By Jo Best, 29 November 2006 12:40
NEWS
Around 100 police officers and staff in Hertfordshire have been reprimanded for emailing pictures of a US man falling on railings and being decapitated.
Distribution of the pictures, which shows a man being chased as he tries to jump from a building to a flyover and falls between the two, was detected by Hertfordshire's email monitoring system.
The Constabulary has said it will be putting in further email monitoring technology to detect non-work related material following of the investigation.
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Eight police officers have received a formal reprimand after a hearing, while another seven staff have received final written warnings, for circulating the "potentially offensive" image.
The police were concerned that the image could be interpreted as racist, as the man shown in the pictures is black.
Deputy Chief Constable Simon Ash, who oversaw the investigation, said in a statement: "I am disappointed by the conduct of officers and staff who distributed this inappropriate image that some people may have perceived as being racist... The discipline process has been used in respect of those individuals who contravened our organisational values and standards and clearly breached our internet security and use policy."
Hertfordshire is not the first public-sector organisation to have been caught out in embarrassingly inappropriate use of email.
An ongoing investigation into email use at the DVLA led to 65 people facing disciplinary action.
Comments
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1. anonymous
How can it be racist just because the person in the picture is Black, pretty certain this email would be sent even if it was a white, red, green ,pink with blue spots coloured person..
2. anonymous
Political correctness gone mad. I bet there would not have been the hue & cry if the man had been white. And how much public money (i.e. our council tax payments) has been wasted on this piece of nonsense?
P.S. Where's the link in the news item to the video? (sorry, I just couldn't help myself putting in that tasteless comment)
3. cassandra
Nothing to do with race - everything to do with privacy and respect - for the victim and his family. Police have no right to circulate information they come across during their work except for the express purpose of solving crime.
4. anonymous
Does the lack of prison spaces justify 'cyber skiving' at our expense?
No work to do, or pies to eat? So much for the terrorist threat eh?
Don't these people have a beat to walk?
So we're hiring PCSOs to make it look like we have police on streets whilst hundreds of existing police 'workers' are messing about on their computers?
5. anonymous
did heads roll...?