- ITV Report
Misconduct hearing sacks police officer over racist texts and sharing information about Amber Peat's death
A misconduct hearing has ruled an officer for Nottinghamshire Police should be sacked over a series of allegations including sending racist texts and giving a friend information about Amber Peat's death before it had been made public.
13-year-old Amber's body was found in her home town of Mansfield two days after she was reported missing on 2 June.
Today, the panel heard that PC Samantha Goodwin told an acquaintance about the body being found in undergrowth near to where Amber went missing, but urged them to "keep it quiet".
PC Goodwin admitted sending text messages using racist terms, taking stills from a police interview and sending them to her partner and using offensive language to refer to vulnerable victims of crime.
Discussing texts relating to Amber Peat, Nottinghamshire Police solicitor, David Ring, said:
The panel also heard that officer from the professional standards department interrogated the phone of PC Goodwin after a complaint.
One message on the phone contained a racist term for the Pakistani community, another included derogatory terms for Turkish people.
She was also found to have told a friend about details of a police stop officers had carried out on someone they mutually knew, as well as sending a "variety" of messages about vulnerable females who had reported crimes of "a very personal nature" in her role as a support officer.
PC Goodwin did not attend the hearing at the force headquarters, but was represented by Malcolm Spencer, of the Nottinghamshire Police Federation.