The chairman of the Metropolitan Black Police Association has been dismissed for gross misconduct after exchanging thousands of racist, homophobic and misogynist WhatsApp messages with a colleague.
Inspector Charles Ehikioya’s messages were described as “disgraceful” and “wholly inappropriate” at a misconduct hearing last week.
Inspector Ehikioya told the panel that the messages were “somehow planted for a racist motive” because of his work supporting minorities in the force, but it ruled that they were “intentional and deliberate”.
The hearing said that his actions had undermined public confidence in the police, particularly in light of the 2023 review by Baroness Casey, which found evidence of WhatsApp groups sharing racist and misogynist messages.
The messages, sent between 2017 and 2020, mocked Muslims, Chinese people, women and the disabled son of model Katie Price.
Met Police news
One included a photograph of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner with the caption: “Message from the other side, tell the Muslims there’s no 72 virgins left”.
Another sent to Ehikioya from PC Carlo Francisco showed someone wearing a mask of Price’s son Harvey snorting a line of cocaine. Others made sexual comments about women in the force and included memes using racist terms and homophobic slurs.
Nicholas Yeo, representing Ehikioya, said his client had been subject to racism himself in messages from colleagues, including references to chains, wicker baskets and cotton-picking.
Yeo said these terms were “intrinsically linked” to historical slavery in the US and that a “vile, racist group” including PC Francisco wanted to do Inspector Ehikoyia “great harm for no other reason than his race”.
The messages were discovered when Francisco’s phone was seized following a complaint by a female police community support officer about his WhatsApp messages. Francisco was found guilty of misconduct in 2023 after being dismissed in July 2022 for an unrelated matter.
The panel found that Inspector Ehikioya had breached standards in respect of equality and diversity, discreditable conduct and challenging and reporting improper conduct, and he was dismissed without notice.
Addressing the media following his dismissal, Mr Ehikioya said: “I believe this outcome was manipulated to ensure a finding against me and is part of a deliberate campaign to smear my reputation.
“The process from the very beginning has been flawed and it is clear to me that this decision is an attempt to silence my voice in the fight against the endemic racism within the [Metropolitan Police Service].”
He claimed the case was “the latest in a long history of black officers being disproportionately scrutinised and penalised”. He intends to appeal the decision.
A spokesperson for the Met Police said the force was “confident that this was not a case where disproportionality was a factor”.
“However, we know that its presence in the misconduct system more broadly remains a real concern for officers and staff, particularly those from black or other minority ethnic heritage backgrounds,” they added.
Commander Jason Prins, who led the misconduct hearing, said: “The panel found that the messages sent by Insp Ehikioya or received by him, which he failed to challenge or report, deeply damage public confidence in the police service.”
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