Ex-firearms and royal protection police officer from Shropshire guilty of revenge porn probe misconduct

A former royal protection officer from Shropshire who “pestered” a revenge porn victim and kept an intimate video and naked images of her on his work phone has been found guilty of misconduct charges.

Ex-Met and West Mercia Police constable Mark Cranfield sent social media messages, including one discussing his sex life, and a friend request to the highly vulnerable woman, a two-week trial was told.

Jurors at Birmingham Crown Court were told Cranfield made his attraction to the woman obvious when she made a complaint and provided evidence to police in 2018, telling her: “I’m glad I got to see the pictures.”

Cranfield, who was based at Ludlow police station in Shropshire, was convicted of two counts of misconduct in a public office and an offence of accessing computer records, including the woman’s phone number, without authorisation.

The charges alleged that he had inappropriate contact with the victim, sent her messages about his marital sex life, and forwarded intimate video and images to a WhatsApp account which has yet to be traced.

The former officer was cleared of a third misconduct offence relating to the social media friend request.

He will be sentenced on February 13.

Jurors deliberated over three days before unanimously convicting the 52-year-old of three of the four offences he faced, despite his claims that he had no sexual interest in the woman and believed he had deleted the images and video, which were found on his work phone more than two years after the inquiry.

Cranfield, of Bromfield, near Ludlow, denied he had been “titillated” by the video, said he had contacted the woman via a social media messaging app to discuss “everyday” issues, and had only sent further messages in panic because his wife wrongly believed he was having an affair.

In response to a question asked by a juror, Cranfield said he had never had an online conversation with the complainant about his sex life with his wife “at any length” but conceded that he had discussed his marital sex life being “ruined”.

“That’s just an off-hand comment during the conversation,” he told the jury. “It was just a stupid comment. It was light-hearted banter.”

Prosecutors said the constable misconducted himself by sending the friend request minutes after the woman left a police station, where he had downloaded video given to him as evidence.

Opening the Crown’s case last week, prosecutor Simon Rippon said the offences came to light in April 2021, when Cranfield’s work phone was seized from his locker without warning for reasons entirely unconnected to the case.

Mr Rippon said two photographs of the complainant were found on the phone, with video of the woman stripping and engaging in a sexual act.

Other images of the woman wearing clothing had been deleted, the court heard.

Mr Rippon said: “The prosecution case is he (Cranfield) took an improper sexual interest in her.

“The defendant, plainly acting as a police officer, started to ask very intimate questions about what she was doing and wanted her to share with him graphic details.”

The prosecutor said the complainant signed a statement and “by the time she got home about 15 minutes later” Cranfield had sent her a friend request, which she declined.

The officer then sent further messages “pestering” the woman, asking how she was and saying his sex life with his wife “had gone out of the window”.

The woman then retracted her complaint relating to revenge porn, Mr Rippon said, because “she just didn’t want to deal with this defendant any more”.

The jury of four women and eight men was told Cranfield’s wife found out in 2019 that he had been messaging the woman and he “begged” the complainant to tell his spouse that “nothing had happened”.

Cranfield also deleted one of two Facebook accounts he had, to cover his tracks.

The trial heard he had forwarded the images to another phone via WhatsApp shortly after the woman retracted her complaint to police.

A statement read to the trial during the defence case said Cranfield, who was a constable for 27 years, spent the majority of his service with the Met on royal protection duties, and had also been an armed officer with the West Mercia force.

Following the verdicts, Cranfield sobbed audibly in the dock as his barrister, Liz Power, applied for the case to be adjourned for pre-sentence reports.

Judge Kerry Maylin then asked if “bearing in mind what I can see” Cranfield had someone to support him, and was told the officer remains married but did not want his wife to attend court due to the stress of the case.

Granting unconditional bail, Judge Maylin said: “The fact that I am adjourning for a pre-sentence report is not an indication of the likely sentence.

“The case law indicates that the most likely outcome is one of an immediate custodial sentence.”