3 days ago
Met Police officers brawl in street after drunken boat party
A group of Metropolitan Police officers have been found guilty of fighting with a group of Romanians after the force's Christmas boat party.
Kellsey Millar, 32, Alex Fackerell 31, Jack Sparkes, 34, Max Michaels-Dubois, 33, and Daniel Dean, 38, had been drinking heavily before they boarded a river boat in London for their Christmas party on December 1, 2023.
The officers, all attached to the Met's Territorial Support Group, have been on 'restricted duties' since the incident. The Met said that 'misconduct proceedings' will be progressed now that convictions have been issued.
Officers became 'aggressive' and started fighting
The five officers had headed to the South Bank after their boat docked, where Fackerell got into a fight with a group of people waving Romanian flags, Inner London Crown Court heard.
While he was being treated at a nearby restaurant after the fight, a different group of Romanians walked past and asked if he was alright in a mocking tone. Fackerell's colleagues then became aggressive and began fighting the group, with CCTV showing some of the officers throwing punches and pushing a man, causing him to fall backwards.
Millar was blocked from entering the restaurant and grabbed Jheanelle Samuels, a female security guard, and kneed her in her left thigh, jurors were told, causing Samuels to punch the officer in self-defence.
Sparkes, Michaels-Dubois and Dean were convicted of one count of affray. Millar was found guilty of one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, but was acquitted of affray.
Fackerell was found not guilty of affray.
Judge Rosina Cottage ordered pre-sentence reports and said 'all options are open, including imprisonment'. The four convicted officers were released on bail and will be sentenced at the court on October 22.
Men 'presented no threat' to officer
When cross-examined, Millar said she had an altercation with two males because she believed that they were threatening her and her friends, but she couldn't recall how drunk she was.
She said: 'I then have a memory of having an interaction with a male and pushing him back and shouting at him to go away. I was scared.'
Millar explained that she had felt threatened by the two men that the CCTV showed that she had an altercation with. She said: 'He was quite unsavoury to me. He displayed threatening body language. On the same basis as before I did push the male back to make space between myself and him.'
Philip Stott, prosecuting, pointed out that on the CCTV the two men can be seen with their hands up and claimed that they 'presented no threat' to Millar.
She said that she did not remember striking Ms Samuels with her knee, but she accepts that she did have an altercation with the guard.
Mr Stott asked her if she had failed to call the police because she knew that it was her and her colleagues who had started the fight. 'Is it because you and your colleagues knew you had gone over the line? You also knew that you had been injured and you wanted to record them to protect yourself if things went any further?'
Millar replied: 'I don't believe that was the case, no.'
She said that her supervisor called her the next day to tell her that she knew she had been injured, and so she thought it would be dealt with.
'No excuse for their actions'
None of the Romanians gave evidence in the trial, which relied on CCTV footage.
Earlier Rebecca Dagett, who is defending Michaels-Dubois, asked DC Michaela Pearce if the police had taken steps to identify anyone else involved in the brawl, who said that no one came forward as part of an appeal.
Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove, who leads the Met's Task Force, said: 'What was supposed to be a celebratory Christmas social event turned into a protracted altercation that saw officers involved in drunken fighting with numerous members of the public.
'The court did not dispute that before and during the incident, a number of officers were themselves assaulted and injured. But that is no excuse for their subsequent actions which showed a serious lack of self-control and fell well below the standards that we and the public rightly expect officers to hold themselves to, both on and off duty.
'The officers have all been on restricted duties, with misconduct proceedings paused, pending this trial. Those proceedings will now be progressed and the officers' status reviewed in light of the convictions.'
