A now-former British police officer has been spared prison after being convicted for making and possessing indecent images of children, mere weeks after another ex-cop was locked up for sharing George Floyd memes.
Daniel Babbs, formerly of the Forensic Services department of London’s Metropolitan Police, came to the attention of the authorities after “allegedly uploading an indecent image on a social media platform”, according to an official police statement.
Babbs ultimately pleaded guilty to “three counts of making an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child and one count of possessing a prohibited image of a child” in July but, having finally been sentenced by Guildford Magistrates’ Court, he has not been imprisoned, received a mere six-month sentence, suspended for 18 months.
This means he will not be locked up unless he commits further offences during the time period — although sometimes criminals already serving suspended sentences who are caught on convicted again while serving suspended sentences still escape jail.
The paedophile’s light treatment comes despite the fact another former police officer was imprisoned for sharing offensive memes about George Floyd in a private WhatsApp group mere weeks ago.
James Watts had “posted racist WhatsApp memes mocking the death of George Floyd” in a group with former colleagues at a prison where he had previously worked as a guard, according to a BBC court report.
He pleaded guilty to “10 counts of sending a grossly offensive or menacing message by a public communication network” — with being “grossly offensive”, at least on communications networks, actually qualifying as a criminal act in Britain.
“The hostility that you demonstrated on the basis of race makes this offending so serious that I cannot deal with it by a community penalty or a fine,” said the sentencing judge, deputy chief magistrate Tan Ikram, as he jailed the 31-year-old for 20 weeks.
Legal free speech protections in Britain are not meaningful, due to the fact that they derive from a European Convention on Human Rights article which supposedly guarantees freedom of expression but allows the imposition of “such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity, or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”