Officers who shared photos of murdered sisters on WhatsApp jailed

A hearing heard how the men left their assigned positions to take "inappropriate" photos of the crime scene.

Two police officers who shared crime scene images of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman have been sentenced to jail for two years and nine months. As reported by Metro, PC Deniz Jaffer and PC Jamie Lewis had been assigned to guard the crime scene after the bodies of the women were found in a park in Wembley last June. Henry and Smallman, who were sisters, were murdered in a random attack after they attended a gathering in the park. Danyal Hussein, who was 18 at the time of the crime, was convicted of their murder. He has since been jailed for life. It's been reported that the officers left their assigned positions and took "inappropriate" and "unauthorised" photographs of the women's bodies. The images were then shared on WhatsApp. PC Lewis had edited one of the images to superimpose his own face onto it. The images were sent to a female officer at the scene, and Lewis used "degrading and sexist" language as he shared photos from the crime scene to a WhatsApp group that had over 4o police officers. The group was named 'The A Team'. Jaffer and Lewis worked for the Met's North East command unit but were suspended after being arrested last June. According to Metro, both officers had pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office. A statement from the Crown Prosecution Service read out at their initial hearing outlined the offences committed. It said: "An investigation found that while on duty in the park both PC Jaffer and PC Lewis left their posts and approached the murdered women – risking contamination of the crime scene – to take pictures of them on their phones. "PC Lewis edited one of the pictures by superimposing his own face on to the photograph with the victims in the background. He sent the resulting image to PC Jaffer, who then forwarded it unsolicited to a female officer also present at the scene.

"PC Jaffer showed one of the photos of the victims to a male officer as they left the park. PC Lewis also shared photographs he had taken at the crime scene, which did not show the victims, with a WhatsApp group of 40-plus police officers called the A Team.

"PC Jaffer, meanwhile, sent photographs of the victims to three friends via WhatsApp."

Feature image via BBC.