Met Police officers kept photos of dead body on personal phones

Two Metropolitan Police officers have been handed final written warnings after a misconduct hearing found they had used their personal mobile phones to take and store photographs of evidence, including images of a deceased man.
The case has prompted a public apology from Scotland Yard, and exposed what officers themselves described as a routine practice of using private devices for police work because force-issued phones were considered inadequate for taking good-quality images.
PC Billy Manning was found to have kept a photograph of a dead man on his iPhone, which he later showed to fellow officers during a training session in Shoreditch. PC Frankie Jordan, who appeared alongside him at the hearing, was also found to have stored evidential images on his personal phone.
The hearing was told that Manning had been called to an assisted living residence for elderly people in Dalston, east London, where officers discovered a resident who had died “some days or weeks earlier”. A colleague, PC Zak Malik, used his own phone to photograph the body and sent the images to Manning via WhatsApp, reportedly so he could compress the files before uploading them to the Met’s internal system.
Although Manning deleted the pictures from his phone’s photo library, he did not remove them from WhatsApp. When Malik later flagged the issue, Manning is said to have responded with three laughing face emojis.
The following year, during a training course at a Shoreditch police station, Manning brought up the incident while discussing difficult callouts with colleagues. According to evidence presented to the panel, he told them: “I’ve been to a bad one, I will show you the picture.” Two officers who saw the image said they felt “very uncomfortable” and reported him.
Manning was subsequently arrested and his phone seized. Investigators found further photographs relating to victims, suspects and other evidence. He told officers that what he had done was “common practice”.
The investigation also uncovered that Manning had created a WhatsApp group titled “Away Days”, which the panel heard contained sexist, homophobic, ableist and transphobic content.
Jordan, meanwhile, denied any wrongdoing. He told the hearing he had not deliberately kept the images on his phone and had simply forgotten they were there, insisting that officers “routinely took photos of evidence on their personal mobile phones”.
The panel heard that internal guidance on the use of personal devices for police work was “confused and conflicting”, with even members of the Met’s senior leadership team said to have interpreted the rules differently.
Following the hearing, which ran between November 2025 and February 2026, Manning was issued with a final written warning for two years, while Jordan received a final warning for three years. No criminal charges were brought against either officer.
In a statement, a Met spokesperson said: “The actions of PC Manning and PC Jordan were highly inappropriate and fell below the standards expected of them as an officer… We would like to apologise to those affected by the officers’ actions and for any distress caused.”