Police officer quits before misconduct hearing over anti-LGBTQ+ and anti‑immigration posts

A Bedfordshire Police officer quit the force just days before a gross‑misconduct hearing over posts he shared on X that were judged to be abusive, insulting and offensive towards LGBTQ+ people and other groups.

Gary Lorenc, who used the handle ‘Bootneck77’ on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform, was found by the gross‑misconduct hearing’s panel to have to have breached the standards of professional behaviour for authority respect and courtesy, equality and diversity, orders and instructions and discreditable conduct.

The hearing, which Lorenc did not attend, took place at Lysander House in Tempsford on 2 February and heard how he shared discriminatory posts, political views and sent abusive messages to serving MPs throughout 2023 and 2024 using the account.

On 1 June 2023 Lorenc responded to a post shared by Glamour Magazine about pregnant trans man Logan Brown, in which he misgendered Brown: “Just hope they don’t allow [him] to keep the poor child.”

The panel said the “only natural meaning of your reply was that Logan Brown was unfit to be a parent
due to being trans”.

Further to this, on 24 July 2023 Lorenc quoted his own reply to the Glamour Magazine post and wrote: “If you tried going in the women’s changing rooms when my wife and daughter were in there, I would have to stop you im (sic) afraid, not worth the risk to (sic) many sex offenders look like you and do it just to get access if I hurt your feelings tough.”

In another post, shared on 21 June 2024, Lorenc responded “Good boy” to a video of a dog defecating on a Pride flag.

Further posts included calling former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a “terrorist supporter”, labelled an incident at Manchester Airport involving an Asian man “what you get when you allow cousins to breed” and responded to the question ‘Do you believe Derek Chauvin was guilty of killing George Floyd?’ with “Not at all”.

The panel concluded that these, and other, social media posts both individually or collectively were in breach
of the Policy and/or brought Bedfordshire Police into disrepute.

They added that the social media posts would likely give the impression to members of the public that if they knew he was a constable that these social media posts would interfere with the impartial discharge of his duties.

Panel chair, assistant chief constable Vaughan Lukey, said: “The messages when considered together presented a disturbing picture of this former officer’s views, which clearly demonstrated his prejudice based on ethnicity, sex and sexual orientation which are incompatible for any serving member of the police service.

“His views displayed attitudes that were the antithesis of the fairness and impartiality required of police officers and therefore unacceptable.”

The hearing ruled that had Lorenc still been serving as an officer for Bedfordshire Police he would have been dismissed without notice.

Lorenc will be added to the College of Policing Barred list, which will ban him from returning to policing or similar professions in the future.