that Jaffer and Lewis then shared images of the victims with other police officers in person, as well as with colleagues and friends via WhatsApp.
According to Judge Mark Lucraft QC, the Recorder of London, the men also made ‘distasteful’ comments about the victims in messages on WhatsApp, and enabled murderer Danyal Hussain to claim they may have contaminated evidence at the crime scene.
Both former officers pleaded guilty last month to misconduct in public office, and they have since been formally dismissed from the Metropolitan Police. Jaffer and Lewis have also been barred from serving as police officers again in the future.
The former officers were each sentenced to two years and nine months in jail, with the judge saying they not only risked the integrity of the crime scene, but ‘wholly disregarded’ the victims’ privacy.
Lucraft argued the pair shared the photographs ‘for what could only have been some sort of cheap thrill, kudos, a kick or bragging rights’, and that they had undermined trust in policing by doing so.
The judge added: ‘The public expects, and rightly so, the highest of standards from police officers. I am sure there will be many thousands of officers in police forces in this country and abroad utterly horrified by your actions. It is appalling and inexplicable conduct.’
Defence barristers for the former officers argued for their prison sentences to be suspended, but Lucraft said immediate imprisonment was the ‘only appropriate sentence’.
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Topics: News, Metropolitan Police, Murder, Now, whatsapp
