A gross misconduct hearing investigating claims that a top ranking Scotland Yard officer accessed the police database to undermine an investigation into bullying by him is starting on Monday.
Deputy assistant commissioner Matt Horne was found guilty of the bullying allegations, including hurling a stress ball at a colleague, but was promoted to head of professional standards at the Metropolitan Police. He has since been accused of improperly requesting and accessing information to help his failed defence. His hearing, held at Thames Valley Police, was due to start on Monday morning.
The officer is one of hundreds of officers facing disciplinary action at the Met, which was branded institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic in an independent report.
Mr Horne was at Essex police in 2018 when he was found guilty of bullying. A hearing then was told that he hurled a stress ball that hit a colleague in the throat, pushed an officer and swore at him.
The independent panel ruled that his actions amounted to misconduct rather than gross misconduct so no sanctions were imposed.
He was then promoted by Met Commissioner at the time Dame Cressida Dick to be the force’s head of standards. The information he is now accused of accessing is understood to relate to the conduct of an officer who accused him of bullying. It was sent to Mr Horne to undermine the officer, it is claimed.
In March 2020 Mr Horne was placed under investigation for allegedly procuring information in breach of standards. A notice about his disciplinary hearing states that he was provided with information about the professional conduct of an accusing officer.
Mr Horne, who faces the sack if found guilty at the hearing, will become the most senior officer at the Met to face disciplinary action in recent years. He was the deputy chief constable at Essex there when he was found guilty of three counts of bullying a colleague.
He was said to have been expressing frustration at delays in the control room where there were 2,400 calls waiting to be dealt with, including 384 domestic cases, one nearly 16 weeks old. At the time the independent panel ruled that his actions amounted to misconduct. The Essex chief constable at the time Stephen Kavanagh did not impose any disciplinary measures saying the actions were out of character and would not be repeated.
In May this year a disciplinary panel found that David Clark, a former chief superintendent from City of London police, secretly passed internal information to Mr Horne to help in the bullying case. The panel concluded that had he not already retired Mr Clark would have been sacked for gross misconduct. He was found to have forwarded emails from his work account to his personal email account, and then on to Mr Horne.
In June 2021 a file was provided to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether either officer might have committed data protection offences. In September last year the CPS decided there was insufficient evidence to charge either officer with any criminal offence.
The Met has been engulfed by series of scandals and Cresida Dick was forced to resign last year by Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, after it emerged that officers at Charing Cross police station had used a WhatsApp group to joke about raping women, killing black children and exchange racist slurs
Mr Horne has been moved from professional standards to oversee an IT project.
