A special constable was given a conditional discharge on Wednesday after being found guilty of having photos of women performing sex acts with a horse.
David Baddiel, 33, from Hendon, who runs a tyre-fitting service, was convicted of possessing three images of extreme pornography on his mobile but acquitted of storing them on his computer in a three-day trial.
Baddiel, who runs a tyre-fitting business, said that the material had been sent by a WhatsApp messaging group to his mobile but he had deleted it when he spotted it. He said that he had been unaware that the images were on his computer.
He told the jury at Harrow Crown Court that the WhatsApp group exchanged humorous material. “It was a joke group for people to post jokes,” he said.
While most were in good taste, he said, they were “not all of the time”.
Asked if it was a group for exchanging pornography, he said “absolutely not”.
Baddiel said that he did not read every joke sent by the group, explaining that he was often too busy to look all his text messages and often had 80 to 90 unread messages on his phone.
When he needed to free up disc space on the phone and began deleting messages, he saw two of the photos of the horse “for a second” and had removed them.
Asked about the third image, he said, “I didn’t see it.”
Computer experts who examined his equipment said that the three images had been deleted from the phone but were found in a dropbox folder marked “Camera uploads” on his laptop.
Baddiel said that he had configured his phone to transfer business contacts from his mobile to his computer. But he was unaware of the “Camera uploads” folder and that the computer was also storing images from the phone.
“I didn’t know they had been sent to the computer,” he said.
When prosecuting counsel Wayne Cranston-Morris suggested he had knowingly moved the photos from his phone to his laptop, he said, “No, that’s not correct.”
Computer analyst Keith Bishop told the court that the three pornographic images had been found among “great many photos” apparently uploaded by the computer from the phone.
They appeared to be part of a collection which he assumed to be of “humorous content”, the analyst said.
The three images in question were “not in character with what the user of the computer appeared to be interested in,” he said.
There was no evidence the images had been accessed on the computer.
When Baddiel was asked if he found the images of the women and horse amusing, he answered “No.”
Baddiel, who had pleaded not guilty, was ordered to pay £700 towards prosecution costs.
The images were discovered in July 2014 after he was questioned by police on an unrelated matter.
The jury heard that he had done 400 hours voluntary service with the police in the year before his arrest and was on duty during the London riots four years ago.
