Hitler? He didn’t do me any harm...
Shocking ‘banter’ of police officer sacked over racism
A POLICE officer has been sacked after claiming Adolf Hitler ‘had never done him any harm’ because he had ‘never met him personally’.
PC David Alston also called a black waitress a ‘ fluffy coco angel’ and said Asians ‘reproduce like 3-to-1 compared to us’, a misconduct tribunal was told.
He was dismissed by Essex Police after messages were uncovered between Alston and friends who served in the Army Reserve.
The group exchanged sexist, racist and homophobic ‘ banter’ on messaging tool WhatsApp – and traded extreme porn videos.
In one message Alston, 31, referred to a ‘ hot black chick’ who served him in a London bar as ‘Umbongo’, and then posted a controversial 1980s advert for the soft drink.
When questioned, Alston, from Braintree, Essex, claimed ‘ fluffy coco angel’ was ‘meant as a compliment’. But in one exchange, another member of the group wrote: ‘Dave’s your stereotypical copper. He doesn’t like blacks.’
In a reference to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Alston wrote: ‘He has never done any of us any harm.’
When questioned about the comment he said: ‘I have never met him personally, he died in 1945.
‘I don’t come from a Jewish family, I did have a great grandad who fought in the war, but he never did me any harm.’
The messages were uncovered after a member of the group was arrested for domestic violence.
Alston, who was an Army Reservist for ten years, left the WhatsApp group in September 2017 when he quit the Armed Forces – but was suspended and hauled in front of police investigators.
Stephen Morely, acting for Essex Police, told the panel: ‘PC Alston is expected to protect society from this type of language and behaviour, not indulge in it.’
Father-of-one Alston accepted his comments were racist and discriminatory and admitted gross misconduct. He said ‘I wholeheartedly apologise if I caused any offence.
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I didn’t want to alienate anyone in the group.’ His representative Rakesh Sharma said Alston had never used similar language with his police colleagues or shown prejudice. Alston, who joined the force in 2013 after working as a PCSO and served in the Army Reserve for more than ten years, was dismissed without notice. Disciplinary panel chairman Siobhan Goodrich said his conduct ‘fell well below the standards expected of a police officer’.
Det Supt Dean Chapple, of Essex Police, said: ‘Racism and homophobia is absolutely disgusting and has no place in our society, let alone within the police force.’