Two London police officers pleaded guilty to misconduct in the line of duty on Tuesday in British courts after sharing photos of the bodies of two murdered sisters on WhatsApp.
Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis were tasked on June 8, 2020 with protecting the scene where the bodies of Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, were found fatally stabbed in Wembley Park (north-west London).
But instead, the two policemen, aged 47 and 33 respectively, had crossed the security cordon to take photographs of the bodies, four for Deniz Jaffer and two for Jamie Lewis. They then broadcast them on WhatsApp, including sending a colleague a photomontage with the face of one of them.
The mother of the two sisters described the police officers, dismissed from their duties on June 22, 2020, as “despicable”: “The grief of our family has been further aggravated by these officers”.
The attitude of the two policemen is not the only element embarrassing the London police in this matter. In mid-October, the British police force had crushed the errors and the “unacceptable” attitude of Scotland Yard in the face of this double disappearance.
The relatives of the two sisters, not found after having celebrated the birthday of the oldest in the same park on June 5, had very quickly reported their disappearance. But flaws in the processing of the information received had led to the closure of the search files, leading their relatives to discover the bodies on June 7.
The London police, weakened by several other recent cases – foremost among which the life sentence of an agent for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Londoner Sarah Everard -, then apologized to family.
A 19-year-old man, Danyal Hussein, was sentenced last week to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 35 years for “brutally murdering” the two sisters.
The Old Bailey court ruled he had embarked on a “campaign of revenge” against randomly selected women. The police had discovered in his room a manuscript signed with blood promising a demonic entity to kill six women every six months, in exchange for wealth.
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