Police officers played ‘snog, marry, avoid' with images of sex workers

Telegraph

16 hours ago

Police in Derbyshire played a game of 'snog, marry, avoid' while using images of suspected sex workers, a tribunal was told.
Shafarat Mohammed sued the force for racial discrimination and harassment after a female colleague involved him in the game, which involves naming three people and asking someone to pick which one you would like to kiss, marry and avoid.
At the hearing in Nottingham, the woman officer admitted she had 'jokingly' played the game with co-workers and included PC Mohammed in their discussion.
In the tribunal's ruling, the judge said that playing the game at work could breach equality legislation.
Employment Judge Stephen Shore suggested that the officers may have referred to the game, which has several names, by a cruder version.
PC Mohammed claimed that during the discussion in May or June 2022, he was shown images of black women and was asked what he liked about one of them.
He said he was 'embarrassed' and 'offended' by the questioning and felt it was inappropriate.
'Crass and inappropriate'
PC Kate Northridge, another officer at Pear Tree Station in Derby, admitted to the hearing that a group of officers played the game with photos of suspect.
She said she had been the one to include PC Mohammed in the game but she had not asked him specific questions about any of the images.
Speaking about snog, marry, avoid, Judge Shore said: ' The game was crass and inappropriate. It casts no one who participated in it in a good light.'
The judge added that playing the game 'could constitute harassment of a sexual nature', although he acknowledged that Mohammed had not made that claim.
'We agree with [him] that the questions were inappropriate,' he said.
Racial discrimination and harassment claims
The tribunal heard that PC Mohammed joined the force in November 2021 and completed his training in March the next year.
He resigned less than a year later, in September 2022, and then made an employment tribunal claim for racial discrimination and harassment.
The tribunal found there was no racial or religious element to it as the sex workers were of varying ethnicities.
They also concluded that he was not asked questions about a specific black sex worker and that his credibility was undermined by a lack of consistency between his different accounts.
PC Mohammed made several allegations including that a colleague called him a 'road man', he was 'humiliated' for eating home-made food, and told he was 'sh*t'.
The officer also claimed that another PC said the custody team was 'all black and ethnics', he was asked about his familiarity with alcohol, and that he had been ostracised from team events.
However, the tribunal found these allegations were either entirely fabricated by PC Mohammed or were given 'a retrospective gloss of alleged discrimination' in his witness statements which often contradicted each other.
PC Mohammed, a Pakistani heritage Muslim, lost his case for racial and religious discrimination and harassment.