PA MediaThe Metropolitan Police says Londoners “will be as outraged as we are at the utter waste of public funds” after a disciplinary process for one of its senior officers took almost five years.
Cdr Julian Bennett has been dismissed from the force for a second time following a misconduct hearing. He had been suspended from duty since July 2020 after he refused to provide a sample for a drugs test.
He was initially dismissed in October 2023 but he appealed to the Police Appeals Tribunal (PAT) which ordered a new hearing on the basis the panel had ruled on allegations they were not asked to.
Mr Bennett was suspended on full pay during the whole process.
On Tuesday the second panel found the allegation proven against Mr Bennett at the level of gross misconduct.
Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said the former senior officer “knew full well what was required of him, yet he made a choice not to cooperate”.
‘A simple matter’
“I am enormously concerned that almost five years since this incident happened we have only now been able to dismiss Cdr Bennett,” added Assistant Commissioner Twist.
“This should have been a simple matter. Cdr Bennett has never disputed he refused a lawful order to take a drugs test.”
He said greater use by the Met of accelerated misconduct hearings to fast-track cases where the evidence is “irrefutable” would allow the force to dismiss officers “far more quickly”.
“I am confident a situation like Cdr Bennett’s prolonged case would not happen again,” he added.
The original disciplinary panel rejected a claim by Mr Bennett’s former flatmate Sheila Gomes that he had used cannabis daily before breakfast.
But it found that he had breached professional standards when he refused to do a drugs test.
Two further allegations at the first panel – that between 2019 and 2020, while off duty, he had smoked cannabis, and that he gave an untrue explanation for why he refused to take the drugs test – were not proven.
He told the first panel he had been taking CBD (cannabidiol) to treat facial palsy and was worried the sample would come up positive for an innocent reason.
Mr Bennett – who wrote a Met drugs strategy in 2017 – was found in 2023 to have breached force standards for honesty and integrity, orders and instructions and discreditable conduct and was sacked.
His lawyers successfully argued that while he had always admitted refusing to provide a sample, the panel found him guilty of a lack of integrity that he had not been charged with.
Following the PAT’s decision to revoke the dismissal, the Met considered a legal challenge by way of a judicial review but decided that Mr Bennett should face a fresh misconduct hearing.
Following the misconduct panel’s decision and his subsequent dismissal, Mr Bennett will be added to the College of Policing’s barred list.
Those appearing on the list cannot be employed by police and a number of police-related bodies.
