A City of London police officer who sent colleagues a sickening joke about the murder of Sarah Everard just days after she had been abducted and killed has been sacked for gross misconduct.
Detective sergeant Giles Kitchener circulated the image on WhatsApp on March 12, 2021, two days after Met Pc Wayne Couzens had been charged with Ms Everard’s murder.
According to misconduct charges, the message contained an “annotated image of a police officer with the title ‘Police Signals Know Your Signs’. The images referred to a police officer killing a single girl in the context of the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.” Couzens later admitted kidnapping, raping and murdering Ms Everard after her abduction from a Clapham street on March 3, 2021.
Kitchener was also found guilty of a series of other incidents of misconduct over the course of 2021, including racism, misogyny and homophobia. In July 2021, Kitchener made a comment to a female colleague “about the fit of her cardigan and the size of her breasts”, City of London Police said.
He had been caught drinking beer in the CID office at Bishopsgate police station the previous month, commented about a colleague that “if he wasn’t incompetent, he might be corrupt”, and referred to other police officials as “p*****” and “w******”.
The charges found proved included that Kitchener was homophobic in early 2021 by saying “he would not be comfortable taking his child to Soho”, and he also told a female officer: “You dress like a typical lesbian.”
Also, in April 2021, Kitchener made a comment about a colleague’s skirt not being short enough, the force said, and in June he made a comment about a Muslim officer’s child having the initials that spelt “ham’’.
In a brief published notice about the outcome of the misconduct hearing — which did not include the details of the allegations — the force said Kitchener had been cleared of a further five claims. A panel found him guilty of gross misconduct and ordered his immediate dismissal, as well as adding him to the police barring list to prevent him from joining other forces.
Meanwhile, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has published his two-year plan to improve standards and rebuild trust in the force.
He has promised a thorough review of its culture and professional standards in an effort to “root out” corrupt officers such as David Carrick, who was last week unmasked as one of the UK’s most prolific sex offenders.
