Sexting cop’s career jeopardy, DVO fight win, threats to ruin ex-lover

A Queensland cop who admits his Snapchat messages to a lover demanding she send sex images and threatening to ruin her amounted to domestic violence has lost his bid to block them being used to probe his fitness to serve in the force.

Chief Magistrate Janelle Brassington

A Queensland cop who admits his Snapchat messages to a lover demanding she send sex images and threatening to ruin her amounted to domestic violence has lost his bid to block them being used to probe his fitness to serve in the force.

The officer, who has not been named, is the subject of an inquiry by the Queensland Police Service ethical standards command after he conceded in the Brisbane Magistrates Court last year that a series of messages he sent to a woman amounted to domestic violence.

He was not charged with any criminal offence, and the hearing related to an application for a domestic violence order which was not granted.

“You have a lot – a lot to make up for, let me tell you. And I guarantee you I will ruin you and ruin your entire future,” the officer is alleged to have told the woman on Snapchat, with other messages berating her for her conduct with other men.

Details of the messages were revealed by Chief Magistrate Janelle Brassington in a decision she handed down on April 24 giving the QPS the green light to use court documents filed in a hearing before Magistrate Clare Kelly last year.

One of the exhibits is a disc containing messages exchanged between the pair, the decision states.

In that case, Ms Kelly dismissed the application by the woman for a domestic violence protection order, but noted the police officer acted in an entitled, and intimidating way when demanding the woman respond to his Snapchat messages.

“There are accusations that she is playing games with him,” Ms Kelly wrote in her decision, quoted by Ms Brassington in her decision.

“The messages and the recordings are in the main threatening, intimidating, abusive, aggressive, demanding, manipulative and concerning.”

The QPS ethical standards command wishes to use the transcript of the Kelly decision, as well as exhibits and affidavits in its internal probe into whether the male officer should be allowed to continue serving in the force, given the need to maintain public confidence in police investigating domestic and family violence.

The male officer has refused consent to the release of the court documents to ethical standards, while the woman has given her consent.

Ms Brassington ruled that the QPS should have access to the documents because to refuse access would undermine the objective of the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012.

She concluded there was a very significant risk that victims of domestic violence may hesitate in seeking police help if they believed a potential perpetrator of DV was investigating their DV matter.

“There is very cogent, reliable evidence available that demonstrates the commission of those acts of domestic violence,” Ms Brassington said of the evidence before Ms Kelly.

“Of course a complete investigation may establish that in the complex circumstances of this matter that (the officer’s) conduct did not compromise his fitness to serve as a police officer.”

The Police Commissioner was forced to apply to the Magistrates Court on March 28 for the order allowing them to use the documents after the officer’s lawyer told the ethical standards unit they should not have access to the documents without court approval.