Metropolitan Police officers shared photos of dead bodies on WhatsApp taken on their personal phones, as one of the accused claimed it was ‘common practice’.
Officers said personal phones were routinely used to capture evidence, including pictures of people who had died, due to the poor photographic quality of standard-issue police equipment.
An internal Scotland Yard inquiry heard confidential images were frequently shared via Whatsapp, with the messaging app being used as a ‘workaround’ to compress files before emailing and uploading them to the Met’s official system.
PC Billy Manning was found to have kept a photo of a deceased elderly man on his personal phone following an investigation into the man’s death.
He later showed the image, which he described as a ‘bad one’, to colleagues during a training session, leaving them to feel ‘uncomfortable’.
PC Manning’s arrest and the investigation that followed revealed widespread uncertainty, including among senior Met leaders, about whether it was appropriate for officers to use personal phones for police work.
A misconduct hearing heard that on September 27 2021, PC Manning and PC Zak Malik were called to an assisted living residence for elderly people in Dalston, east London.
There, the officers found a resident who had died ‘some days or weeks earlier’ and whose body was in an advanced state of decomposition.
Metropolitan Police officers shared photos of dead bodies on WhatsApp taken on their personal phones, with one accused officer claiming it was ‘common practice’ (file picture)
PC Malik took photos of the dead man on his personal phone before sending it to PC Manning’s iPhone on WhatsApp.
The images were sent to reduce file size so they could be uploaded to the Met system and passed to the coroner, the hearing was told.
PC Manning, who joined the Met in 2019 and since served at Stoke Newington police station, deleted the photo from his phone’s library but did not delete it from his WhatsApp thread.
When PC Malik later realised the photo was still on WhatsApp and warned him, PC Manning replied with three laughing face emojis, the panel heard.
The following year, during a Taser training course at Shoreditch police station, PC Manning was discussing ‘difficult situations’ with other officers during a break.
This prompted him to show them the photo of the deceased elderly man, saying: ‘I’ve been to a bad one, I will show you the picture.’
He went on to describe the body in detail while holding up the phone, the investigation heard.
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Two officers said the incident left them feeling ‘very uncomfortable’, inciting them to report him to their seniors.
PC Manning was arrested on February 18 2022.
He justified his actions by claiming it was ‘common practice’ to take pictures on mobile phones and delete them, however he had forgotten to do so on this occasion.
His mobile was seized and the contents downloaded, revealing a number of other pictures ‘relating to victims, suspects and evidence’.
The investigation also found PC Manning had created a WhatsApp group called ‘Away Days’, in which sexist, homophobic, ableist and transphobic content was shared.
Another officer told the hearing he attended a separate sudden-death callout with PC Manning where photos were taken on personal phones, although he could not recall who took them.
No criminal charges were brought, but misconduct proceedings were launched against PC Manning and another officer in the group, PC Frankie Jordan, who had also kept photos of evidence.
PC Jordan told investigators he ‘did not believe that he had done anything wrong’ and that ‘he and colleagues routinely took photos of evidence on their personal mobile phones and sent them to colleagues via WhatsApp’.
He said officers had not been given work mobile phones and described standard police tablets as ‘sub-standard’.
PC Jordan denied deliberately keeping the images, saying he ‘forgot that they were there’.
As concerns grew, senior officers warned that the use of personal mobile phones for policing purposes was not in line with accepted policy.
However the briefing encouraged other officers to come forward to report they had done the same thing.
The issue was discussed at a senior leadership team meeting in February 2022, where it was decided that personal phones should never be used for a policing purpose.
Despite this, the misconduct panel heard evidence of ‘confused and conflicting guidelines’ that even members of the senior Met leaders had interpreted differently.
PC Manning was given a final written warning for a period of two years, while PC Jordan received a final warning for three years, following the hearing held between last November and February this year.
The Daily Mail has contacted the Metropolitan Police for comment.
