by

Cop Shared A ‘Grossly Offensive’ George Floyd Meme, Still Has His Job…

Sergeant Geraint Jones, 47, shared the altered image to a WhatsApp group of other police officers and colleagues in May.

By Ruby ‑Lott Lavigna

A British police offi­cer has been giv­en a final writ­ten warn­ing after shar­ing a “gross­ly offen­sive” doc­tored image of George Floyd’s arrest, mean­ing he will remain in his job.

Sergeant Geraint Jones, 47, admit­ted to gross mis­con­duct dur­ing an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) inves­ti­ga­tion, which found he had breached the pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards of author­i­ty such as respect and cour­tesy, equal­i­ty and diver­si­ty, duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties, and that he had behaved in a man­ner that dis­cred­it­ed the police.

Jones sent the image to a WhatsApp group con­tain­ing police col­leagues and civil­ian staff from Devon and Cornwall Police in May 2020, just days after Floyd’s death. The altered image depict­ed a naked pic­ture of Wardy Joubert III super­im­posed over Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin kneel­ing on the neck of Floyd. In June this year, Chauvin was sen­tenced to 22.5 years for mur­der­ing Floyd.

The meme came to light after it was report­ed by a col­league in the WhatsApp chat. Two col­leagues respond­ed with laugh­ing emo­jis, however.

Jones was acquit­ted of any crim­i­nal charges at a hear­ing before a dis­trict judge at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on the 21st of April ear­li­er this year. But he still faced sep­a­rate dis­ci­pli­nary action by the UK police watch­dog, the IOPC

IOPC region­al direc­tor Catrin Evans said: “The image was bound to cause sig­nif­i­cant offense, not least with­in our Black com­mu­ni­ties. It is encour­ag­ing that the mat­ter was swift­ly report­ed by a work col­league who right­ly called out the behavior.”

“The out­come is a reminder that the shar­ing of offen­sive mate­r­i­al by any serv­ing police offi­cer is unac­cept­able, and that indi­vid­u­als will be held account­able. It is impor­tant offi­cers under­stand that whether such behav­ior occurs on or off duty, or in a pri­vate or pub­lic social media net­work, inap­pro­pri­ate and unpro­fes­sion­al con­duct has seri­ous consequences.”

Jones’ writ­ten warn­ing will last for five years but he will con­tin­ue in his post.