By David Young-
A special constable has been sacked for viewing body-worn camera footage of two students in their final moments after they had been stabbed in the street after a night out.
The mother of attack victim Barnaby Webber said she will ‘never forgive’ a police officer who viewed bodycam footage of her son lying in the street after he was repeatedly knifed by triple killer Valdo Calocane.
It is not the first time a police officer has been reprimanded for such atrocious acts.
In December 2021, two Metropolitan police officers were jailed for nearly three years after taking and sharing photos from the scene where they lay murdered have each been jailed for two years and nine months.
Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33, were ordered to guard the scene in a London park where two sisters, Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were found stabbed to death in June 2020
Almost 180 police staff were found to have viewed material relating to the case, with 11 of them having no “legitimate reason” to do so.
Friends Grace O’Malley Kumar and Barnaby Webber were killed last June during the attacks in Nottingham city centre.
A short time afterwards, school caretaker Ian Coates was also knifed to death by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane.
Almost 180 police staff were found to have viewed material relating to the case, with 11 of them having no “legitimate reason” to do so.
It is understood he viewed footage of officers and paramedics providing medical help to Grace and Barnaby at the scene, and after they had passed away, on his police laptop.
As well as being dismissed, he has also been barred from working as a police officer.
“I’m disgusted, it’s absolutely morbid voyeurism. As parents we feel broken-hearted about it,” he said.
“Everything from Nottinghamshire Police has been piecemeal, there is something else all the time. Why weren’t we told about the misconduct hearing? We would have gone to it.”
In January, PC Matt Gell was found guilty of gross misconduct and given a final written warning after he looked up records relating to Calocane when he had no part in the investigation.
He had also forwarded a WhatsApp message with “crude and distasteful” descriptions about the incident to people outside the force. The officer who sent the message received a “management intervention”.
Deputy Chief Constable Steve Cooper said action over the WhatsApp was immediately taken, adding that “some of the words were crude and distasteful. It was a single message and no images were taken or shared,” he said.
Superintendent Andrew Reynolds, head of Nottinghamshire Police’s Professional Standards Directorate, said: “We identified 22 people who had viewed material related to the Nottingham attacks case, also known as Operation Hendrix, which we had concerns about.
“Following our thorough investigation, we narrowed this down to 11 members of staff who did not have a legitimate reason to view some of the material in this case.
“Eight of these members of staff were handed non-disciplinary performance interventions, which is focused around learning, and three faced formal discipline – one member of staff has been sacked, one handed a final written warning and one is waiting for their misconduct hearing to be heard.”
Nottinghamshire Police referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct after the families of the victims raised a number of concerns over the investigation.
The College of Policing is also conducting a review of how the force handled the case.
Attorney General Victoria Prentice told the families that the Court of Appeal would decide whether Calocane’s sentence was too lenient.