The Metropolitan Police is having problems with its officers issued with corporate American Express cards. They’ve been misusing them and buying things they really shouldn’t have been, like sex toys and holidays for their mistresses. The Metropolitan Police Authority found 1,183 Met employees have been buying unauthorised items– about a third of all cards have been misused.
They have recently announced an amnesty for the misuse.
People who made “potentially unacceptable” use of the credit cards, including cases of suspected fraud, were labelled “category A” by the MPA and passed to anti-corruption detectives.
[...]
In excess of 300 police officers have been referred to the Directorate of Professional Standards by my staff and forty-six of these have become formal investigations overseen by the indepennt police complaints commission.
This is not quite so bad as it appears; some staff have simply used the wrong procedure for claiming expenses (eg using their corporate card instead of their own one and then claiming back). We may never know how bad it actually is. There seems to be have been a culture of misuse and if disciplinary action was pursued against all the officers, the staffrooms of counter-terrorism and diplomatic protection would be gutted. Regardless, 300 police officers being refered to the PSD is serious.
There have been three successful prosecutions of police officers so far and there will doubtlessly be more. We’ll be looking at the Met’s Credit Card misuse in more depth this month.
And finally, let’s amuse ourselves with Police’s ‘Standards of Good Policing‘:
Honesty and Integrity: Police officers are honest, act with integrity and do not compromise or abuse their position.
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