A former Met Police officer has been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work for possessing child abuse images.  

Benedict Ashton, 38, of College Road in Bromley, was a Special Constable when he was arrested in August 2022 following a referral from the National Crime Agency. 

A Twitter user claimed to be a 13-year-old boy and requested images of children to be sent to him. 

The account, associated email address and IP address were all traced to Ashton and when interviewed he admitted possessing indecent images. 

Ashton appeared at Bromley Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday (September 10, 2024) for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to making eight category B indecent images of a child and 24 category C indecent images of a child. 

District Judge Sarah Turnock gave him a six-month community order including 200 hours of unpaid work and 30 days rehabilitation activity. 

He will be required to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years and will be the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO). 

The SHPO places some restrictions on his internet usage and states he must not have unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18 without approval from his supervising officer or social services department.

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A spokesperson for the Met Police said a misconduct hearing for former-SC Ashton took place on January 30 last year. 

The hearing concluded that he would have been dismissed if he had still been a serving officer. 

He was subsequently added to the College of Policing barred list. 

An outcome notice of the misconduct hearing was not published at the time as it would have been prejudicial to the ongoing criminal proceedings, a Met Police spokesperson said.