ACT police account porn retweet breached professional standards, investigation finds

AN internal investigation into the retweet of porn from the official ACT police Twitter account has found professional standards were breached.

WHEN a member of the ACT police force retweeted pornographic images from its official Twitter account, the agency was left red-faced.

Now, an internal investigation has ruled the former employee breached professional standards when they retweeted the images to thousands of followers on New Year’s Eve last year.

The offending tweet from an account named Katie Sanders was originally published 18 days before the incident and contained three separate photographs of a naked woman dressed only in boots.

“One good thing about winter.. these boots! #ThonglessThursday,” read the caption.

The explicit retweet was removed from the force’s account 20 minutes after it appeared, as were several other pornographic tweets that had been ‘favourited’ by the ACT police Twitter account.

A number of images had also been ‘favourited’ by the official account.

After examining the case, the AFP’s professional standards unit found two breaches of the agency’s code of conduct, but said no further action would be taken because the employee had resigned for unrelated reasons before the issue had been finalised.

In a statement, the AFP said misconduct matters were dealt with in a variety of ways depending on the severity of the incident.

The AFP contacted the former employee with the outcome of the investigation, but said it would not be making details public for privacy reasons.

Chief Police Officer Rudi Lammers did disclose that the employee was not directly involved with the agency’s media unit, but used the matter to reinforce his view that law enforcement officers maintain professionalism across all facets of the job.

“The higher you are in the organisation, the greater the level of responsibility and adherence to standards that you must have because you not only follow the standards but you model them,” he said.