Six former Metropolitan police officers have been given suspended prison sentences for sending offensive and racist WhatsApp messages.
The group, who retired between 2001 and 2015, were given sentences of between six and 14 weeks in prison, all suspended for 12 months, on Thursday.
According to the charges, some of the messages shared referenced the Duchess of Sussex, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the late queen, as well as Rishi Sunak and the former Conservative home secretaries Priti Patel and Sajid Javid.
The former officer Michael Chadwell, 62, of Liss, Hampshire, was found guilty of sending by public communication a grossly offensive racist message. He was sentenced at Westminster magistrates court to 10 weeks’ imprisonment and 100 hours of unpaid work.
Robert Lewis, Peter Booth, Anthony Elsom, Alan Hall and Trevor Lewton all pleaded guilty to multiple counts of the same charge. Lewis, 62, was sentenced to 14 weeks’ imprisonment and 200 hours of unpaid work; Booth, 66, and Elsom, 67, both received eight weeks’ imprisonment and 140 hours’ unpaid work; Hall, 65, received eight weeks in prison with 40 hours of unpaid work; and Lewton, 65, was sentenced to six weeks’ jail time with 65 hours’ unpaid work.
The messages were brought to the Met’s attention by the BBC’s Newsnight programme in October 2022.
Commander James Harman, who leads the Met’s anti-corruption and abuse command, said: “The racist and discriminatory content of these messages is absolutely appalling and, given the defendants once served as police officers, we recognise that this case may further damage confidence in policing.
“Colleagues across the Met will also be disgusted and will be pleased to see the outcome today.”
All of the officers convicted had served in the diplomatic protection group, now known as the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command.
Harman added: “The messaging in this case took place on WhatsApp – but it could have been on any other platform, or communicated verbally. It is less about the technology – it is the underlying mindset and the conduct that is so important for us to deal with.”
