A Metropolitan Police commander has been fired after a disciplinary panel found he refused to provide a sample for a drugs test after being accused of smoking cannabis.
Julian Bennett, who joined the Met in 1976, had himself chaired 69 police misconduct hearings between June 2010 and February 2012, leading to the dismissal of 56 officers, earning him the nickname “Sacker.”
Cmdr. Bennett was first investigated after his lodger, Sheila Gomes, claimed he smoked cannabis every day before breakfast and before heading off to work at New Scotland Yard.
The three-person panel rejected that allegation, which dated from late 2019, after examining WhatsApp messages Ms. Gomes sent to a friend which showed her displaying “vitriol” towards Cmdr. Bennett and a “propensity to lie.”
The chairman of the panel, Akbar Khan, said some of Ms. Gomes’s claims were “entirely fabricated” and added: “Overall, the panel finds Sheila Gomes’s account to be unpersuasive and lacking in cogency.”
But the panel found Cmdr. Bennett—who has been suspended on full pay since July 2021—to have committed gross misconduct by failing to provide a urine sample for a drugs test on July 21, 2020.
That finding was despite accepting his excuse—which was that he had refused the drug test because he had taken legal CBD oil to treat a painful medical condition, Bell’s palsy, and feared it would give a positive result.
But the panel said Cmdr. Bennett knew how serious it was to refuse a lawful order to give a urine sample as he was a senior officer who had previously led disciplinary panels.
He had also been advised by a colleague it would be better to take the test and explain any positive result, should it arise.
Wrote the Met’s Drug Strategy
Cmdr. Bennett ironically wrote the Met’s drug strategy for 2017/2021 as a commander for territorial policing.In the drug strategy document, called “Dealing With The Impact Of Drugs On Communities,” he sought to raise, “awareness of the impact of drug misuse.”
But after Ms. Gomes reported Cmdr. Bennett to the police in July 2020, he was asked, in the presence of an assistant commissioner, to provide a sample.
Instead he offered to resign and then asked for a meeting with Dame Cressida Dick, who was the commissioner at the time.
Mark Ley-Morgan, KC, representing the Metropolitan Police, said she refused to allow him to resign, saying it would have smacked of “organised corruption at the highest level” and compromised her integrity.
Mr. Morgan said Cmdr. Bennett chose to involve Dame Cressida, “to secure for himself high-level cover to deflect inevitable criticism and embarrassment that would come his way.”
Magic Mushrooms Allegations Rejected
The panel also dismissed as hearsay, allegations made by Hugo Pereira—who lived with Ms. Gomes in late 2019—that Cmdr. Bennett took magic mushrooms on holiday in France and LSD at a party.Cmdr. Bennett said he planned to appeal against the panel’s decision and his solicitors said in a statement: “The panel found that Cmdr. Bennett did not take any drugs, cannabis or otherwise. The panel found Cmdr. Bennett guilty of refusing to take a drug test, something he had always admitted.”
They added: “The panel also found Cmdr. Bennett guilty of misconduct that he had not been charged with: this concerns an alleged lack of integrity. This finding was despite the prosecution agreeing with the defence that this was not a permissible finding.”
“Since Cmdr. Bennett has been found guilty of a lack of integrity that he had not been charged with, Cmdr. Bennett has no choice but to appeal so that the sanction decision is retaken on a proper rather than improper basis,” the statement concluded.
The Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner, Barbara Gray, said: “Julian Bennett’s actions were deplorable. He was a senior officer and showed complete disregard and disrespect for the standards we must all uphold.”
She said: “The public will justifiably be outraged that any police officer, but particularly one of such a senior rank, refused a lawful order to take a drugs test.”
“Commander Bennett was highly experienced and knew full well what was required of him, yet he made a choice not to co-operate. He could have been in no doubt of the professional standards required as he was responsible for chairing the misconduct hearings of numerous officers between 2010 and 2016,” added Ms. Gray.
“His actions have further damaged not only the public’s trust in us as an organisation, but also the confidence of our own officers and staff in those who lead them,” she added.
