Police officers in Derby played ‘crass’ game with sex worker photos

Police officers used photos of sex workers to play a “crass and inappropriate” game of “snog, marry or avoid”, an employment tribunal heard.

The game came to light as part of an unsuccessful claim of racial discrimination brought by former probationary police constable Shafarat Mohammed against Derbyshire Police.

Mr Mohammed sued the force claiming colleagues had discriminated against him when he served as an officer in Derby between March 2022 and his resignation in October that year.

A report on the findings of the tribunal, published on Thursday, said Mr Mohammed, an Asian Muslim, alleged he was subjected to acts of direct discrimination because of his race and religious beliefs.

Among his claims were that, in May or June 2023, a colleague asked him to look at pictures of black female sex workers and comment on whether he liked them.

The claimant said the game, where players pick people they would prefer to kiss, marry or avoid, left him offended and embarrassed and was racially motivated.

In a report, tribunal judge Stephen Shore said the game could have constituted sexual harassment but Mr Mohammed had not made such a claim.

The judge said: “The ‘game’ was crass and inappropriate. It casts no one who participated in it in a good light.”

A panel, led by the judge, dismissed all of Mr Mohammed’s claims which also included that he had been ostracised and excluded from team and social events and that colleagues ordered and ate bacon sandwiches, knowing he was a Muslim, to further exclude him.

Mr Mohammed said he had also been called a “Road Man”, a slang term for a drug dealer, by a colleague during one of his first shifts at Pear Tree Police Station in Derby in March 2022.

The panel heard evidence from the complainant during a five-day hearing at the Nottingham Tribunal Hearing Centre, in July last year.

“Our analysis of the facts of each, claim led us to the conclusion that many of the claims were weak and not founded in fact,” the panel’s report said.

The panel report said Mr Mohammed had “weakened his case by withdrawing allegations” and had retrospectively refitted facts to fit his discrimination claims.

The panel also found he had fabricated facts to bolster his claims, some of which were contradicted by his own contemporaneous statements.

The panel said evidence presented to the tribunal found the claimant “struggled” as a probationary officer while working at a “pressurised” police station.

Derbyshire Police has been contacted for comment.