Choni Kenny, 27, wore her police uniform to meet Josh Whelan in Forest Bank Prison, Salford, where he was locked up between 2021 and 2023.
Choni Kenny, a female police officer was caught on camera locking lips with a prisoner, while wearing her police uniform.
The 27-year-old Kenny wore her police uniform to meet Josh Whelan in Forest Bank Prison, Salford, where he was locked up between 2021 and 2023.
In the waiting room, she kissed him while holding his face in her hands. This moment, caught on CCTV, helped lead to her being jailed for nearly four years this week.
Kenny was ‘trusted to uphold the law and protect the public’ when she joined Greater Manchester Police in 2020, Alan Richardson, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said.
‘Yet her conduct fell far below this when she became involved with two known criminals’, he said.
After starting a relationship with Whelan while he was behind bars, Kenny kept in touch using mobile phones she bought and delivered herself.
Whelan, 28, was found with 20 of them in prison, all of them supplied by Kenny, who knew Whelan was a drug dealer.
‘You were helping him to supervise that operation from prison’, Judge Neil Flewitt KC said.
Kenny wasn’t just supplying phones. She also passed on police information – including a victim impact statement – when Whelan was accused of violence against a former partner.
This continued after Whelan was released. The pair were spotted together in Kenny’s BMW car and at a Nando’s restaurant in November 2022.
Then Kenny went to work and searched for the details of prisoners released that week.
‘He is a convicted criminal’, Alexander Beevers, defending Whelan, said.
‘His co-defendant liked that aspect of his character, it is something which appealed to her and unfortunately she, in addition and unusually, had the status of being a police officer.
‘She was willing to make use of that status.’
It’s a pattern she repeated with former schoolmate Rahim Mottley, 31, who she started a ‘physical but casual’ relationship with after parting ways with ‘committed criminal’ Whelan.
Mottley was abroad at the time, having moved to Spain while under investigation by Kenny’s police force.
Aside from spending time with him there, Kenny used police systems to find information about the investigation into Mottley and share it with him.
She warned him of a planned police firearms raid. She promised to find the ‘local grasses’. Then she went to a course on handling police informants.
Mottley was extradited from Spain to the UK in October 2024, three months after the National Crime Agency arrested him.
Claiming the men ‘took advantage’ and ‘exploited’ Kenny’s willingness to share sensitive information, the judge said: ‘Your actions were not motivated by a desire for a financial or other advantage or borne out of any malice.
‘They were a consequence of your naivety, immaturity, and wish to maintain the friendship of Josh Whelan and Rahim Mottley.’
Speaking after sentencing, Detective Chief Superintendent Mike Allen said the disgraced officer’s actions ‘plainly amounted to serious corruption’.
‘It is right that she now contemplates her future from behind the bars of the prison estate where she is now incarcerated’, he said.
‘Kenny’s jail term is fully deserved – she does not represent the thousands of professional, honest, hard-working police officers across Greater Manchester who continue to protect the public every day.’
Kenny, of Tennyson Road in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, admitted four counts of misconduct in a public office and one count of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office.
She was jailed for three years and nine months. She was previously dismissed from the police after an accelerated misconduct hearing on April 1.
