Misconduct hearings for at least 16 Metropolitan Police officers are set to take place before December as the force attempts to accelerate rooting out offenders in its ranks.
This year alone more than 50 officers have faced, or been told they will face, a disciplinary panel for offences including domestic violence, indecent exposure, sexual assault and abusive or cohesive control.
Next month a constable will answer allegations that he assaulted his father-in-law and sent threatening text messages to his wife. In October, another Pc faces questions that he made “several unwanted sexual advances towards a female colleague” while off duty.
The following month a panel will decide whether a detective sergeant “behaved in a discriminatory and disrespectful way towards three officers under his direct line management”, and if a Pc “persistently made attempts to kiss two female colleagues without their consent”.
Met chief Sir Mark Rowley is under increasing pressure to root out unfit staff following a series of scandals, including the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens and the sentencing of serial rapist David Carrick.
This week former constable Adam Provan was jailed for 16 years after raping a colleague and a teenage girl, in a case which revealed that the Met had missed eight opportunities to stop him.
Assistant commissioner Louisa Rolfe said: “In the last year we have grown our professional standards teams to ensure we are robust in investigating matters at the earliest opportunity to rid the Met of those who very clearly should not be a part of policing.”
Those who have already been removed include detective constable Dariusz Alexander, who was sacked without notice on July 18 after he was caught pleasuring himself on Hampstead Heath by a plain clothes officer.
A misconduct hearing on June 8 for former Pc Archit Sharma heard that he allegedly sexually assaulted a female colleague at a police station after she turned him down for date in 2020. He resigned from the force some two years after the initial allegation was made.
Pc Darren Hourigan was found in possession of thousands of pornographic images of children, a panel on June 12 heard. He left the force after pleading guilty to three counts of possessing indecent images in April.
