The number of Metropolitan Police officers being dismissed has reached a new high, with more than 100 sacked last year, while there are 344 officers still working for the Met who are awaiting misconduct hearings, according to London’s police service.
Backlog: according to the Met, there are 344 officers serving today who are awaiting misconduct hearings
The figures were published last week, just as the latest c*nstable from Croydon was dismissed from the force following a misconduct hearing for using an “offensive” racist slur to a colleague.
PC Huw Harris, a response officer at Croydon Police Station, reportedly called a colleague a “daft Romanian c**t”. The asterisked word is not thought to be “cult”.
The incident occurred in September 2022 when colleague PC Oana Girboan was struggling with her office computer. When she said she would complain about the comments, Harris responded: “No one is going to believe you.”
Harris told the misconduct hearing panel his comment was an ill-judged attempt at humour, and that he was genuinely remorseful. He said that the pair had worked together well and that other members of the team had previously jokingly called him a “posh” or a “Welsh c**t”.
In its ruling, the panel said: “PC Harris made that comment on the spur of the moment, without any real consideration of what he was going to say.
“However, the panel also found that in view of his training as a police officer and his apparent awareness that such a comment would amount to offensive, racist language, he should have stopped himself from using such language, however spontaneous.”
The panel found that profanities were common at Croydon Police Station. The “racist slur”, the panel said, was “particularly offensive”.
The hearing was told that PC Girboan had been served with disciplinary papers over alleged comments to PC Harris.
While not making any findings on those allegations, the panel found that the claim had “little relevance where PC Harris had admitted to using offensive, discriminatory language”.
The officer, who served in the Met Police since 2018, was dismissed without notice.
The panel said the decision was a matter of “great regret”, as it had heard evidence attesting to his “clear qualities” as a police officer, but that a lesser sanction would undermine confidence in policing.
Guilty: PC Perry Lathwood was found guilty of assault. He may yet appeal
Harris’s dismissal comes just days after PC Perry Lathwood, another c*nstable working in Croydon, was found guilty of assault during the wrongful arrest of Jocelyn Agyemang last July – the bus stop ticket inspection arrest.
The Met is awaiting Lathwood’s decision on whether to appeal his conviction.
Across the Met as a whole, figures show that 113 police officers were dismissed in 2023, or would have been dismissed if they had not already left the force as a result of misconduct or incompetence.
There were 35% more dismissals last year compared to 2022, when 84 officers were fired.
The number of officers who have lost their jobs due to misconduct or incompetence has also doubled since 2020, when only 52 officers were terminated.
The backlog of misconduct cases waiting to be heard has also reached a new high.
Nearly 400 misconduct cases are yet to be heard, up by 42 cases since October. There are 344 officers who are still in the force that are waiting to have their cases heard.
Last year the Casey Review found the Metropolitan Police was institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic and that failings go well beyond the actions of “bad apple” officers.
It is 25 years since the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry found the Met Police to be institutionally racist.
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
