Police Officer Sacked After Writing Erotic Stories On Work Laptop
A Metropolitan police officer who wrote erotic fiction on his work laptop as a means of dealing with “trauma” has been dismissed from the force.
Detective Constable Thomas Sewell spent work hours writing first-person stories containing “misogynistic, aggressive and sexual language,” described by the panel as “deeply offensive.”
Sewell admitted to writing the stories, saying he had been doing it for years as a way of coping with a traumatic incident early in his career.
In one of his stories, titled White Male Juvenile, Sewell addressed a female character, writing: “If you’re simply going to do what women claim they hate doing and objectify yourself, show off your assets, your physicality, advertise your attributes like there’s a f****** sale on for them at the moment.”
In another erotic tale, the story’s narrator describes a suicidal person having a mental health crisis as “pond scum”.
Sewell, who also used Wikipedia at work to look up erotic themes and topics, told the panel he had been seriously injured in a pub earlier in his career and “turned to writing” as a way of coping.
The hearing was told: “DC Sewell is very sorry and disappointed.
“His team did not have enough work to do because there are fewer detectives recruited than previously and, as a trainer, this left him with significant downtime.”
Commander Katie Lilburn, chair of the misconduct hearing, said the content was “deeply offensive in that it is misogynistic as well as erotically explicit”.
She said: “The misogynistic and sexualised comments in the documents are especially abhorrent because they were not just erotic but also specific to policing, and misogynistic in a policing context.”
Yeah, not ideal really. But still, it seems like the least worst thing I’ve ever heard a police officer being sacked over. There’s officers out there who commit assault, fraud and corruption, and get suspended with pay. Although I guess none of those are as evidenced as writing NSFW stories on a monitored work laptop. I mean really, what a colossal idiot!
Come to think of it, maybe writing an erotic short story should become part of police recruitment process? If they can write something that isn’t utterly gross and offensive they can move onto physical screening. If it’s actually well-written they get fast tracked to detective status. Seems pretty fool-proof to me.
For the moment a police officer got caught stuffing a pair of pink panties in his pocket during a police search in Hertfordshire, click HERE.
[h/t Sky News]
