THE PSNI has suspended four police officers as it carries out an investigation into alleged sectarian and racist text messaging.
Police said the investigation was “in relation to inappropriate and offensive racist and sectarian text messages”.
Sources said some of the texts were of a “sexual nature” but were not “homophobic”. The officers were suspended after the alleged misconduct was discovered.
In a statement, the PSNI said: “We will not tolerate wrongdoing of any nature or inappropriate behaviour of any description and moved quickly to suspend these officers involved once we became aware. Whilst we cannot discuss who the officers are or where they work, we can state that they are from various areas throughout the organisation and are not senior officers.”
The PSNI’s professional standards department is leading the investigation. PSNI Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie said the allegations would be robustly investigated. “I would be confident that if you had access to any of these texts you would find them deeply offensive,” she told reporters yesterday.
Ms Gillespie said that pending the inquiry, she could not give specific detail about the sectarian and racist nature of the texts, but they were serious.
“We have had previous investigations involving officers who used racist texts and they were dealt with very seriously, but this is the first time I can recall that we’ve suspended four officers,” she said. “The message is loud and clear, that racist and sectarian behaviour on the part of police officers is absolutely not tolerated by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.”
The PSNI added: “The police service is proud of its reputation for delivering a personal, professional and protective policing service to the people of Northern Ireland and we expect our staff to behave ethically and with the utmost integrity at all times both on and off duty.
“Any officer who fails to abide by the high standards of behaviour expected of all officers as laid out in our code of ethics can expect to be rigorously investigated.”
The chairman of the North’s Policing Board Brian Rea said the highest professional and ethical standards were expected from all police officers and those who fell short must be dealt with.
“The action taken by the PSNI in respect of the allegations made against these four officers is to be welcomed. Misconduct of this nature cannot be tolerated by the PSNI,” Mr Rea said.
Sinn Féin Policing Board member Gerry Kelly said the claims were disappointing but the PSNI must be commended for taking the allegations so seriously.
“The fact that the PSNI are holding them to account needs to be welcomed and acknowledged.”
