A Metropolitan Police officer who drew a cartoon of himself performing a sex act on a junior Muslim colleague has been allowed to keep his job.
The PC – dubbed ‘Officer X’ whose identity has been kept a secret – made a series of drawings in a police work book under the heading ‘A Modern Romance’ and gave it to the newly-qualified officer.
She told a tribunal she was upset by seeing images of herself sitting on Officer X’s face, apparently engaging in a sexual act, as well as depictions of them kissing and settled down with children.
Officer X, who has served the Met for 16 years, had also drawn a cartoon of himself on the phone to the junior PC while holding his penis, as well as an image titled “suspended wank” which he said was a reference to his "irrepressible sex drive”.
The tribunal heard Officer X worked with the junior officer in a Safer Neighbourhood team, and she saw him as a father figure.
They had socialised together, and she had confided in him about her belief in abstinence from full sex before marriage, according to her Muslim faith.
The hearing was told Officer X had dated another junior female officer, and he drew the cartoons shortly after that relationship broke down.
During the tribunal, one of Officer X’s colleagues accused him of being a “sex addict” and claimed he had a pillow shaped as a penis as a Secret Santa gift.
Officer X described the cartoons, which he drew across two days in November 2021, as “exaggerated sarcasm” and not intended to humiliate his colleague.
One image depicted the junior officer “eating only one chip and taking the rest home”, the tribunal heard, and Officer X insisted he didnot know she had struggled with an eating disorder.
He denied any attraction to the officer, and said the sex act cartoon “was a reference to a previous conversation during which she told him that she had spoken to a friend who had advised about the religious confines of sex before marriage, and that oral sex was permissible.”
He also said the officer had laughed after finding the police work book in her locker.
The misconduct panel concluded that the cartoons had created an offensive or humiliating environment for the officer, although Officer X had not deliberately intended to do so.
“The cartoons were titled a ‘Modern Day Romance’ and developed over two days in a deliberate manner. It was not an ‘off the cuff’ drawing”, the panel found.
“Given the content of the cartoon and its explicit sexual nature in part, the Panel finds it hard to understand how the defence can maintain that it was not sexually motivated.
“In the Panel’s view it was clearly sexually motivated on the part of the Officer X.”
Allegations that Officer X had told the junior PC about having sex with her in a dream, that he had drawn another cartoon of them having sex in a threesome, and that he had humiliated her by discussing his sex life were dismissed by the panel.
Officer X was given a final written warning at the conclusion of the misconduct proceedings.
