‘Naive’ armed officer keeps job after sending explicit pictures and sharing police documents

An armed police officer has kept his job after sharing confidential police documents and sending explicit photos to a woman he was seeing. Police Constable Joseph Wooldridge has been given a written warning and told his behaviour had made the force look ridiculous at a disciplinary hearing at the Kent Police Force Headquarters in Sutton Road, Maidstone. According to character references given to the panel from more than 40 of his police colleagues, including several senior officers, PC Wooldridge was in many ways an exceptional officer.

He was described variously as “highly effective”, “hardworking and motivated”, and “professional and mature” who had devoted himself to police work since joining the force in 2015. His career took a plunge when in October 2022, someone leaked the two photographs he had taken to the police. It transpired that when they were taken, PC Wooldridge had been at a low point in his relationship with his wife.



They had been separated for a couple of months, and he had become enamoured with another woman who was attracted by his role as an armed police officer. She had asked him to send her photographs of his gun and his genitalia, and he had complied, taking the photos in the toilet at his station at the end of his shift and while still in uniform. There was no suggestion that the photos had been unsolicited.

In the subsequent investigation, PC Wooldridge’s personal phone was examined, and it was discovered that over a period of four years, from April 2018 until July 2022, the officer had on 22 occasions sent out confidential police information, including 33 images, via WhatsApp, sometimes to his wife and sometimes to other officers. The messages had included details of arrests, custody photographs, a suspect’s passport, details about crimes and, on one occasion, the names and work roster of colleagues in his armed unit. Matthew Holdcroft, the barrister acting for the police authority, said that officers were specifically banned from using WhatsApp as a messaging service because it was insecure.

They were told repeatedly to use Blackberry Messenger to exchange police information as it was the only service that gave a satisfactory level of encryption. More recently, Microsoft Teams had also been permitted. Mr Holdcroft said the information that PC Wooldridge had shared - especially the details of the armed response unit - would have been of great interest to criminals if it had fallen into the wrong hands.

The sharing of “sensitive and personal” information and the photographs were also a breach of Data Protection laws and of the individual’s rights to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights and opened the way for Kent Police potentially to be sued by those individuals concerned. He said that PC Wooldridge was lucky not to have faced a criminal prosecution. Mr Holdcroft argued that PC Wooldridge knew what he was doing was wrong - during the four-year period, he had achieved a 100% score at a police training course specifically about data sharing.

The fact that he had also labelled one of his messages “Top Secret” indicated that he knew he shouldn’t be sharing it. In his defence, PC Wooldridge’s barrister, Martyn Hyndes, said that at the time, the use of WhatsApp to share information was widespread among police officers. He said: “The existence of a policy [forbidding it] does not necessarily mean that is the practice followed at ground level.

“At the time, it was a process that was being used; it was a way for officers to share information.” None of the messages, he said, were malicious or for personal gain. With regard to the occasion when PC Wooldridge had shared case information with his wife, Mr Hyndes likened it to a pre-digital age when an officer might have come home and discussed his day at work with his partner.

He said: “Policing is an incredibly stressful job, and offloading to a partner can be a way to cope.” The only difference was that whereas a verbal discussion left no trail, a message exchange left a digital record. The sharing of the explicit photo had been during a private and consensual relationship, and the only problem had been when it was subsequently released.

PC Wooldridge told the hearing: “I am embarrassed and ashamed. You have seen the worst of me.” He said that joining the police had been his childhood dream, and that after achieving that goal he had “given everything to the job.

” PC Wooldridge was going through personal problems at the time which affected his marriage. He said: “I was feeling lost and hopeless and that’s when my life derailed. I lost myself.

“It’s been a most difficult road. I cannot explain how sorry I am. I’d like to apologise to the people of Kent and I’d like to apologise to my wife and daughter.

“My wife has picked me up and brushed me off every time I have fallen over and I’m extremely grateful to her.” PC Wooldridge told the panel: “Lessons have been learned and I ask your forgiveness.” The three-person disciplinary panel was chaired by Assistant Chief Constable Nigel Brookes.

After an overnight break to consider their judgement, he delivered the panel’s verdict. He said that the constable’s sharing of police information with his wife had been gross misconduct; saying: “It went well beyond de-stressing with your family.” The sharing of information via WhatsApp with other officers was misconduct but not gross misconduct, because it had been for operational reasons and the data had been “shared for a proper purpose”.

The panel accepted that at the time there had been a culture among officers of sharing information through WhatsApp, a practice, they hoped, had now ceased. With regard to the explicit photo of himself, taken on police premises and in uniform, that constituted gross misconduct because it damaged the reputation of Kent Police and had “made the police look ridiculous”. PC Wooldridge had also opened himself up to a significant risk of blackmail.

ACC Brookes said that PC Wooldridge had been naive, but noted the photo had been sent five years previously and the behaviour had not been repeated. Against that was set the impressive list of character references, his exemplary career before and since the investigation began, including awards and commendations, and the fact that there was a public interest in retaining an officer like PC Wooldridge who had undergone extensive training and had an exceptional level of skills. The panel issued a Final Written Warning, extended for five years, which was the maximum penalty they could impose short of dismissal.

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