An editorial chief has voiced his frustration after one of his newspapers was barred from naming a police officer sacked for watching porn at work.
KM Group weekly the Kent Messenger and its sister website Kent Online were denied the right to identify the man, known as ‘Officer A’, when they reported on his misconduct hearing at Kent Police’s headquarters in Maidstone.
A three-man misconduct panel afforded the officer complete anonymity on the grounds that the offences were highly embarrassing and would potentially result in his two children being teased at school.
The panel, which heard the officer had accessed pornographic material more than 2,000 times at work, also prohibited any publication of his rank.
Kent Police HQ
Police forces have been required to hold disciplinary hearings in public since May 2015, when new regulations were brought in by then-Home Secretary Theresa May.
However, the rules allow the chair of each panel the right to bar the naming of officers, as well as to exclude people from such hearings and also to not advertise when and where they will take place.
Posting on Twitter, KM Group editorial director Ian Carter said the case illustrated “the frustratingly arbitrary nature of police misconduct panels.”
Speaking to HTFP, he added: “It was a disappointing decision, but unfortunately there is no mechanism to appeal or any requirement on the panel to name the officer involved. Our legal advice was they have a broad discretion to conduct them how they want.
“We will continue to cover such hearings, but it’s frustrating we can only bring readers part of the story.”
The Messenger reported that ‘Officer A’ had used an office computer to search for terms including “huge boobs”, “diora baird nude” and “michaela tabb hot”.
Diora Baird is an American actress while Michaela Tabb is a Scottish snooker and pool referee.
The officer, who was on £41,000 a year and worked in West Kent, did not attend the hearing but made full admissions to 19 allegations and had been previously issued with formal written advice in 2008 following similar offences.
The panel was told he also went on social media and sports sites, watched football, sent personal emails and printed off material while on duty.
He was sacked without notice following the hearing’s conclusion.
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Justice, seen to be done.
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Part of the punishment is that such people should be named. If he had appeared in court that would have been the case. Too many in officialdom are using any excuse to hide their shame.
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Hmmm. I wonder what rank you have to be to earn £41,000?
Anyway, this whole disciplinary set up is utterly disgraceful. The masons are more transparent.
Good work by the Messenger but surely this needs a wider audience? Have none of the nationals picked it up? Plod browsing porn 2,000 times. It’s gold dust to the broadsheets and red tops, isn’t it?
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Agree the whole set-up is a shambles and a mockery but I am not sure that Wordsmith has it right. It may be his idea of justice that the porn-watcher should be named but this is not a court in the justice sense so can’t be compared. If this man was a civil servant, fire-fighter or ambulanceman would there be calls for him to be named? No, because no-one would know anything about it. Doctor or military man, maybe, because there are quasi-public channels. Non-senior Plod browses porn and other inappropriate stuff while on duty, not for the first time, and rightly gets the boot. Apart from that (and credit to the paper for getting the story), not a great deal has happened.
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