A police officer who punched a man in a fit of “youthful stupidity” in a Bristol city centre pub while off-duty has been sacked for gross misconduct. PC Jedd Perry was dismissed without notice at an Avon & Somerset Police misconduct hearing on Friday, January 20, into the incident on the dancefloor of the Green House on College Green in August 2021.
The officer, then 21, was on a night out with colleagues when he struck the man twice in the face because he believed his girlfriend, also a constable, was being “sexually assaulted”. PC Perry, who admitted misconduct but denied gross misconduct, insisted he was right to defend PC Jennifer Daly, with whom he was in the early stages of a relationship, after he saw the man lay his hand on her lower back.
But the panel ruled at the end of a four-day hearing at force headquarters in Portishead in November that the attack was unprovoked and his actions unjustified. It found that the Bristol-based student officer had “no reasonable basis for a belief that PC Daly was being sexually assaulted”.
