Policemen suspended over vile texts about raping crime victims
A HERO firearms officer and a detective constable have been suspended over text messages that discussed ‘raping’ victims of crime.
Scotland Yard has opened a major misconduct inquiry into the behaviour of the two Met officers after the disturbing messages were uncovered.
The texts include an exchange about demanding a sex act from someone they called a ‘hot slag victim of crime’ under threat of not filing her complaint.
Scotland Yard and the police watchdog are also assessing disturbing videos from a mobile phone that show suspects being secretly filmed in custody, as well as footage of a drunken woman in the back of a police car and clips of innocent motorists being berated by officers responding to 999 calls.
The shocking material came to light only because the messages had been accidentally handed over to lawyers acting for a Surrey businessman in an entirely unrelated case that has since collapsed. The suspended firearms officer is 36yearold PC Edward Bengree, once hailed by Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey as a ‘fantastic example of the values we hold dear within the Metropolitan Police Service’. The officer, who works at Heathrow Airport, received a bravery award in 2016 for saving a boy who had stopped breathing.
He now faces questioning over scores of abusive and racist messages found on his phone dating back six years.
The second officer is Detective Constable John Taylor from the Met’s elite gangs unit Trident. He has also been suspended after allegedly discussing sexually assaulting victims of crime in a police van while on night shift with Mr Bengree.
In a textmessage conversation – seen by the Daily Mail – the two officers joked about rape as they worked in Hounslow, West London, in September 2011. Mr Taylor allegedly wrote: ‘We’ll bring in some hot slag victim of crime.’ The Mail has chosen not to print the full disturbing details of the exchange. Mr Bengree ended the conversation, saying: ‘I do not condone this. I challenge it. Stop.’
Other texts, in March of that year, appear to show the pair chatting about Mr Taylor having sex with a stripper who had been arrested two months earlier. Mr Bengree appeared to suggest the stripper had flirted with his colleague to get out of trouble, to which the detective replied: ‘Ha, ha ha, I couldn’t care less.’
In messages during the London riots on August, 9, 2011, Mr Bengree wrote that he was ‘so upset’ he was not there after his brother, who is not a police officer, told him: ‘It’s pretty much “feel free to hit [rioters] with batons” time.’ There were also homophobic jibes apparently sent by friends, and messages using a racist term to refer to footballer Ashley Cole, and mocking black victims of crime.
Among the videos was one of a drunken woman in a police car who is asked: ‘How drunk are you?’ She responds: ‘I’m not so drunk that I don’t know that you are filming me right now.’
Mr Bengree appears to ask whether she would fall down if the driver swerved, at which point the car swerves and she falls. In a clip in a police vehicle racing to a crime scene, officers can be heard berating motorists for not getting out of the way.
The Met said the case had been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the Directorate of Professional Standards was investigating if other staff were involved.
Mr Bengree denied any knowledge of the videos and messages while Mr Taylor declined to comment. The IOPC said it was assessing the case.
‘Ha, ha, I couldn’t care less’