A former Met Police officer slapped two of his colleagues bottoms and grabbed another penis while off duty and drunk at a work leaving drinks. Former PC Thomas Wallis-Chandley would have been dismissed without notice had he still been a serving police officer, a misconduct panel heard.
Wallis-Chandley had been at a work leaving drinks at Hamilton Hall Wetherspoons on Liverpool Street for one of his colleagues on October 25, 2022, while he was still a police officer. At the get-together, he got “very intoxicated”, the panel said and began making an inappropriate comment to one colleague about her same sex partner.
He said her trousers were “on point” and raised his eyebrows in “a suggestive and/or sexual way”, the panel said. Both officers found this offensive, the panel heard. Wallis-Chandley admitted this was misconduct but denied gross misconduct.
The group then moved onto a Simmons cocktail bar where Wallis-Chandley cupped another colleague’s penis. The aftermath was caught on video where the colleague said in a jokey fashion “he just grabbed my cock”, the panel heard. He later admitted to the panel that this was gross misconduct.
After this, Wallis Changey was seen dancing drunkenly in the street, the panel heard. The couple he had offended earlier had had enough and decided to go home, but he was apparently not done with them, reportedly following them home to Liverpool Street Station after the event.
The couple said they saw him trying to hide while following them and were “frightened” by his behaviour, so they went into a KFC restaurant. One of them challenged him, but he said nothing and walked away.
Wallis-Chandley admitted to following them, but said he did not deliberately hide from them. He admitted misconduct but denied gross misconduct for this.
He returned to the group which then moved on to the Cocktail Club in Bishopsgate. In the club, he slapped two of his colleague’s bottoms whilst they were engaged in a private conversation, one being the man he had grabbed the penis of earlier in the evening.
What did the panel say?
The panel assessed each of these allegations against Wallis-Chandley. They found the inappropriate comment made to the couple was “not inherently sexual”. However, they noted that when he had been immediately challenged by the woman he made the comment to, he said he would āprobably notā have made the comment to a male partner.
They found this had breached the Standard of Equality and Diversity, to a “limited extent” and was misconduct but not gross misconduct. The panel found that his following of the couple “so shortly after he had made a remark that he knew had caused offence to them both,” did amount to gross misconduct and believed that he did in fact try to hide from them.
For the grabbing of his colleague’s penis and slapping bottoms, the panel accepted his admission that these were incidents of gross misconduct. The panel concluded that Thomas Wallis-Chandley would have been dismissed if they were still a serving officer and that the officer’s name will be placed on the barred list.
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