BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND – According to reports, a former British police officer was handed down a 20-week jail sentence after being found guilty of sharing memes alleged to be “racist” or generally offensive, with some of the memes mocking George Floyd.
While here in the United States, people are free to enjoy engaging in the sharing of offensive memes and social media posts without the risk of facing jail time (except for maybe “Facebook jail”), the same cannot be said about England – as they harbor their own brand of “hate speech” laws.
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Between May and June of 2020, 31-year-old West Mercia Police Officer James Watts was part of a WhatsApp group chat that consisted in part of some of his former colleagues at a prison he’d worked at prior to joining the police force where the allegedly offensive memes were shared.
Infowars reported that one of the individuals who were in the group chat had decided to leave the group, with this person later taking to Twitter while sharing screenshots of the memes shared by Watts along with the caption, “Former work colleague now serving police officer sent these in group chat. What hope is there in police in the UK sharing these.”
When a formal inquiry was opened up into the memes shared in this group chat, Watts had resigned from the police force and was later charged with ten counts of sending grossly offensive messages.
The Guardian described some of the memes as “one featuring a white dog wearing Ku Klux Klan clothing and another showing a kneeling mat with Floyd’s face printed on it,” while others contained “jokes about Floyd’s death featuring pictures of George of the Jungle and the children’s game Guess Who.”
After pleading guilty to the charges, Watts was reportedly fined £75, which would be paid directly to the original complainant that led to the charges, as well as £115 in court costs and a £128 victim surcharge. However, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram proclaimed during the June 14th sentencing that mere fines weren’t going to satisfy the matter.
“At the time of these offences, you were a police officer – a person to whom the public looks up to uphold the law – but you did the opposite. Your behavior brings the criminal justice system as a whole into disrepute. 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.”
Deputy Chief Magistrate Ikram declared that in this case, “A message must go out and that message can only go out through an immediate sentence of imprisonment,” handing down a 20-week jail sentence for the former police officer.
Another West Mercia Police officer, 41-year-old Joann Jinks, is also facing three counts of the same offense that Watts did in his case, as Jinks was also part of this WhatsApp group and had allegedly shared offensive posts. Jinks is slated to stand trial on August 23rd.
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