Police officer loses promotion over gay Facebook entries
Bedfordshire police have withdrawn a job offer to an Inspector with the British Transport police after discovering he was the subject of a written warning over his Facebook profile.
Chris Dreyfus, who is gay, had been offered the rank of Chief Inspector, but a background check revealed the disciplinary action.
On his Facebook page Inspector Dreyfus had posted graphic details of his sex life and photos of him posing in his uniform at a tube station in London.
The British Transport police issued a written warning.
Bedfordshire Police told the BBC:
“After the interview we ran routine background checks and we were told he had a live sanction against him.
“Therefore we felt unable to proceed with the job offer.”
Inspector Dreyfus, currently the British Transport Police’s head of royalty and government protection, was unavailable for comment.
Social networking sites have proved troublesome to other people in recent months, as prospective employers and journalists alike consult them to get a truer picture of employees or people in the public eye.
In January the Facebook profile of Bhutto Zardari, son of the murdered Pakistani opposition leader, Benazir, was highlighted by The Mail on Sunday.
The 19 year old, whose profile was later removed, made references to being “hungover”, despite alcohol being banned under Islamic law and is friends with a bisexual couple, despite lesbians facing a 100 lashes in Pakistan.
In October a young Conservative student leader was thrown out of the party and suspended from his university after making homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks on Facebook.
Fergus Bowman, 22, a second-year politics and religion student at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), had earlier resigned as chairman of the student union’s Conservative Future branch.
He was listed on Facebook as leader of a group called “Homos burn in hell.”
Their homepage showed a member of the Klu Klux Klan standing in front of a burning cross and near it were the words “Everyone knows homosexuality is against God’s wishes.”
Last month the gay son of disgraced MP Derek Conway was vilified about his sexuality.
The Daily Mail said: “he describes himself on the internet as ‘blond, bouncy and one for the boys,'” while The Independent revealed its source:
“His Facebook diary describes him “hotting it up cowboy style” at Prince Harry’s favourite watering hole, Mahiki, on the Thursday before the story broke.
“A day later he was “strutting out la disco” at Maya in Soho. By the weekend he was in the “recovery position” but by Monday was once more “looking hot.””
Mr Conway announced he would be stepping down from Parliament at the next election after being censured by the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee for paying his son Frederick £50,000 of public money for “work” as a researcher.
No evidence of any work done was discovered. At the time his son was a fulltime undergraduate student at Newcastle University.
