Vile Essex police officer shared photos of dead women and crash victims to 'show off'
An ex-police officer who resigned in disgrace before being jailed for sharing pictures of dead women tried to blame his actions on other officers, a misconduct hearing heard. An accelerated misconduct hearing for PC Russell Hinkins was heard today (February 3), and he was deemed he would've been sacked without notice if he had not already been sent to prison for what he did.
Hinkins, who resigned from Essex Police in March 2023, was jailed for four years in October 2024 for misconduct in a public office which took place from 2017 to 2020. He accessed unauthorised material and shared unlawfully obtained data from police systems. In addition to "bragging" and "showing off" with sensitive material, the former Essex cop, who lived in Haverhill, Suffolk, also shared sensitive details about a state visit to the UK by former US President Donald Trump, as well as the bodies of two women who had died.
Despite Hinkins resigning from the force, Essex Police held an accelerated misconducting hearing at Police HQ in Chelmsford on Monday. During the hearing, Chief Constable BJ Harrington found all gross misconduct proven against Hinkins in light of his guilty pleas to the criminal charges.
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Chief Constable Harrington said: "It's quite clear from his guilty plea that he is responsible for the actions. It was his emails and his phone, and he sent the information and is culpable for the actions he took. The harm caused is to the reputation in policing and harm clearly to the people that were subject to those photos and people seeing information when they should not have seen it."
The Chief Constable heard that Hinkins had submitted a basis of plea with his guilty pleas, which he said was an "aggravating factor" as he tried to have facts "disputed" but they were "disproven" by the court. DC Claudia Vital told the hearing that Hinkins was trying to say he had "lawful reason" to take the photographs and that he "put his behaviour onto other managers", but the majority of his arguments were rejected by the court.
Chief Constable Harrington said Hinkins had refused to take part in the misconduct proceedings and that while being in prison made him "not a threat" to people currently, if no action was taken, it could allow him to rejoin the police after sentence. He, therefore, placed Hinkins on the College of Policing's barred list.
He said: "It is clear that Mr Hinkins' behaviour was wholly unacceptable and he shared information that he shouldn't have and rightly he has been sent to prison and rightly would have been dismissed had he still been a serving officer. He's done nothing to enhance the standards of policing."
The Chief added that Hinkins had undermined the efforts of the "overwhelming majority of hard working officers in the police".