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1 month ago
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A Metropolitan Police officer has been fired after making racist comments and pulling the hair of a colleague at a police outing to a horse racing day out. PC Shaun Davies was also found to have pulled "his eyes up in an obvious attempt to mock and squint like a Chinese person" at an East Asian colleague in a separate incident at a Christmas party.
PC Davies, who was serving on the response team at Islington Police Station at the time, was dismissed without notice and added to the College of Policing’s barred list after a misconduct hearing, which was held between February 3 to 13 and the outcome published earlier this month. Chief Superintendent Andrew Carter, responsible for policing for the Central North Command Unit, said: “The behaviour displayed by PC Shaun Davies is wholly unacceptable.
"We are committed to ensuring that actions do have consequences and anyone who displays such views is not fit to serve in our organisation. It’s right that he has been dismissed with immediate effect.”
The complaints made against PC Davies
The panel said that "senior officers did not take the complaints of Officers A and B seriously enough" when the allegations first came to light. He was finally held accountable when one of the victims who suffered abuse at the Derby at Epsom Downs Racecourse in 2010 broke down at a Metropolitan Police talk aimed at tackling unacceptable conduct from officers in 2022.
Officer B, of East Asian origin, said that Davies had pulled his eyes back to mock her appearance in a display of racism during a police party in 2009.
Officer A said PC Davies called her a “P**i” and said her dad owned a corner shop while at the Derby at Epsom Downs Racecourse on June 5, 2010. He repeatedly made derogatory racist comments to her throughout the day, the panel heard.
Later on, at a Walkabout bar in Covent Garden, she described how he “grabbed hold of her hair”. While Officer A alleged that PC Davies had “dragged her across the pub floor”, the panel did not find this to be true as the panel said it may have been the case that intervention by a fellow officer caused her to fall to the floor, if this did happen.
Officer A described someone pulling PC Davies off of her before running to get her jacket and leaving the pub. She says the next day she received a text from PC Davies apologising for his drunken behaviour, although this has not been possible to recover due to the passage of time since the events.
When Officer A returned to work the next week PC Davies said out loud that she had called him a ‘f****t’ over the weekend, the court heard. She said that she believed this to be an attempt to cover up his behaviour.
Officer A then claims to have told her line manager about the assault. The two were then put in a room together, and while she doesn’t remember if PC Davies apologised she accepted that she did give him a hug. While no one apart from Officer A claimed to have seen the racial insults made at Epsom racecourse, an officer did come forward to say they had seen the assault at Walkabout Bar.
'One of the most disgusting behaviours'
DS McGeouch, who says he grabbed PC Davies and threw him away from Officer A, says it was "one of the most disgusting behaviours he had ever witnessed." There were also a number of written statements from police who said they did not see anything happen at the races or at Walkabout Bar.
However, the panel said it did not necessarily accept these as true as some of the officers "may have feared being ostracised within the group or how PC Davies would have reacted had he found out about their disloyalty." The panel heard from several witnesses during the hearing but after considering all the evidence that PC Shaun Davies has made racially offensive comments and pulled Officer A’s hair.
Officer B, who had been mocked by Davies at the Police Christmas party in 2009, says she complained to an inspector who attempted to resolved the matter at a pub outing when he shouted that "PC Davies had something to say to her and PC Davies said ‘I’m sorry’.” Officer B considered that the informal way that this was done was not satisfactory and the matter was effectively “brushed under the carpet."
PC Davies, who denies the allegations, was also able to provide testimonials from at least 17 different friends and colleagues that proved he was well thought of by them. His partner, Stuart Fields, also stated that he had not seen any altercation at the 2010 Derby, but the panel found him not to be an independent witness due to his close nature with PC Davies.
Got a story? Please get in touch at katherine.gray@reachplc.com
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