Former Police Scotland officer jailed after harassing couple

A former police officer who harassed a man and his wife for several months by hacking his social media has been jailed.

26-year-old Ashley Boyd will spend 11 months behind bars after she admitted stalking and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

She targeted a former colleague, a man she had worked with at a Boots store prior to joining Police Scotland.

Boyd hacked into his social media pages and his email, posting an derogatory message from his Twitter account purporting to be about his wife.

The Crown Office said Boyd accessed his Facebook account and - while pretending to be him - held conversations with his friends and pretended that he was unhappy in his marriage.

Boyd, who was a serving police officer in Glasgow at the time, also cancelled a hospital appointment for the man's wife.

In order to try and evade the police investigation into her behaviour, Boyd convinced a friend to confess to hacking the Twitter account and posting the offensive message.

She was sentenced to 11 months in prison and given a five year non-harassment order at Glasgow Sheriff Court, the Crown Office said.

Les Brown, head of the criminal allegations against the police division, said: “Ashley Boyd placed an innocent couple in a state of fear and alarm through her criminal behaviour.

“There was no justification for the abusive messages and the invasion of their personal lives.

“Boyd's decision to exploit a friend to evade investigation and prosecution exacerbated the tremendously difficult situation she had created.''

The offences happened between March 2015 and October 2016, prosecutors said.

It is understood Boyd resigned from the police force during the investigation