London police Chief superintendent and inspector sacked for corruption

west London Chief Superintendent Paul Martin has been in the police for 23 years. He started work in Wandsworth and was attached to the homicide team, before moving on to Lambeth. He worked within the public events management for a period of time, including being attached to the Olympics, being an event manager for the command team for Twickenham, working at Notting Hill Carnival and on new year’s eve.

Before coming to Ealing, Mr Martin was deputy borough commander for Hounslow for four years.

The news has broke today that he is one of two Metropolitan Police officers have been dismissed following an investigation by the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards. A misconduct hearing, led by an Independent Legally Qualified Chair, concluded on Sunday, 16 January, with all findings and sanctions being read into public record.

Chief Superintendent Paul Martin was found to have breached Standards of Professional Behaviour, amounting to gross misconduct, in relation to honesty and integrity, orders and instructions, duties and responsibilities, authority, respect and courtesy, and equality and diversity.

The breaches related to, misusing a corporate credit card, conduct towards more junior members of staff including a pregnant colleague and failing to declare a conflict of interest while assisting in a promotion process for Chief Inspector Davinder Kandohla.

He was dismissed without notice.

Martin,Khandola and radio host

Mr Martin, a borough commander in west London, liked to ‘bellow’ at another female colleague, saying she should make his tea and porridge.

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Chief Inspector Kandohla was also found to have breached Standards of Professional Behaviour, amounting to gross misconduct, in relation to honesty and integrity, authority, respect and courtesy, duties and responsibilities and discreditable conduct. The breaches related to failing to declare a conflict of interest while taking part in his own promotion process, providing a misleading account to professional standards officers during an investigation into expenses he had claimed and conduct towards junior members of staff.

He was dismissed without notice.

He was said to have claimed more than £5,500 in expenses using the corporate credit card of a junior officer, which was blown on booze and flight upgrades on a week-long policing trip to Florida.

Cleared

The hearing also considered allegations against two other officers. Sergeant James Di-Luzio was found to have breached Standards of Professional Behaviour, amounting to misconduct, in relation to, orders and instructions, duties and responsibilities, and authority, respect and courtesy. The breaches related to the misuse of a corporate credit card and conduct towards more junior members of staff. He was issued with management advice. All allegations against PC Karina Kandohla were not proven.

At the time of the allegations, PC Kandohla was attached to Met Operations. The three other officers were attached to Frontline Policing.

The DPS investigation began in July 2018 following allegations that Chief Supt Martin and Chief Inspector Kandohla had breached Standards of Professional Behaviour as part of Chief Inspector Kandohla’s promotion process. A further investigation was launched in September 2019 after concerns were raised about other breaches of professional standards, including inappropriate behaviour in the workplace and improper financial expenditure.

The breaches all occurred between 2017 and 2019. Commander Catherine Roper said: “The behaviour demonstrated by these officers has no place in the Met. It is right they have been subject to a detailed and thorough investigation by the DPS, resulting in a misconduct hearing and the subsequent sanctions.

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“Three of the officers were of a leadership rank and should have been setting a strong example for the standards we hold in the Met. Instead they abused their trusted positions; in particular in the way they spoke to and treated more junior members of staff was appalling. This behaviour will not be tolerated by anyone in the Met and we will continue to investigate and hold to account those who act in this manner.”

The DPS investigation also considered the actions of a Chief Inspector, who was an Inspector at the time. That officer received management action for breaching standards of professional behaviour in relation to duties and responsibilities.

This means the officer will have been subject to a performance discussion with their line manager focussing on their learning from their previous actions and how they will commit to improve to ensure the behaviour is not repeated.

The trust of the public is fundamental to our core purpose of keeping London safe. It is critical and right that all Londoners can trust our officers, staff and volunteers whenever they encounter them. It is also essential that people who work for the Met do so in a positive, inclusive and supportive environment.

We cannot and are not waiting for the findings of ongoing inquiries to begin rebuilding the public’s trust and confidence that police officers will protect and respect them. We have already taken a number of significant steps to start real change across the organisation.

These include the ongoing changes delivered through the Deputy Commissioner’s Delivery Group, including the Mayors Action Plan; the delivery of the STRIDE Action plan; The ‘Rebuilding Trust and Confidence’ commitments; in addition to two independent reviews, an examination of all current investigations of sexual and domestic abuse allegations against Met employees and an increase in the number of investigators in our Professional Standards Directorate.

The Met is driven by the values of professionalism, integrity, courage and compassion. We only want the best and will always act when our employees fall below the exemplary standards we and the public expect and deserve’.

Narrative

A 2018 myldn interview with so called “Local Democracy reporter” Martin Elvery claimed to find out how West London’s new police boss, Chief Superintendent Paul Martin, went from being a child victim of race hate on the streets of South West London, to commanding one of London’s largest police operations.

The interview let Paul set the narrative on a subject that was not about his jobe then goes on to demonstrate in the interview the behaviour that got him sacked.

This is the interview unedited

West Area BCU (Basic Command Unit) Commander Paul Martin is a big character. It’s a good job, really, as he’s just been appointed to run policing in the whole of Ealing , Hounslow and Hillingdon .

When I go into his office he’s got soul music blaring from speakers on his desk and is talking animatedly to a couple of colleagues. It’s soon clear that soul is what he’s all about.

As he leaps up to shake my hand, I see he’s a big guy. Not just physically big – he clearly keeps himself in shape – but also with a big welcoming handshake and massive charisma. As he starts talking he reveals an even bigger passion for policing and for the people he is tasked with looking after. He immediately orders me some tea and cake and starts talking nine to the dozen about his huge job.

The self confessed “son of a preacher man ” – his father was a pentecostal minister – Chief Superintendent Martin, now 51, tells me about his direct experience of racism and hate growing up in Mitcham in South West London at a time when black people were still a tiny minority.

Paul set the narrative with the media

“I know what it’s like to be a victim of crime,” he laughs. “I used to have five different routes to school and I would go a different route every day. “I was racially abused at school, in classes, at break times, all the time. I would never walk past a pub because if you did you were going to get attacked and chased by white skinheads.” Incredibly – because he doesn’t look like any sort of victim – Paul tells me he was stabbed and even lost a close friend to knife crime. “I used to be scared that I wasn’t going to make it to 15-years-old,” he laughs, incredulously.

“I used to self-present at hospital after I’d been attacked and tell them I’d been run over.”

Chief Superintendent Martin added: “25 years ago when I started in policing, it was a case of ‘spot the non white face’, but now we’ve got loads of black, Asian, white, Polish, Russian officers. “That’s why I love West London, because it’s one of the most diverse areas in the country. I loooove it.” He slams his hand on the table. I’m convinced.

“It means we’ve got a shared cultural experience with our communities and it reassures people because we know where they are coming from. We’ve got officers here from Africa, Asia, Japan, Russia, Poland just about everywhere you can mention and I looooove it,” he repeats. While I’m there he is constantly calling to colleagues, who all have their office doors open, making demands, cajoling and questioning, but also enjoying some high level banter. There’s lots of laughter and lots of comradery alongside the serious task at hand.

It’s clear he also sets high expectations that his staff follow his passion for putting the people first.

Davinder doing press runs

Newstatesman

An exclusive investigation was done by a newspaper and they found many of the never-before-published names were hidden from public view because their misconduct hearing was “held in private”.  This means journalists aren’t allowed to attend the meeting and report on the name and/or details of the case.

In some cases, reporters were not even informed a hearing was going ahead. However, new regulations mean that since 2020, journalists now have to be told about every hearing so they can argue why it should be public (though cases pre-dating the change can still be heard under the old regulations).

According to our analysis of data from 19 different police forces, around one in five hearings (19.6 per cent) have been held in private since 2018.

In west London, one reporter was escorted from the Metropolitan Police’s Empress State building after learning, shortly before a disciplinary hearing was due to start, that the entire case would be heard in private.

In Hampshire, reporter Ben Fishwick was unable to report on a police officer who was sacked for pursuing “private personal relationships” with women he met on duty. 

An exclusive New Statesman investigation, in collaboration with the Brighton Argus, into the records of officers dismissed for serious offences has revealed 212 individuals, ranging from police community support officers (PCSOs) to chief inspectors, who were struck off without either their names or misconduct being made public. This is despite regulations introduced in 2017 stating that barred officers should be placed on a public list by the College of Policing, except in instances that would cause serious harm. The regulations say that “where a person recorded in the police barred list is a police officer or former police officer… the College must publish the entry relating to that person”.

The offences these officers were dismissed for include domestic abuse, sexual harassment, possessing and distributing indecent images of children, racism, colluding with suspects, engaging in sexual relationships with vulnerable people, excessive use of force against suspects and members of the public, breaching Covid-19 restrictions, and drink driving, among others.

Some of these officers were dismissed in “private” meetings away from the press and public, or were granted anonymity. Others were sacked in supposedly public meetings, or had notices placed online, of which there is no current record.  

However, a New Statesman investigation can now reveal many of the officers secretly kicked out of the profession following gross misconduct hearings: names that are on the College of Policing’s public barred list but that are unknown to the public as they have never been released.

 New Statesman investigation was able to view 872 names on the list, added in the period from 26 January 2018 to 2 June 2021 – the vast majority of the total. The names were then checked against police websites and public news sources for record of their dismissal. We were unable to find any public record of dismissal for 212 names, almost one in every four on the list.

When contacted, some forces informed us they had published (and since removed) details for 48 of those names at the time – for whatever reason, these were not picked up and widely publicised, and the notices published by the forces have been removed.

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