Thursday, April 24, 2025 - A female police officer was caught on camera locking lips with a prisoner, while wearing her police uniform.
Choni Kenny, 27, wore her police uniform to meet Josh Whelan
in Forest Bank Prison, Salford, where he was locked up between 2021 and 2023.
In the waiting room, she kissed him while holding his face
in her hands. This moment, caught on CCTV, helped lead to her being jailed for
nearly four years this week.
Kenny was ‘trusted to uphold the law and protect the public’
when she joined Greater Manchester Police in 2020, Alan Richardson,
of the Crown Prosecution Service, said.
‘Yet her conduct fell far below this when she became
involved with two known criminals’, he said.
After starting a relationship with Whelan while he was
behind bars, Kenny kept in touch using mobile phones she bought and delivered
herself.
Whelan, 28, was found with 20 of them in prison, all of them
supplied by Kenny, who knew Whelan was a drug dealer.
‘You were helping him to supervise that operation from
prison’, Judge Neil Flewitt KC said.
Kenny wasn’t just supplying phones. She also passed on police information – including a victim impact statement – when Whelan was accused of violence against a former partner.
This continued after Whelan was released. The pair were
spotted together in Kenny’s BMW car and at a Nando’s restaurant in November
2022.
Then Kenny went to work and searched for the details of
prisoners released that week.
‘He is a convicted criminal’, Alexander Beevers,
defending Whelan, said.
‘His co-defendant liked that aspect of his character, it
is something which appealed to her and unfortunately, she, in addition and
unusually, had the status of being a police officer.
‘She was willing to make use of that status.’
It’s a pattern she repeated with former schoolmate Rahim
Mottley, 31, who she started a ‘physical but casual’ relationship with after
parting ways with ‘committed criminal’ Whelan.
Mottley was abroad at the time, having moved to Spain
while under investigation by Kenny’s police force.
Aside from spending time with him there, Kenny used
police systems to find information about the investigation into Mottley and
share it with him.
She warned him of a planned police firearms raid. She
promised to find the ‘local grasses. Then she went to a course on handling
police informants.
Mottley was extradited from Spain to the UK in October
2024, three months after the National Crime Agency arrested him.
Claiming the men ‘took advantage’ and ‘exploited’ Kenny’s
willingness to share sensitive information, the judge said: ‘Your actions were
not motivated by a desire for a financial or other advantage or borne out of
any malice.
‘They were a consequence of your naivety, immaturity, and
wish to maintain the friendship of Josh Whelan and Rahim Mottley.’
Speaking after sentencing, Detective Chief Superintendent
Mike Allen said the disgraced officer’s actions ‘plainly amounted to serious
corruption’.
‘It is right that she now contemplates her future from
behind the bars of the prison estate where she is now incarcerated’, he said.
‘Kenny’s jail term is fully deserved – she does not
represent the thousands of professional, honest, hard-working police officers
across Greater Manchester who continue to protect the public every day.’
Kenny, of Tennyson Road in Cheadle, Greater Manchester,
admitted four counts of misconduct in a public office and one count of
conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office.
She was jailed for three years and nine months. She was
previously dismissed from the police after an accelerated misconduct hearing on
April 1.
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