A serving Met Police officer has been charged with sexual communication with a child
kent999.co.uk/breaking/news-243466/a-serving-...
kent999.co.ukPosted Dec 20, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC
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kent999.co.ukOn one hand, I'm glad we're finding and showing the door to so many dodgy cops. On the other hand I'm unnerved by how many we're finding lately.
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I saw a comment on here a while ago that made a good point: if more police officers were being proven to have committed misconduct/gross misconduct, we'd expect the headlines to reflect that. I can't recall seeing any headlines along the lines of "twice as many cops charged with sexual offences than 10 years ago" or "x more police officers facing gross misconduct investigations than last year". This makes me think the rate hasn't really changed.
I couldn't find any aggregated stats online for number of police officers charged with offences or proven gross misconduct by year. It looks like stats relating to misconduct hearings only started being compiled in 2020 as "experimental", so no previous years to compare it to https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-30-september-2020/police-workforce-england-and-wales-30-september-2020#experimental-statistics-misconduct-and-criminal-investigations.
There do seem to be more frequent headlines about individual cases though, more than I can recall in previous years. Very bad for public perception; even if the rate hasn't increased, it certainly gives the impression that is has.
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I think it's just currently more news worthy and therefore gaining more column inches. Alot of the reported incidents are also old or delayed cases too. So when you look at the offence dates their not recent at all.
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Because people are actually looking now, these people have always been doing what they’re doing
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He's been charged, not found guilty?
Why is it front page news in that case?
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This is a double edged sword. Whilst I agree that these people should be identified, I’m a strong believer in doing this after conviction, not a charge.
My mate was charged with some awful awful offences which at trial were proven to be made up lies by a psycho ex.
This can ruin the lives of innocent people.
Totally agree, Isn't it deformation of character?
*defamation is the word you are looking for.
Thank you
I believe this isn't defamation as the media have a freedom to report things that are in the public interest. Like it or not reporting that a PC has been charged with this type of offence is definitely in the Public Interest.
True I just think he shouldn't be named until convicted
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If people don’t know the difference between a conviction and a charge they shouldn’t be commenting on these posts anyway!
I think it’s important to post stuff like this because people are being warned now and could possibly have more information about people like this!
That’s nonsense. Majority of people will see this on their Facebook feeds etc and just read a headline.
Not quite!
I agree with your initial points but the offence makes me wonder about the likelihood that it's a lie... I mean, to get a charge for this particular offence, surely you'd need actual evidence of it?
To get a charge for any offence you need actual evidence of it. It’s not like the evidential standard is higher for sexual offences than others.
The point is that there’s a big difference between CPS looking at the evidence and saying ‘there’s a realistic prospect of conviction here’, and a jury looking at it and saying ‘this evidence makes me sure of guilt’.
Sorry, my message was worded poorly. I meant in contrast to getting charged for things that end up as having been lies (domestic related, presumbly) and then stuff related to inappropriate interactions with children. One is probably more likely to have more grounding.