Nov. 2 (UPI) — Two police officers in Britain face jail time for taking inappropriate photos of two murdered women and sharing them on WhatsApp.
London Metropolitan officers Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33, were charged with misconduct and pleaded guilty to taking photographs of Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27.
British courts recently convicted 19-year-old Danyal Hussein for the murder of the sisters at a London park in 2020. He received two concurrent 35-year jail sentences.
Lewis and Jaffer were assigned to protect the scene where Smallman and Henry were found dead in the bushes. They took a total of six unauthorized pictures and shared them on WhatsApp.
Lewis superimposed his face on one of the photographs of the sisters.
Judge Mark Lucraft told the officers that it’s likely they will receive a custodial sentence.
Crown Prosecution Service spokesman Paul Goddard said the officers had conducted themselves senselessly.
“Their thoughtless and insensitive actions have no doubt caused immeasurable further distress and pain to the heartbroken family and friends of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, who were already left reeling from the loss of their loved ones,” Goddard told Sky News.
Mina Smallman, mother of the two victims, criticized the chief commissioner for not offering an apology for the officers’ behavior.
“It’s shameful that the IOPC [Independent Office for Police Conduct] had to tell the Met they should apologize to us in their failings for the missing persons,” she told reporters. “Too little too late. Too little too late.”