A Metropolitan Police officer and his former colleague have been jailed for 12 weeks for sharing grossly offensive messages in a WhatsApp group with Sarah Everard’s killer – and then bailed ahead of an appeal against their convictions.
Met constable Jonathon Cobban, 35, and former PC Joel Borders, 45, were were found guilty of the offences back in September.
The pair were found to be members of a chat group called “Bottle and Stoppers”, along with Wayne Couzens earlier this year.
Couzens is currently serving a whole-life sentence for the kidnap, rape, and murder of 33-year-old Ms Everard in March last year, while he was working in the police force.
In the group, Cobban and Borders were found to have swapped messages about tasering children and people with disabilities, and which referred to Hounslow as a “Somali s*******” in 2019.
In an exchange on 5 April that year, Borders wrote: “I can’t wait to get on guns so I can shoot some c*** in the face!”
Cobban responded: “Me too. I want to taser a cat and a dog to see which reacts better. I think the cat will get more p***** off and the dog will s***. I wanna test this theory. Same with children. Zap zap you little f******.”
In the same month, Borders joked about raping a female colleague, who he referred to as a “sneaky b****”.
District Judge Sarah Turnock jailed Cobban and Borders for 12 weeks, saying she could not think of “more grossly offensive messages” – but bailed the pair ahead of an appeal against their convictions at the High Court.
“They encapsulated the full range of prejudiced views, racism, misogyny, ableism and homophobia,” the judge said.
“There was no intention on the part of the defendants to cause any harm to the persons to whom these messages relate or the minor groups of society who are undoubtedly effected by these messages,” she continued.
“The persons to whom these messages relate will undoubtedly been caused great distress by knowing police officers find it funny to joke about them in such a deeply offensive manner.
“Significant harm has undoubtedly been caused to public confidence in policing as a result of these offences.”
The officers described the messages as “banter” and dismissed many of the comments as examples of “dark humour”.
But the judge rejected this account, finding that at the very least the extensive police training they had each received meant they would have been aware of the public reaction to their messages.
She said Cobban and Borders had shown no “genuine remorse” but were “indignant” to find themselves before the court and felt they were being “scapegoated”.
“This humour was covert and done in a covert way, to exchange banter in a safe space and they felt like they had free rein to share their views without fear of retribution,” she said.
“It is precisely the covert nature of these comments which makes the prejudice so difficult to address within the police force.
“It is the contrast between the exemplary conduct of these defendants and the covert views expressed in these messages which causes me such concern.”