Police<\/a> (BTP) used offensive language in a WhatsApp group he was in with other police officers.<\/p>\nIn a WhatsApp conversation on 31 December 2024 about someone winning a bottle of whisky with the security tag still attached, Luker wrote: \u201cWas this a raffle on a certain kind of site? Lots of mobile type homes? Lots of \u2018Dags\u2019\u201d. He then added: \u201cYou are the MSOC pikey liaison.\u201d<\/p>\n
The misconduct panel during a tribunal concluded that these were \u201cdeliberate messages that clearly link the Irish Traveller community to acts of theft\u201d.<\/p>\n
The word \u201cdags\u201d is believed to be a reference to a scene in the Guy Ritchie film Snatch in which Brad Pitt plays a Gypsy. During the scene, the character played by Stephen Graham struggles to understand Pitt\u2019s accent when he says \u201cdogs\u201d. The panel found that the word was \u201cderogatory\u201d because it refers to an instance when a Gypsy character\u2019s accent is \u201cmocked\u201d.<\/p>\n
Luker was a member of a WhatsApp group called \u201cSelbie Gumshoes\u201d with other members of the Major Serious and Organised Crime (MSOC) team.<\/p>\n
During another WhatsApp conversation on 17 March 2025, Luker wrote: \u201cOff to find some scrap metal, lead roofing and cable\u201d, in response to a video sent by another group member of \u201cPaddy Day parade on Inishbofin\u201d alongside the message \u201cJust like a Disney World Parade. They know how to put on a show\u201d.<\/p>\n
The panel said that Luker\u2019s message was \u201cdeliberate and discriminatory\u201d because it linked the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community to theft.<\/p>\n
He also used the word \u201cpikey\u201d again in messages that were sent on 27 March 2025.<\/p>\n
During the tribunal, the panel heard that Luker accepted that \u201cscrap metal, lead roofing and cable\u201d was a joke to associate theft with the Irish Traveller community but said he did not intend for the word \u201cpikey\u201d in the messages to be offensive.<\/p>\n
Luker was one of the first responders to the terror attack on London Bridge which took place on 3 June 2017. He said that one of his coping mechanisms for dealing with the day was the use of humour, the panel heard.<\/p>\n
The panel concluded that DC Luker is not \u201cinherently racist\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an experienced BTP police officer used to dealing with a whole range of people, the panel found that, on the balance of probabilities, he probably would have known that this was an especially offensive use of language directed towards members of a minority community,\u201d the panel wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A police officer who was one of the first on the scene of the 2017 London Bridge terror…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-438839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}