A special constable has been sacked from Nottinghamshire police after viewing bodycam video showing the final moments of the students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley Kumar.
The two friends were stabbed to death, along with Ian Coates, a school caretaker, in June 2023 when Valdo Calocane, 32, committed a killing spree in the city centre that also left three other people injured.
The special constable viewed video, on his police laptop, of officers and paramedics providing medical help to the two students at the scene and after they had died. As well as being dismissed, he has also been barred from working as a police officer.
Kate Meynell, Nottinghamshire’s chief constable, chaired an “accelerated misconduct hearing” in private that dealt with the special constable. The family were not told about the police misconduct at the time. Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Grace’s father, said he was “appalled” by the incident.
A review by the police force found 178 police staff had viewed material in relation to the case and 11 of them had no “legitimate reason” to do so. There is an ongoing gross misconduct investigation into a member of staff who was arrested and interviewed after accessing evidence for which she had no legitimate policing purpose.
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Kumar said: “I’m disgusted, it’s absolutely morbid voyeurism. As parents we feel broken-hearted about it. Everything from Nottinghamshire police has been piecemeal, there is something else all the time. Why weren’t we told about the misconduct hearing? We would have gone to it.”
In January, PC Matt Gell was found guilty of gross misconduct and given a final written warning after he looked up records relating to Calocane when he had no part in the investigation. He had also forwarded a WhatsApp message with “crude and distasteful” descriptions about the incident to people outside the force.
• Nottingham attack judges asked to revisit Valdo Calocane’s sentence
Superintendent Andrew Reynolds, head of Nottinghamshire police’s professional standards directorate, said: “We identified 22 people who had viewed material related to the Nottingham attacks case, also known as Operation Hendrix, which we had concerns about. Following our thorough investigation, we narrowed this down to 11 members of staff who did not have a legitimate reason to view some of the material in this case.
“Eight of these members of staff were handed non-disciplinary performance interventions, which is focused around learning, and three faced formal discipline — one member of staff has been sacked, one handed a final written warning and one is waiting for their misconduct hearing to be heard.”
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Nottinghamshire police referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct after the families of the victims raised a number of concerns over the investigation. The College of Policing is also conducting a review of how the force handled the case.
Victoria Prentice, the attorney-general, told the families that the Court of Appeal would decide whether Calocane’s sentence was too lenient. He was detained at a high-security hospital after prosecutors accepted his manslaughter plea and did not pursue a murder trial due to his history of mental illness.
