POLICE WORKER WHO ILLEGALLY ACCESSED CRIME PHOTOS FAILS TO GET JAIL TERM CUT
Digital forensic specialist stored images of dead people used as evidence
A STAFFORDSHIRE Police worker who illegally accessed thousands of pictures of murder scenes, crashes and post-mortems has failed in a bid to get his jail term cut.
Disgraced Darren Collins used a ‘back door method’ to get to the images and was later found to have accessed 3,000.
The 56-year-old – who worked as a digital forensic specialist – was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this year after admitting a charge of misconduct in a public office.
Now Court of Appeal judges have dismissed an appeal by Collins, of Pinewood Drive, Little Haywood near Stafford, to have his sentence reduced after his lawyers argued it was unjustly harsh. The three judges ruled against him and said they will give their reasons at a later date.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Collins, who is said to have acted out of ‘morbid curiosity’, ‘thought he might just get a telling off’ if colleagues found he had been storing and viewing images without authorisation.
Simon Davis, prosecuting, said Collins had first appeared
in court in 2019 and had since seen various proceedings delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Davis told the court Collins, who had worked for Staffordshire Police for 18-and-a-half-years, had admitted a charge relating to illegal access to and storage of images of deceased persons between January 2014 and December 2018.
Collins, the court heard, had used a “back door” method to access images of murder scenes, including a deposition site, pictures taken at postmortem examinations, and others relating to road traffic collisions.
After his arrest, Collins, claimed he had looked at the images because digital forensics was a ‘stepping stone’ to becoming a scenes of crime officer.
Addressing the hearing, defence barrister Kelly Cyples said Collins suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of legitimate work on investigations into child abuse.
She told Judge Roderick Henderson: “The crux of this case is that, at the time, Mr Collins certainly did not realise that what he was doing was criminal.
“He accepts and understands, with the benefit of hindsight, he should not have and was not permitted to look at other images beyond the parameters he had been given for his actual role. There was no malicious intent and the images have never been shown to anyone else.”
The force said a number of images downloaded were official police photographs of crime scenes and post mortems, which are taken to provide evidence of scenes which may later be used during criminal court proceedings or coroners court inquests.
He was arrested in March 2019 following an internal investigation after concerns had been raised by colleagues.
He was immediately suspended. Collins later faced internal disciplinary proceedings and was dismissed without notice for gross misconduct and was barred from working within policing and certain law enforcement bodies.