Senior Met police officer who claimed six-figure salary for nearly five years despite refusing to take drugs test is finally sacked
Commander Julian Bennett, who wrote the Met's official drugs strategy and once presided over dozens of misconduct hearings, was dismissed after a disciplinary panel found his refusal to provide a urine sample in July 2020 amounted to gross misconduct.
It marks the second time Bennett has been sacked by the force, after his first dismissal in October 2023 was overturned by the Police Appeals Tribunal (PAT) last summer.
The Met then opted not to pursue a Judicial Review, instead holding a fresh misconduct hearing in September, which again concluded with his dismissal.
Bennett, who joined the force in 1976 and rose to one of its most senior ranks, had been suspended on full pay since 2021.
The case is estimated to have cost the taxpayer around £1.5 million.
Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said: 'I am enormously concerned that almost five years since this incident happened we have only now been able to dismiss Commander Bennett.
'This should have been a simple matter. Commander Bennett has never disputed he refused a lawful order to take a drugs test.
'As a senior officer who had chaired misconduct hearings, Commander Bennett was highly experienced and knew full well what was required of him, yet he made a choice not to co-operate.
'He has been suspended on full pay for an extraordinary length of time. I am sure Londoners will be as outraged as we are at the utter waste of public funds spent paying a senior officer to sit at home suspended and not work.'
Bennett was asked to provide a urine sample on July 21, 2020, after being reported by a former flatmate, but refused in the presence of an assistant commissioner.
Instead, he offered to resign immediately and requested a meeting with then-Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick.
He later claimed he had been taking cannabidiol (CBD) for facial palsy and feared a positive test result might wrongly suggest drug misuse.
The panel concluded that his refusal breached standards relating to honesty and integrity, discreditable conduct, and orders and instructions.
Bennett's dismissal means he will now be added to the College of Policing's barred list, preventing him from holding any policing role in the future.
He had previously faced allegations of cannabis use made by his former flatmate, Sheila Gomes, who claimed he had used the drug daily before leaving for work at Scotland Yard.
However, a three-person panel rejected that claim, as well as an allegation that Bennett gave an untruthful explanation for refusing the test.
During tribunal proceedings, Mark Ley-Morgan KC, representing the Metropolitan Police, said it would have 'smacked of organised corruption at the highest level' if Bennett had been allowed to resign and avoid the disciplinary process.
Bennett's barrister, John Beggs KC, dismissed the allegations by Ms Gomes, calling her a 'liar' and a 'fantasist' who he claimed wanted to write a book and profit from her accusations.
The tribunal heard she had a history of litigation, including in her native Portugal.
Despite being cleared of using cannabis, Bennett's refusal to take the test was considered serious enough to warrant dismissal.
At the time of the request, he was still a serving officer and had played a central role in shaping the Met's anti-drug policies.
His own 2017–2021 strategy document, Dealing With The Impact Of Drugs On Communities, aimed to raise awareness of the dangers of drug misuse.
Between 2010 and 2012, Bennett chaired 74 misconduct hearings involving 90 officers, resulting in 56 dismissals.
Twist added: 'While the Met is not responsible for all the delays in Commander Bennett's matter, we are also working hard to expedite cases and cut bureaucracy.
'I am confident a situation like Commander Bennett's prolonged case would not happen again.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
26 minutes ago
- The Independent
Aristocrat Constance Marten launches bid to overturn conviction for killing baby while on the run
Aristocrat Constance Marten has launched a bid to overturn her conviction for killing her newborn daughter while on the run from police. Baby Victoria perished in a 'thin and flimsy' tent after Marten and her partner Mark Gordon, a convicted rapist, took her off-grid to stop the infant from being taken into care. The parents are facing years in jail after they were both convicted of gross negligence manslaughter in a retrial this summer. In a separate trial last year, the couple were also found guilty of concealing their daughter's birth, child cruelty and perverting the course of justice by hiding her body in a rubbish-filled plastic shopping bag. An appeal bid following their first trial was previously rejected. However Marten, 38, has now lodged a fresh application at the Court of Appeal seeking permission to appeal her manslaughter conviction, according to court officials. Over the course of the two drawn-out trials, it emerged the couple had carefully concealed Marten's pregnancy with Victoria – their fifth child – before going on the run to stop her from being taken into care. Their first four children had been removed by a family court – a decision which the parents claimed was a miscarriage of justice driven by a 'corrupt' social services system. She gave birth in secret in a holiday cottage before they frantically travelled the country with the baby hidden inside Marten's coat – at first by road and later in taxis paid for with cash from her trust fund – after their car caught fire on the M61. They decided to settle 'off-grid' in the South Downs with little more than some sleeping bags and a cheap tent amid a nationwide manhunt after police found the remains of a placenta in their burnt-out car. But Victoria died after Marten fell asleep with her zipped inside her jacket as they sheltered in the tent in January 2023. After the unanimous guilty verdict for manslaughter was read out in July, Marten, wearing a blue top and dark trousers, later shouted 'it's a scam' from the dock. Gordon, 51, has previously served 22 years in a Florida prison for raping a woman armed with a knife and hedge clippers in a 1989 home invasion when he was 14 years old. A further charge against Gordon for failing to comply with his sex offender notification requirements while on the run was this week dropped by prosecutors. Prosecutor Joel Smith KC told the Old Bailey that in light of his recent conviction for manslaughter, the Crown Prosecution Service took the view that it was no longer in the public interest to pursue the charge. Gordon, who appeared by video-link from Belmarsh prison unrepresented by a lawyer, seemed uncertain when asked to enter a plea. Judge Mark Lucraft KC told him: 'If you plead not guilty that will bring proceedings to an end.' Gordon then responded: 'Of course, not guilty.' Mr Smith then offered no evidence and invited Judge Lucraft to formally acquit Gordon. The parents are due to be sentenced on 15 September.
The Independent
26 minutes ago
- The Independent
Men, you've really got to hand it to the porn-blockers…
Poor old Pornhub. The UK's most visited pornography site is having a barren August and not just because its (mostly male) users are on holiday with the family. Following the introduction of new age verification rules, as part of the Online Safety Act – which requires users to prove how old they are by entering credit card details or using their bank account, mobile phone contract or facial recognition – traffic to Pornhub has almost halved. In the fortnight between July 24 (the day before the new legislation came in) and August 8, visitors to the site fell by 47 per cent, according to data experts Similarweb. Other adult sites have also reported drops in UK traffic. OnlyFans is apparently down 10 per cent, but that could be down to having banned Bonnie Blue. No word yet on whether the amount of laundry being done in the middle of the night has fallen, too. Let me be the first to say a tentative woohoo. I previously wrote in these pages how, ahead of the age verification kicking in, online forums had been flooded with men (and 73 per cent of UK porn users are male) angry that the trifling matter of keeping children safe was getting in the way of their unrestricted pleasure. Now? It seems possible that at least some of those chaps have cut themselves off. Sounds painful. If the side effect of protecting society's most vulnerable – the average age that children are thought to first view explicit porn in this country is just 13 – is that some men have had their own online habit broken? That's surely something to celebrate. University College London academics might say it can take between 18 to 255 days to form a new habit, but I bet their study didn't take into account the prospect of having to put your real details into a porn site and the potential for data leaks. I've interviewed porn-addicted men, who told me about the mindless scrolling, almost numb to what they were seeing, searching for ever darker material to get a kick. They wanted to stop but felt unable to tear themselves away – maybe the thought of having to enter their long card number was the breaker some have been waiting for. Not unlike (indulge me) my friend whose unstoppable M&S fashion habit was cut off by the cyberattack the retailer experienced this summer and which denied her access to its website for several weeks. Look, I'm not naive. I do realise that a lot of Pornhub's users will now be using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), which disguise the location of their IP address and were the most downloaded thing on the UK Apple App Store in the days after the new rules came in. That makes data on UK visits to porn sites hard to pin down. Nor do we know exactly which users have stopped scrolling. Is it those accessing the most violent pornography day after day? Or the more casual viewer who doesn't rely on porn enough to bother going through age checks – easier just to knock it on the head. Still, I can't help wondering whether these men might not come to thank the likes of Baroness Kidron, who campaigned tirelessly to get this legislation passed. She's likened it to making children 'climb out of the window', rather than just giving them unrestricted access. If a few men are also reluctant to shimmy down the drainpipe? That's surely progress, however angry they might be.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
I used to get riotously drunk with my brilliant sister-in-law... but now she's become a tradwife. This is how it's ruined our relationship
'Don't worry about bringing anything, except maybe a pudding. Oh, and it's just us, so don't go to any trouble,' my sister-in-law, Isabel, says breezily when we confirm plans for a long overdue summer barbecue. But then we arrive to find their vast kitchen covered with the sort of spread that wouldn't look out of place in Good Housekeeping magazine, and my heart sinks. I sheepishly hand over the slightly soggy boxed cheesecake and tub of creme fraiche I've picked up from the Co-op.
