West Midlands has confirmed this morning that the PSD is investigating alleged inappropriate and discriminatory communication on social media.

The West Midlands Professional Standards Department is investigating 10 officers/police staff over alleged inappropriate and discriminatory communication on social media.

The force has confirmed that a number of the officers/staff are no longer in public facing roles.

It comes as a WMP officer in his 20s was arrested last night in connection with an “off-duty incident” in December 2022. He remains in custody.

Channel 4 News has reported that a firearms officer allegedly secretly filmed himself having sex with two women before sharing the footage with his colleagues by social media.

The broadcaster claimed 10 West Midlands Police officers and staff members shared offensive and derogatory material on social media.

ACC Mike O’Hara said: “We know trust in policing has been deeply damaged in recent years, and can only be rebuilt by the public seeing the results of the action we’re taking. All police chiefs have been strengthening their misconduct processes, addressing cultural problems and increasing action against violent men over the past two years.

“Every day the majority of our officers and staff work tirelessly to protect the public and perform their duties with the utmost professionalism and they will be disgusted at the behaviour of a small minority of individuals who fall below these standards and betray everything they stand for.

“There is no place in policing for misogynistic, discriminatory or disrespectful behaviour and we are working hard to ensure predatory individuals are not only rooted out of the force, but that vetting and standards are strengthened to ensure they cannot join the police in the first place.”

Former victims commissioner for England and Wales Dame Vera Baird told Channel 4 the officers should be suspended immediately while investigations continue.

She also said it is “no longer at all appropriate” that police are able to carry out their own vetting.

She said: “These attitudes don’t develop in a vacuum where they would be actively discouraged.

“I think we’ve seen… whole cultural problems about sexuality in particular, and this has a bit of an inevitability about that really.

“I think there are very serious problems about vetting. There have been so many errors made by so many forces that have culminated in men who should never have been in the force in the first place being looked at in exactly this way.

“It seems to me it is no longer at all appropriate that the police should carry out their own vetting. It should be done, in my view, with the intervention of some outside people.”