Cop who wrote Met's anti-drug strategy 'smoked cannabis every day before work'
A Police Commander who drew up the Metropolitan Constabulary’s anti-drug strategy smoked weed every day before breakfast and work, a misconduct panel heard.
Commander Julian Bennett's former flatmate told the hearing the man regularly smoked. Sheila Gomes told the misconduct panel she became so infuriated by Cmmdr Bennett's habit that she could not even hang out her laundry to dry.
Cmmdr Bennett, who wore a grey suit with black glasses at the hearing, is accused of gross misconduct for smoking cannabis and taking LSD and magic mushrooms while on a holiday in France. He is also accused of refusing to take a drug test, and then lying about why. The employee argues he was taking CBD products from Holland and Barrett.
Ms Gomes, a key witness, claimed she watched Cmmdr Bennett act aggressively. He would allegedly hide the drugs in his room, but on one occasion he walked out in the morning and left a packet of marijuana on the table.
Exasperated by her flatmate’s alleged substance abuse, Ms Gomes, who paid £640 a month to rent a room in Cmmdr Bennett’s flat, said she took the opportunity to photograph the drugs to send it to her friend, Mario Saraiva. Ms Gomes said she occupied the room for just two months after she met the cop through her friend Hugo Pereira, who also lived in the officer’s flat and who allegedly smoked weed with him.
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The key witness, a senior nurse in a London hospital, said she paid Cmmdr Bennet every two weeks for her stay between October and December 2019. She also claimed he pretended he was a lawyer for years. In light of Ms Gomes’ report, the top-flight cop who drew up the Met’s anti-drug strategy was hauled in front of his colleagues and lawfully ordered to take a drug test on July 21, 2020.
In response, he said he would resign, and said: “I’m concerned that because of my facial palsy illness, and that has taken CBD cannabidoil as a treatment for my face, this may cause my test to be positive. I do not wish for that to happen and cause embarrassment for the MPS, as a senior officer. I appreciate this is a lawful order and I mean no disrespect."
The Portuguese woman, who moved to the UK in 2014 and lived in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire for two months, wore a pink cardigan and black top as she told the panel about the officer’s “erratic” and “annoying” behaviour.
She said: “Of course, I heard about him a lot before I met him personally, because Hugo was telling me a lot about him. It happened after he had his problem with his face paralysis. Hugo asked me to go to where they were living, Julian’s flat actually – [Hugo] was doing a make-up session so he wanted me to join and stay there, just stay around. Then Julian when he finished his work, that’s how I met him originally."
Recalling life when she first moved in with the officer, who she then believed was a lawyer, she said: “I will not say they were doing the parties that I was complaining of during my second month of staying there, but there was daily cannabis smoking, which was very annoying to me. Daily, daily.
“Julian was aggressive at a certain point, he was in my opinion withdrawing from the weed. The daily smoking of cannabis was annoying to me, when I realised they were doing that. From the start that part was already annoying me."
She said she would sometimes see the top cop smoking weed when she arrived back from her hospital shifts that started at 7pm or 8pm and ran until 8.15am to 8.30am. She said: “He was working daytime, I could find him sometimes in the morning. He could leave at 10 or 11, or early morning, so there were days that we were finding each other.”
Asked when she saw him smoking, she said: “Before his breakfast, and before he will leave and go to work. I could see sometimes that when I was arriving, it was there. “I never saw him eat before he went to work. In January 2020 I started investigating, or trying to investigate, who was Julian Bennett, after I left. I found his behaviour erratic while I was living with him, so something was wrong.
“Why do I have to live in a place where there is cannabis in the air, why do I have to breathe that? I’m just trying to breathe oxygen. When I am going to dry my clothes in the lounge, when they were smoking daily?" She repeated that he smoked weed before work: “I can say, he was the one who was having the cannabis, I would say a few times during the day if he will be at home.
"If he was going to work at least before going to work and arriving at home again. He was very addicted. The moment he was leaving his bathroom he was already coming out with the cannabis, he was very addicted.
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"I was not expecting them to smoke cannabis, and I was not expecting them to smoke so often, their addiction was really serious. That’s not my lifestyle, and it became really chaotic, it was always parties and no one was cleaning anything. "It was a joint environment, when people smoke they become lazy, there was no point in staying there."
She described the day that she announced she would leave: “I was resting before my shift and my phone was already on silent, and I got a message saying okay somebody’s coming tonight here.
"The people were going there for dinners, they were also smoking cannabis. Instead of having two of them in the lounge smoking cannabis, there were four of them. I was fed up, I was so fed up.
“There was an argument between me and Hugo and then we had the conversation, there were three of them together in the lounge and I said 'okay, I’m leaving'. I couldn’t take that anymore, I couldn’t take both of them smoking on a daily basis. I couldn’t take their behaviour.
“They were telling me when people were arriving, not in advance, they were not respecting my resting periods.” The Met police legal team are relying on a series of photographs allegedly documenting Cmmdr Bennett’s bag of marijuana. Ms Gomes is said to have sent the photographs to the Met when she reported him.
She said: “I finished my night shift, I arrived at home, I had to stay awake because I had a birthday party at lunchtime. So I arrived at home, and after a few minutes, Julian came to the lounge and joined me.
“He came with cannabis in [a] plastic bag, small one. So for the first time, he left that on the table, because usually he kept it with him. I think he went to his bathroom and that was the only opportunity I had to take. I did it to send to Mario. I was like, Mario, this is what going on here, I cannot even have breakfast in peace.
“I went to the party and there were more than 24 hours that I was awake, so I didn’t get a chance to send them to Mario, but Mario was aware.” Summarising the Met’s case against Cmmdr Bennett, Mark Ley-Morgan said he would not have been disciplined if he was really taking CBD products from Holland and Barrett.
He told the panel, led by Akbar Kahn: “We say the contemporaneous WhatsApp messages where she refers to the smoking of cannabis in the flat are compelling, why would Ms Gomes be telling Mario something that was not true?
“The photograph shows cannabis and related paraphernalia, we saw that as compelling The officer denies all knowledge of cannabis, he also says Mario and Mr Pereira did not smoke cannabis either.
“If he is telling the truth we say the only other explanation is that Ms Gomes has planted cannabis from somewhere with all the paraphernalia, put it on the table and taken photographs of it. We say also the officer's reason for not providing a urine sample is also likely to be untrue. He says that he was using CBD products that could be lawfully purchased on the high street in Holland and Bennett."
Responding to Cmmdr Bennett’s claim he did not want to “embarrass” the Met, Mr Ley-Morgan said he believes the embarrassment would more likely be experienced by Cmmdr Bennett. He said: “It would be more than a bit embarrassing for him as he knows the reading would be far higher and consistent with taking over-the-counter products.
“It’s more likely than not that the officer was lying or being dishonest when he gave that reason, firstly because he was smoking cannabis regularly, presuming you have accepted this.
“It is unlikely that they could lead him to test positive for cannabis. It’s unlikely that if he had tested positive as a result of using over-the-counter products he would have faced misconduct hearings.”
Mr Bennett wrote the force's drugs strategy for 2017-21 as a commander for territorial policing. The document, called Dealing With The Impact Of Drugs On Communities, set up plans to raise "awareness of the impact of drug misuse".
Freedom of information requests showed Mr Bennett presided over 74 police misconduct hearings involving 90 officers between June 2010 and February 2012. Out of the hearings involving Mr Bennett, 56 officers were dismissed - more than three-quarters.
He chaired 69 hearings during that time and two officers were dismissed for drugs misuse, the figures showed. Mr Bennett is accused of breaching the force's professional standards for discreditable conduct three times, honesty and integrity twice and orders and instructions once.
His actions are alleged to have amounted to gross misconduct. He denies the allegations and has been suspended on full pay since July 2021. The tribunal continues.
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