Police misconduct hearing for Tom Beardsworth’s client ends with submission of no case to answer.

A Police Misconduct Panel has found that Tom Beardsworth’s client, a police sergeant of more than 20 years’ experience in the Metropolitan Police, had no case to answer in respect of charges of discreditable and dishonest conduct.

The sergeant met the complainant, at the time a PCSO, in the former’s capacity as an LGBT ‘lead’. The sergeant was then said to have formed an inappropriate sexual relationship with the complainant and lied about it when interviewed a decade later.

The complainant was cross-examined over two days to the effect that he had lied about almost every aspect of his acquaintance with the sergeant and about what he had told colleagues in the decade before making a formal complaint. On the third day the Panel acceded to the sergeant’s submission that the credibility of the complainant’s account was so exceptionally low such that the proceedings should end immediately.

Counsel was instructed by Elizabeth Fox at JMW Solicitors.