Met anti-drugs officer ‘smoke so much cannabis his flatmate thought he was a dealer’
A senior Metropolitan Police officer who drew up Scotland Yard’s anti-drug strategy smoked so much marijuana his flatmate thought he was a dealer, a misconduct panel has been told.
Cdr Julian Bennett used the drug every morning before work and also took LSD and magic mushrooms, according to a nurse who rented a room from him in 2019.
Sheila Gomes said the property was often so full of smoke that it resembled an “Amsterdam coffee shop”.
The Portuguese national, who lived with Mr Bennett for two months, said he was so “erratic and controlling” that she believed he was running a criminal enterprise.
Giving evidence to a police disciplinary hearing on Monday in Palestra House in Southwark, London, Ms Gomes explained how she met Mr Bennett through her friend, Hugo Pereira, who lived with him at the time.
She said she had initially believed he was a lawyer and only discovered he was a senior police officer after moving out.
She told the panel Mr Bennett and Mr Pereira smoked marijuana together and alleged that it was the officer who purchased the drugs.
The hearing was told that Ms Gomes shared her concerns over the drug-taking in WhatsApp messages with her friend, Mario Sariava.
The exchanges were read to the panel and are relied on by the Metropolitan Police as contemporaneous evidence of Mr Bennett’s alleged drug-taking.
Ms Gomes said she personally witnessed Mr Bennett and Mr Pereira smoking drugs every day, but only heard about the officer taking hallucinogenic substances through Mr Pereira.
She explained: “I couldn’t breathe in oxygen when I was living there, but also he had very erratic behaviour, especially when he was not smoking.
“I was thinking he was a dealer – a dealer, a drugs dealer, for me personally, because of his erratic behaviour.”
‘Cannabis in the air’
The disciplinary panel was told that Ms Gomes became so tired of the drug-taking that she took photographs of marijuana inside the flat and sent them to a friend.
She moved out of the flat in December 2019 and reported Mr Bennett to the Metropolitan Police in July 2020, when an investigation was launched.
Mark Ley-Morgan KC, representing the Metropolitan Police, told the panel Ms Gomes, a nurse, had moved into Mr Bennett’s flat in October 2019.
She told the hearing: “I didn’t like it at all. Why did I have to live in a place where it was just cannabis in the air? I was just trying to breathe oxygen.
“He was the one who was using the cannabis, I will say a few times during the day he would bring it in.
“If he would go to work [he would do it] at least before going to work and arriving at home.”
She went on: “It would start early in the morning, before breakfast and before he would leave and go to work.
“Sometimes when he was arriving at home it was there. I never saw him eat before going to work.”
Three days after she reported him to the police, Mr Bennett was asked to provide a sample and take a drug test.
But he refused and said he would resign instead, telling officers he had been taking CBD (cannabidiol) to treat facial palsy and was worried the sample would come up positive for an innocent reason.
Mr Ley-Morgan said Mr Bennett’s explanation for not providing a sample was “nonsensical”, as it would have come up with a much lower reading if it was not being used recreationally.
Officer denies accusations
Mr Bennett wrote the force’s drugs strategy for 2017-21 as a commander for territorial policing.
The document, called Dealing With The Impact Of Drugs On Communities, set up plans to raise “awareness of the impact of drug misuse”.
Mr Ley-Morgan told the panel, led by Akbar Kahn: “We say the contemporaneous WhatsApp messages where she refers to the smoking of cannabis in the flat are compelling ... The photograph shows cannabis and related paraphernalia, we saw that as compelling.”
Mr Bennett is accused of breaching the force’s professional standards for discreditable conduct three times, honesty and integrity twice, and orders and instructions once.
His actions are alleged to have amounted to gross misconduct.
He denies the allegations and has been suspended on full pay since July 2021.
The tribunal continues.
