Met Police officer who said ‘shut up black boy’ to colleague sacked

PC Luke Hunt, based within the North East Command Unit, made the comments on the way home from an officer’s leaving do at Dirty Martini in Liverpool Street on January 27 last year. 

On a train PC Hunt was told to “shut up” by a colleague he was interrupting, a misconduct hearing was told on November 8.

PC Hunt responded by addressing his colleague as “black boy” twice and telling him to “shut up”. 

This was witnessed by two other police colleagues. 

By February 28, PC Hunt had not apologised to his colleague. 

When asked why he hadn’t apologised PC Hunt said it was because he hadn’t seen him in person and that it would not be appropriate over the phone. 

However, the panel stated: “PC Hunt made no attempt to seek out Officer O and ensure they met, on his current account apparently just waiting for a chance meeting that did not happen. 

“PC Hunt did not reach out to him by, for example, sending him an email or text message suggesting they meet as there was something he felt he needed to discuss with him.” 

PC Hunt accepts that he used the racist term and said he apologises unconditionally to his colleague. 

He said he made a stupid mistake and a bad error of judgment, and asked the misconduct panel to give him a final written warning. 

However, after hearing the evidence the panel found PC Hunt had breached the standards of professional behaviour amounting to gross misconduct and he was dismissed. 

Chief Superintendent Simon Crick, of the North East Command Unit, said: “We expect all of our officers to uphold our high standards of behaviour, when they are both on and off-duty. We have also made it very clear that there is no place for racism in the Met. 

“We do not accept conduct of this nature which undermines confidence in our organisation and so it is only right that PC Hunt has been dismissed.”