Two ex-Met Police officers who swapped racist and misogynistic messages on WhatsApp with Wayne Couzens have lost an appeal against their convictions.
Jonathon Cobban, 37, and Joel Borders, 47, posted the messages on a group named “Bottle and Stoppers”, swapping violent fantasies and using derogatory slurs aimed at black people and Muslims.
The messages came to light after the arrest of Couzens, a member of the WhatsApp group, for the kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard in March2021. He has now been jailed for the rest of his life.
Cobban and Borders denied that their messages were “grossly offensive” but were convicted after a trial in late 2022.
At the Court of Appeal on Friday, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr and Mr Justice Saini dismissed challenges to the convictions.
Baroness Carr said the pair “could have no reasonable expectation of privacy” over the messages which “relate to policing actions”.
District Judge Sarah Turnock originally sentenced the two men to 12 weeks in prison each, but the jail terms have not been served while the appeals process has been ongoing.
Baroness Carr gave the two man 28 days on Friday to “to reflect maturely on their present position” about whether to make a Supreme Court challenge.
District Judge Turnock said their messages have “undoubtedly caused significant harm to the reputations of police forces in England and Wales”.
In the messages, Cobban likened driving through Hounslow in west London to “FGM patrol”, said he was “hoping to get into a fight” to prove himself, and discussed a violent fantasy.
“I can’t wait to get on guns so I can shoot some c*** in the face”, wrote Borders.
Cobban replied: “Me too. I want to taser a cat and a dog to see which reacts better. I think the cat wil get more pissed off and the dog will sh*t it.
“I wanna test this theory. Same with children. Zap zap you little f***ers.”
Borders then replied: “And a couple of downys?”, believed to be a reference to people with Downs Syndrome.
In another exchange, the officer said about a female Met colleague: “Lead me on then get me locked up when I rape and beat her! Sneaky b*tch.”
Couzens’ name was kept out of the trial, at a time when he was still facing live allegations of indecent exposure.
But the content of his messages were later revealed after misconduct proceedings in which four other officers, PC Gary Bailey, PC Matthew Forster, William Neville and PC Daniel Comfort who were also involved in the WhatsApp groups lost their jobs.
On 22 February 2019 Couzens said: “Messy one, lovely. Remember Forster, it’s got to be consensual!”
PC Forster replied: “They’ve only got to say yes once.”
On 21 March 2019, after Cobban told the group chat he had responded to an unconscious woman who had been drinking, Couzens said: “Did you finger her to see if she was ok?”
Cobban said: “I considered it. But she was a right old lump. So I just raped a bystander instead.”
On 21 June 2019 Couzens said: “Mate they aren’t gonna ditch you with your skills sets, unless you finger a DV [domestic violence] victim! Oh, Jon, in that case you’re probably f--d.”
Cobban replied: “That’s alright, DV victims love it* that’s why they are repeat victims more often than not.”
At their trial, Cobban and Borders attempted to portray the messages as “banter” and examples of “dark humour”. But the judge rejected their defences, calling the WhatsApp material “sickening”.
“The WhatsApp group in which these messages were posted appears therefore to have been viewed by the defendants as a safe space, involving a small number of like-minded individuals, in which they had free reign to share controversial and deeply offensive messages without fear of retribution”, she said.
In a probation service interview, Cobban said he “wanted to be eaten alive when he read (the messages), they made him feel sick and he was utterly ashamed and embarrassed”.
Borders said he is “disgusted and embarrassed by what he had done, he deeply regretted that innocent people have been affected by what he hasdone, and he has done damage to the force.
“Everyone’s job is made harder and this makes me feel like crap”, he told probation.
The court heard many of the messages were sent when the officers were in training to join the force, though some were sent by Cobban while he was on active duty.
Borders, from Preston, and Cobban, from Didcot in Oxfordshire, both denied five charges each of sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing message or matter.
Borders was convicted of all five charges he faced, while Cobban was cleared of two and found guilty of three charges.
