Court sentences six veteran UK police officers to jail targeting Meghan for being biracial
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
A court has given six former London police officers suspended prison sentences for sharing offensive and racist messages on WhatsApp, including references to Meghan Markle, the wife of Prince Harry, younger son of King Charles of England.
“The racist and discriminatory content of these messages is absolutely appalling,” Commander James Harman, who heads the Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Corruption and Abuse Command, said in a statement after the court ruling.
“Given the defendants once served as police officers, we recognise that this case may further damage confidence in policing,” Harman said, as quoted by Reuters.
Simply for being biracial or Black (her father Thomas Markle is White, her mother Doria Ragland is Black), Meghan has faced varying degrees of racism since she married into the British royal family in 2018.
The racism against her has emanated from within the Firm (the Royal family) and from the outside in the general White world from the United Kingdom, across to Australia and New Zealand, feeding into the United States.
Meghan lamented on television in 2020 researchers discovered she was the most trolled person online worldwide in 2019 – much of it fueled by racist Whites getting feelers from the racist British press, especially the tabloids comprising The Sun, Daily Express, Daily Mail, and Daily Mirror.
Investigation by Newsnight, the flagship BBC investigative programme, found the six retired officers sent the messages between August 2018 and September 2022, a period when all had left the force.
Meghan received three racist messages.
A message also included a picture of the late Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip, while others mentioned Charles’ eldest son and heir Prince William and his wife Kate, and Britain’s first Black Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
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Several officers plead guilty
Several former officers, aged in their 60s, pleaded guilty to sending offensive messages last September and received prison sentences ranging from six to 14 weeks, suspended for one year, according to reporting by livemint.com
The six men had all worked in various departments at the police but had all served in the Diplomatic Protection Group, where one former member was convicted of murder and rape in the last two years, and another was jailed for committing 24 rapes.
A trial at City of London Magistrates’ Court last month convicted Michael Chadwell, 62, of sending an offensive message despite pleading not guilty.
Chadwell was sentenced to 10 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months.
Britain’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police, has been beset by scandals in recent years, including racism, misogyny, and homophobia, according to an independent review in March.
Over 43,000 officers and staff will be rid of unsuitable individuals by its chief Mark Rowley, who took up the post last year.