Two Metropolitan police officers who claimed to smell cannabis as they stopped and searched the athletes Bianca Williams and her partner, Ricardo dos Santos, have been sacked.
Dos Santos – speaking after the tribunal found PC Jonathan Clapham, 31, and PC Sam Franks, 29 had lied and were guilty of gross misconduct – said he had been left “traumatised” after suffering more than 20 stop and searches.
He added that he had been robbed of faith in the police and feared that the officers found guilty of gross misconduct after stopping him and Williams were driven by institutional racism, which the Met continues to deny.
Three other officers were acquitted of gross misconduct over the incident. The disciplinary panel found unproven their claims that the stopping, detention for 45 minutes and handcuffing of the athletes was so unjustified that it amounted to gross misconduct.
The panel also found unproven the claim that the race of the athletes had played a role in their treatment. The other three officers who faced the hearing should undertake a reflective practice process, it recommended.
The sacking of police officers over a stop and search is rare. Officers from the Territorial Support Group decided to stop Williams and Dos Santos while they were driving in Maida Vale, London, on 4 July 2020. They were returning from training, with their baby, in a Mercedes, which officers claimed could be linked to gang activity.
Clapham and Franks were both dismissed without notice and will be placed on a list barring them from serving in the police.
The panel chair, Chiew Yin Jones, said: “Given the breach of the standards of honesty and integrity, within an operational context, arising as it did during the course of an encounter with members of the public in which coercive powers were used, the panel found that conduct of PC Clapham and PC Franks amounted to gross misconduct as the breach was so serious as to justify dismissal.”
Jones said Clapham and Franks had been “untruthful” in their account, which led to the officers being “trapped in a lie”, and there was no objective basis for believing Dos Santos had cannabis in his car or on his person.
Jones said the panel accepted that Dos Santos, who was regularly drug tested, did not take or possess drugs.
Speaking after the ruling, Dos Santos, 28, told the Guardian that standing up to the police had led to him and his partner being racially abused by trolls online, called the N-word, and that Williams had been reduced to tears: “It’s 30 years since Stephen Lawrence and I’m going through the same issues people were going through then.”
Dos Santos said that, since the incident three years ago, he had been stopped two further times while driving, and more than 20 times since the age of 13: “If see the police, I tense up. I’m left with trauma.”
Dos Santos said of the July 2020 incident and the accusation that he smelled of cannabis: “They said it because it is the institutional racism they had, [believing] every black person smokes. I suspect both of them had done it before, to give grounds for a search, where none exist.”
He said he doubted that the Met – which had resisted the hearing – could radically reform: “Talk is cheap; I don’t believe it is going to happen any time soon.”
The athlete said he would help others allegedly wronged by the police through a new charity called 4theVoiceless.
His solicitor, Jules Carey, said: “There is an urgent need for committed investigators and robust panels if the institutional racism in the force is to be addressed at street level.”
Police chiefs led by the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, have persuaded the government to scrap independent chairs of discipline panels, in favour of police officials.
Franks’ barrister, Alisdair Williamson KC, said the finding of gross misconduct would devastate the officer’s life.
Clapham, through his barrister, insisted still that he had smelled cannabis and vowed to appeal. In an interview with investigators, Clapham said: “I clearly smelled what I believed to [be] the odour of cannabis on him.”
The case was brought by the director general of the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
Opening the hearing, the IOPC’s counsel, Karon Monaghan KC, said: “It was obvious that she [Williams] was with her partner and son rather than all being members of a gang.”
The police leadership had backed all the officers after the incident became public, triggering dismay in the black community. The commissioner of the Met police at the time of the stop, Cressida Dick, claimed that “any officer worth their salt would have stopped that car being driven in that manner”.
Officers claimed the car had driven through a red light. It turned out it had not.
Stop and search is a longstanding flash point between police and communities, especially black British young people, who are disproportionately targeted.
A Met deputy assistant commissioner, Matt Ward, apologised to the couple and said: “Honesty and integrity are at the core of policing and, as the panel has concluded, there can be no place in the Met for officers who do not uphold these values. Mr Dos Santos and Ms Williams deserved better and I apologise to them for the distress they have suffered.
“Today’s findings also highlight that we still have a long way to go to earn the trust of our communities, particularly our black communities, when it comes to our use of stop and search.”
