Thread by @CCChatMagazine

“On one occasion, she said, male officers taped her phone to the ceiling, telling her: “We’re gonna watch your arse when you climb on the table.””

How a dead officer’s iPhone exposes misogyny, corruption and racism in a police force
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Ricky Jones, a retired police officer knew where many of Gwent police’s skeletons were buried, but it wasn’t until his death that his own began to emerge.

In 2020, he jumped to his death from a bridge.

He left behind his wife and three daughters.

To the outside world Jones was a respected former copper and family man. But behind closed doors he subjected his family to decades of #domesticabuse.

After his death, Jones’s eldest daughter looked through his iPhone, hoping to get insight into her father’s cruelty.

The phone exposed one of the most toxic police cultures in the UK.

WhatsApp and Facebook messages show Gwent police officers openly discussing the sexual harassment of junior female colleagues; racist, homophobic and misogynistic abuse; the leaking of sensitive police material; and corruption.

Jones and his former colleagues regularly shared pornographic videos and images of naked women.

“We call it the boys’ club,”

Perhaps the most offensive exchanges were sent to Jones by a retired sergeant we are calling Officer A, who spent 30 years in the force and will receive a large police pension.

Officer A messaged Jones:

“He has been shagging on duty and it’s been recorded on his tetra [police radio] mate,” he wrote. “Didn’t he learn anything from me at all?? I thought I taught him well and how not to get caught.”

In 2018 and 2019 Officer A sent a number of racist images to Jones, mostly about Muslim women. A picture of Grenfell Tower on fire is titled “The Great Muslim Bakeoff”. In May 2019 Officer A sent Jones a racist image about the new royal baby.

In another exchange, on Facebook Messenger, Jones is discussing a possible divorce. Officer A offered him help in carrying out a possible fraud, saying he had done the same in the past for a Gwent police chief.

“If you need to hide some money, I will look after it or open an account for you in my name if you want. I did it for (name of senior Gwent police officer).”

Hiding money from a partner during divorce is fraud and can be punishable by a custodial sentence.

In November 2018 at a misconduct hearing as many as ten female officers gave evidence of domineering, controlling and physically abusive behaviour by Clarke Joslyn.

A former partner reported Joslyn to Gwent police in 2012, and he was issued with a harassment warning — but he was allowed to remain a serving officer, even after breaching the order.

A former police officer was 20 when she got involved in a relationship with After he held her up against the wall with a knife at her shoulder.

Afterwards, she said Joslyn told her: “Who are they going to believe? Me, who’s got years of service? Or you, who’s just started?”

She reported him and police later dismissed her on a data protection breach. Gwent police arrested her at home in front of her neighbours and searched her house.

She was never charged.

She said women who came forward to make complaints at Gwent police were discredited by the management. “They’re made out to be either liars or mental,” she said. “Anything so they don’t have to be believed.”

Another victim was dismissed from the force after making a complaint of sexual assault against that same officer. She was dismissed from the force on “spurious” allegations - failing to present a statement to a suspect during an interview.

“They were clutching at every straw that they could to get me out,” she said. “All they wanted was to discredit me for his hearing.”
Soon after she joined the force, she was told by a male colleague if she “sucked people off” she would move quickly through the ranks.

Officer E sends a screenshot of an online dating application that reads: “Your application to join our match-making service has been rejected. You failed question 14. ‘What do you like most in a woman?’ ‘My d*ck’ was not an acceptable answer.”

Ricky Jones’ wife:

“He had an obsession with hygiene and cleanliness, and the idea that me and the children were somehow dirty.

“He said his children stank. He said their breath was smelly and we were all overweight. He once told one of my daughters he was going to charge her per slice of bread from the loaf.”

Sharon and the children would have to vacuum the house from top to bottom 3x a day to keep him happy. He would demand his children use only “two pieces” of lavatory paper, and when the children were younger he would make them live in one room, to keep the rest of the house clean.

The couple became estranged — his wife slept on the sofa for 15 years while Jones had the bedroom. But not once did she suspect him of cheating.
“He used to say, ‘I’m an honourable person, and you’re a bad person’,” she said. “He would say that on a daily basis.

It was nasty and malicious, and after many years I started to believe him. He would get all dolled up in his aftershave and say he was going out with his mates in Cardiff. I believed him.”

thetimes.co.uk/article/how-a-…